Chronic illness and dis-ease often develops when your body is unable to self-regulate and complete a stress response, therefore leaving your body “stuck” in a state of fight, flight or freeze. Anything incomplete stays...meaning, it gets stored in your body. The accumulation of stress in the body causes internal chaos and symptoms appear as a protective alert to the perceived danger.
Reacting to symptoms with fear, frustration, trying to fight and fix and obsessively searching for answers keeps the body stuck in a survival and perpetuates the chaos and therefore symptoms.
Its impossible to be healthy or heal when locked into such a state of threat. God designed out bodies brilliantly and we are intended to live in survival primarily. The physiology of prolonged threat leads to poor digestion, impaired detox, lowered immune response, chronic pain, inflammation, anxiety/depression, negative thinking, increased heart rate/BP, and so many other possible “mystery symptoms". This fearful obsession of fixing the body becomes all-consuming and keeps you on the healing hamster wheel but gets you nowhere.
The huge first step forward for me was understanding how much my relationship to the symptoms, and how I was reacting and approaching them was fueling the dysfunction. This was all nervous system driven. It started to shift when I stopped trying to fix and fear the symptoms and instead understood them in a new way….the symptoms are like the tip of the iceberg and there are deeper aspects of self that needed tending to….nervous system dysregulation, core wounds, suppressed emotions, thought patterns, self-image, unresolved traumas and/or hurts/regrets, beliefs.
So the best thing to do when experiencing a chronic symptom is to be neutral about it, notice, observe and allow it without judgement. That’s a first step in calming the danger response that’s keeping the cycle going.
Comments