Embodied Healing is The Upside to Stress
Embodied Healing is The Upside to Stress
Excess stress is a factor of our modern world, but we can learn ways of building capacity and resilience to overcome the negative effects of stress.
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My light Saturday reading was The Two Faces of Stress: Nurturing Resilience and Recognizing Overload by Safia Debar of the Mayo Clinic.
The really interesting point of the article is that not all stress is bad. There is another side to stress called “Eustress” which is the positive side of stress, enhancing our sense of well-being.
So, this Eustress is another word for building Resilience and basically, this ratifies the notion that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
I know I have had tangible experiences of both kinds of stress and I’ve written about contractions I’ve felt in my body but I have not written about the Eustress experiences, which looking back are also palpable.
My brain injury confronted me with levels of challenge, from trying to alter my lifestyle to survive, to eventually actually finding an outlet for my creativity once again, thanks to Pulse.
Everyone faces challenges in life, and for most of mine, I’ve tried to avoid them. With my injury the challenges became just getting groceries, going to the bank and the occasional appointment, many of which I cancelled. At the beginning, all of these activities caused anxiety as I noticed myself getting through them each of them seemed to get easier.
Stress Depletes the Organism
Besides the description of Eustress, the article makes two other key points:
“Chronic stress impacts every organ system, leading to anxiety, depression, and digestive problems.
Continual high stress without relief can be harmful, diminishing our ability to return to a relaxed baseline.”
It’s interesting looking back now at 5 ½ years after brain surgery how my experience confirms the main points of the article.
That being again – it seems that the cycle of meeting a challenge, successfully processing the stress encountered, and savoring the satisfaction of that experience leads to Resilience and inner strength.
I went through years of intensely resisting anything that would interfere with my peaceful ability to recover in stillness. This resistance led to anxiety which made things worse.
Then I started to observe the resistance and note that often despite the resistance, things had worked out so that the resistance had served no viable purpose.
I also noticed that the resistance was mainly in the anticipation of the experience. But then, when I was in the process of doing whatever it was I had been resisting – I was on what the author of the piece calls “automatic pilot.” I was able to allow it to unfold without deliberate interference – allowing life and forcing nothing.
The Inner Rules Against Resting
One of the biggest areas of resistance, which I’ve written about before, was to “resting.”
I can’t remember precisely when, but it was less than a year ago that I tried an experiment where I listened to my body and let myself rest without guilt in stillness.
Thoughts that might have made me feel like a slacker were allowed to pass through my mind without picking up on them and creating a further narrative. It was a meditation as well, I suppose, especially from the standpoint of those who see meditation as essentially letting life unfold without resistance or judgment.
I was talking to my ex-college roommate about this (we’re both 74) and he said supportively, “oh yeah I nap too.” To which of course I thought “oh sure” and thought about the concussion. But then I realized that I was waking up really early – my older body has a different clock -- so the period I rested was essentially the middle of my day. Perfectly ok. Permission granted.
Interesting that I needed that kind of rational validation, but it’s been so clear how the conditioned part of me will bring up “rules” that I need to abide by – often echoing my parents and teachers.
Another good thing to notice. I started telling my parents, “OK I got it. Laundry time.”
Anybody In There?
At some point, I also started to try to pay particular attention to what it might be that was noticing. The obvious word for it would be “Awareness” – or the Nervous System which I have come to think of as an awareness system – but the data must go somewhere, or be directed by something. Or perhaps at the root level that is just Life, Being, Consciousness, the Mystery…
The article in Neuroscience News points out that there are events in our lives that are basically invitations to Eustress, like a wedding. There are loads of details and opportunities to freak out but presumably, the final effect is a feeling of accomplishment.
I felt that way after I got myself to the DMV to renew my driver’s license.
When I got home I was quite tired and felt that I had “earned” the rest, another interesting perspective relating to my conditioning. But during the rest periods after getting my license renewed, I kind of felt my body strengthening and what Dr. Debar calls in the article “repairing.”
“When someone realizes the threat has passed, the body begins to repair itself from this response and “tidy up”. It shifts to a repair, renew and growth state as the stress response is mopped up.”
“If you go up in stress and then come back down, you have completed our cycle. There’s no wear and tear, there’s no damage,” Dr. Debar says.
This struck me as interesting on many levels, as the notion of a cyclical time span for reality has always intrigued me.
It was also interesting to read that one of the key indicators of stress overload is “You’re experiencing physical symptoms such as headaches, chest pain, stomach upsets, problems sleeping, or getting sick more often.”
It Always Comes Back to the Inside
These, of course, are also the sorts of bodily sensations that we’ve come to connect to trauma stored in the body, which can be triggered especially if we have allowed stressful periods to pile up without repair or resolution.
For myself, I have found it very helpful, and essential to the rest periods I allow myself, to also not try to rid myself of these sensations, but even welcome them as a means of healing.
I wish I could say that I was now “in control” of feelings and sensations that arise – and my mood – but overload still happens. I think it’s the nature of our time. No matter how much we may tell ourselves that we can detach from triggers – we’re human and that’s why they’re called triggers.
Just be gentle and kind to yourself. Along with compassion for others, show some for yourself.
(Tom Bunzel was a contributor to Collective Evolution and now writes for The Pulse. His new book "Conversations with Nobody: Getting to Know ChatGPT" – a book written with AI, about AI and giving a taste of AI, is available on Amazon.)