Let’s be clear from the start that stress is not all in the mind, as some people might say.
Stress is a physiological and chemical change within our body which is designed to bring on the fight or flight instinct.
In modern society though there is very little reason to fight or flight. In stressful situations our bodies are now primed and packed with chemicals which create physiological changes that never actually get used. This builds up and can be the cause of long-term health problems such as fatigue, anxiety and exhaustion. All these are indicators of stress.
Stress is linked to the six leading causes of death:
Heart disease, cancer, respiratory ailments, accidents, liver cirrhosis and suicide.
We all know that we should lower our stress levels, but it isn’t always easy. Sometimes though, knowing exactly how stress is affecting us can be a highly motivational factor in taking steps which will actually decrease stress in our lives.
Here are 5 reasons why learning how to de-stress is so important:
- Stress leads to some of the most debilitating diseases of our time, including higher rates of heart disease, cancer, accidental injury and even suicide.
- Stress depletes your vitamin B stores and suppresses your immune system by producing more cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline. An excess of these can make your body feel like it is on constant high-alert.
- Stress raises your heart rate, respiratory rate and interrupts digestion to highly unhealthy levels.
- Stress interferes with your sleep cycles. It is frustrating to lose sleep when you are already under lots of stress. This usually occurs when we are ruminating about something and our anxiety levels are already heightened, which leads to restless sleep.
- Long-term stress can cause adrenal fatigue. If you are always operating in a fight-or-flight capacity, are constantly worried or stressed, then your body is likely to go through something called adrenal fatigue. Our adrenal glands are responsible for making over 50 different hormones and can normally help us to deal with stress in small doses, but if we never get a break, we can develop adrenal fatigue. This causes us to store excess fat and consequently our cells take longer to repair themselves- thus causing us to age faster
Some types of stress can be very good for us, for example when we’re preparing to significantly challenge ourselves. However modern life seems to produce many sorts of unnecessary stress which are debilitating to us.
Being able to keep a healthy balance of alert and focused stress when it’s needed is acceptable, and it’s important to be able to unwind and relax after those periods of time. However, continuing stress for prolonged periods of time has a long-term highly detrimental effect on our health.
Our physical and psychological systems aren’t able to tell the difference between a real life threatening stress where the need to fight or flight is essential and that of a subjective stress, where the physical risk is just not real and no real danger exists. In modern society we are constantly triggered by small stressful experiences that at the time seem highly important to our bodies and so prepare us but we are not able to let off the chemical steam that we have created.
The chemical and the physiological changes happen, but sadly they don’t actually get used. It’s a bit like building up the pressure inside of something but not allowing it to release naturally. The constant pressure or re-pressurisation causes cracks in our health.
The great news is that when you learn to de-stress and follow the natural relaxing rhythms of your body and your mind, you actually become more productive, more creative and happier.
With hypnotherapy and NLP, EMDR and EFT we can use effective, safe and healthy techniques to rapidly and easily reduce stress. This can dramatically improve our health and our quality of life.
These natural techniques can be learnt and then used by us at home to regain a healthier balance in our life.