Why Stress Is Deadly?
Stress causes deterioration in your Mind and Body, rendering you more susceptible to illnesses ranging from heart disease, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, chronic stress has been linked to ailments as diverse as intestinal problems, gum disease, erectile dysfunction, growth problems and even cancer.
Stress is a measure of your mental and physical resistance to circumstances beyond your control.
Stressors are threats, demands, or changes to which you attach special, significant importance, you may struggle or feel discomfort or uncertainty in your responses.
Your autonomic nervous system (the part that regulates how your unconscious physiological processes function) is divided into two parts – the sympathetic and the parasympathetic autonomic nervous systems.
The sympathetic nervous system is responsible in part for the “fight or flight” response. It is stimulated when you are under pressure, and results in increased arousal.
The parasympathetic nervous system does the opposite; it returns your system to a balanced, or homeostatic, state.
The hormones your body produces boost heart rate, increase respiration and increase the availability of glucose (cellular fuel) in the blood, thereby enabling the well-known “fight or flight” reaction.
These responses use a lot of energy, stress affects physical processes such as digestion, reproduction, physical growth and some aspects of the immune system; to shut or slow down.
There are different types of stress that can be harmful to your well being.
Cumulative Stress slowly accumulates over time. It’s just one small thing after and another, until you are overwhelmed and can not take it any more.
Chronic Stress does not easily go away. You may wake up every morning with it and can not stop to think about it on the bed every night. Many people complaining of enduring back pain tend to have chronic stress. Many people injured in their 40’s or 50’s suffer from never ending pain that can not be easily be cured by medical procedures. They are in an irritable state and easily get angry when confronted with even a small problem!
Catastrophic Stress can affect people after an intense and unexpected traumatic event, such as an accident, hurricanes, or act of violence, it can be devastating, especially for those who are immediately affected. A trauma is a life-altering event, a horrific kind of stress. Some people are unable to recover from catastrophic stress. Many people suffering PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) can take many years to recover from catastrophic stress. The death of a loved one is catastrophic. People build strong attachments over time, once broken, it brings a lot of personal pain. Grief is not something that comes or ends swiftly. People can often become overwhelmed by the complexity and dilemmas of their personal and professional lives.
Control Stress People feel more competent, stronger, and safer when they have control, often situations in life do not allow us to have that opportunity. You may end up time poor without enough time to devote to your favourite activities. Once an energetic, positive person, with dynamic personality, you may find yourself constantly exhausted, thinking things will never change, dreading going to work, cranky, and suffering from stomach pains and migraine headaches. Your have no mastery over your life life with no ability to make choices based on your awareness.
Taking Responsibility for your Responses
Taking a step back from life enables you to move forward with greater ease and grace with renewed clarity towards what you wish to create.
Attending a retreat with Living from The Heart provides such an opportunity for growth.
In life what is an unhealthily stressful situation for one person may be a bracing challenge for another.
Stress is your response to external circumstances. You can learn coping behaviors and live in a more balanced way. New behavior patterns have to be learned, not adopted as an act of will.
This involves taking responsibility for your mental, emotional and physical states, training yourself to alter how you respond to experiences, especially difficult ones, to affect outcomes both internally, in terms of mental and emotional states that you experience, and externally, in terms of the situations that you create that can become more conducive to your well being and happiness. When you become deeply aware of the patterns that your mind and emotions give rise to including the patterns of responses that you experience as stress.
You become more aware, for example, of how you might blow things out of proportion, to add to your woes.
You might become aware of how you indulge in anxious thoughts, so that a neutral thought about something you have to do leads to worrying about what will happen if you do not do it, and how this leads in turn to you actively seeking things to worry about.
Once you are aware of these internal activities, you clearly are in a better position to do something about them.
With awareness comes choice. Once you are aware of a pattern of experience, you can choose to act in a different way.
No awareness = No choice
Restoring Mind, Body, Spirit Retreat can help you to become more aware of how to make choices that lead to outcomes that are more supportive of your well being and happiness.
By practicing the relaxation techniques on a daily basis, you learn to let go of the unhealthy emotional states that lead to the physical and emotional tension. Meditation includes a strong element of bodily relaxation.
To begin to understand how this works you can listen to a body awareness and relaxation exercises on the Meditation page.
You can learn how to directly affect your emotional and mental states, promoting calmness and contentment. Learning how your body/ mind interacts will help you to influence your emotional states by regulating your posture and breathing and lifestyle.
