Your Bodymind: Moving In and Out of Stress

Imagine you are trying to squeeze some toothpaste out of a tube but you have forgotten to take the top off. What happens? Deb actually did this in one of her most unaware moments (they do happen!) and the toothpaste soon found another way out—through the bottom of the tube and onto her clotheyourbody.jpgs. Now imagine that the tube of toothpaste is you, under pressure and beginning to experience mental or emotional stress. But you do not take your lid off, as it were, by recognizing what is happening and making time to relax or deal with your inner conflicts. So what happens to the pressure building up inside you? Eventually it has to find a way out and if it can't come out through the top—by being expressed or released—it will come out somewhere else. It will find the weakest point, whether through your digestive system, your nerves, immune system, behavior, or sleep patterns. Repressed or ignored it can become illness, depression, addiction, or anxiety; projected outwards it becomes hostility, aggression, prejudice, or fear. See more about this in Deb’s book, Your Body Speaks Your Mind. The fight-or-flight stress response enables us to respond to danger if, for instance, we were on the front line of a battle or facing a large bear. And even though we may not often be in these situations, bears do come in many shapes and sizes. Seemingly unimportant events can also cause a stress reaction, as the brain is unable to tell the difference between real and imagined threats. We all respond differently to circumstances: a divorce may be high on the list of stressors for one person but it may be a welcome relief to another! Life-issues that we are all subject to in one way or another are stressors for some but not for others. The difference lies in our response, for although we may have little or no control over the circumstances we are dealing with, we do have control over our reaction to them. Continue reading on The Huffington Post