It’s no secret that stress can take a toll on your mental health. But what you may not know is that it can also cause physical pain. In fact, stress is one of the most common causes of bodily aches and pains.
If you’re feeling stressed out and have been experiencing physical pain, read on to learn about the surprising way stress is causing your pain. You may find some relief by making some simple changes to how you deal with stress.
We are talking about something we all experience literally.
STRESS
Stress is not necessarily a bad thing. When we exercise, we’re stressing the body and we’re training it to have greater resiliency and greater strength. Along with physical stress mental stress has it’s place as well.
Outrun the Bear
If we were cave men and we were being chased by a bear. We wouldn’t want to just sit there and say “Oh here comes a bear… it’s really stressing me out, I should meditate.” The stress in this life or death situation has a great role. It cortisone into our system, it tightens all of our muscles, it tightens our ligaments an it gets us primed, ready to run and fight this bear.
However, if you were under this attack every single day it would actually have a shortening effect on your lifespan. Even if you were to outrun the bear every single day you would still have a shorter lifespan.
Long Term Exposure To Stress Hurts Your Body
The impact of stress over time means that your body is going to be in this constant fight or flight mode. In our nervous system, we have two systems that are at play all the time and in different levels of balance, you’ve got the parasympathetic, which is the rest and digest system.
There is also the sympathetic, which is your fight or flight. So anytime you’ve ever felt a level of tension where you feel like your heart’s racing, you’re sweating and maybe you feel like you’re ready to fight or run away. That’s your sympathetic system surging.
The sympathetic system shuts down other systems in the body in order to direct resources towards the ones that help you run away and have better vision. It also tightens up your muscles and makes them ready to run.
But if you have an injury, it will also put tension on the injury and change the way your body has adapted to modifying movements around that injury.
Basically everything in your body shifts to adjust, but in that state, you’re also producing a tremendous amount of neurotransmitters that are not helpful in a day-to-day manner because they change the way your brain thinks. They change the way you respond, they change your reactivity, uh, and your ability to restore normal, natural function.
In this constant state of agitation, you’re actually using up resources that are better used for:
- Longer life
- Healthier quality of life
- Recovering from the day
- Recovering promoted injuries
- Getting ready for intellectual persuites
- Having an emotional presence with someone
When you’re in a state of runaway or fight, you’re not going to have the same kind of level of emotional connectivity that you have with other people because you’re concerned about their safety.
Your mind is going to be action oriented rather than reflection-oriented.
We’ve seen this in many of our patients where they’ll come to us and they’re in this state of chronic anxiety and they’re dealing with pain. They’re dealing with digestive issues or dealing with quality of sleep, quality of life, or just level of satisfaction.
This happens to all of us.
At some point in our lives. We have something that takes place that puts us in a state of higher level of stress or anxiety. The toll is pretty remarkable.
I’ve seen the stress hit my hairline. I used to have a full head of hair, but looking back at those very stressful times in my life, each time has affected my hair. Everyone is different in how the body reacts to stress.
Our ability to connect with loved ones is a big foundation to the quality of our relationships. If you’re in a state of anxiety, it’s really easy to displace what you’re feeling on the inside to the people you care most about.
When you’re in a relationship, the boundary between yourself and your partner or your loved one becomes blurry. So people start to treat their loved ones like they treat themselves.
And if they’re in that chronic state of anxiety or they’re feeling that tension on the inside. The only place that often shows up is when they deal with themselves or when they deal with a loved one.
In our clients case, they would come home and they would have this stress. But rather than being able to downshift and just connecting with the stress, connecting with their loved one, allowing it to subside they would still be in that action mode.
They would translate all of the stress they had during the day onto their partner and explode over the smallest little agitation. It was almost like it was out of their control and the more they tried to control it, the worst the problem got.
How To Avoid These Problems
The solution in that situation wasn’t to change their behavior as much as it was to identify the feelings, identify the emotions, and connect with those emotions. This person really was challenged she never learned how to do that.
During the ketamine infusion, we were able to, we were able to tap into that and understand it better and bring it to the surface.
Notice we didn’t say, “Oh, you’re stressed out… here to take a lot of these anti-stress medications, anti-anxiety medications and get out of my office.” That’s not how we operate
This is something we try to restore in our practice at Wellward. It’s connecting with the inner being of who you are and understanding the problems you’re presenting.
There are more things that come out through talking and stress and the impact has on your body can be profound.
This is something we can take control of so our family members don’t have to suffer. If it’s something that you’re not doing, it’s not intuitive to learn, but we can help quite a lot with different resources we have.
Like our mental health resources and ketamine infusions. People often say it’s like 20 years of therapy all at once.
Stress can cause physical pain. If you’re feeling stressed out and have been experiencing body aches, we’re glad you read about the surprising way stress is causing your pain – and what you can do to alleviate it.
We know that having a lot going on in life can be overwhelming at times, but we also know how much relief there is when things start to settle down again. Give us a call for a free discovery session so we can help you get back into balance as soon as possible!
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DISCLAIMER: The information in this email is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content is for general informational purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional
