As a physical consequence of stress, delicate hormone ratios are thrown off. Continuous high levels of stress spike cortisol levels, potentially leading to chronic fatigue. pH balance is altered and acidity/inflammation levels rise. You can also look forward to increased blood pressure, which can lead to heart and kidney damage, gut issues and compromised immunity with increasing inflammation and the increased risk for numerous diseases like cancer. Emotional distress can often be a trigger for these physical issues.
Besides physical, stress can bring about a diverse array of emotions. Emotions can be negative (anxiety, anger, worry, fear, lack, and depression), or positive (joy, happiness, gratitude, compassion, and love). Emotions reflect a certain mindset. They present themselves in accordance to how you view, interpret, and perceive the world and life situations. They can also be the by-product of how you measure your self-worth. Unlike physical pain that most often times is unavoidable (like let’s say stubbing a toe), the emotional pains encountered should not be embraced. Feeling negative emotions is important, but holding onto them can be crippling. Only when one mistakenly identifies themselves in the ego centered reality can they slip into emotional turmoil and uncontrollable distress.
Emotions are a byproduct of your thought process and thus a reflection of your mental stability.
Unfortunately, the majority of people are not born or lucky enough to be raised with a set of consciously focused practical management skills. Being raised in dysfunctional homes and growing up with outdated curriculum’s in a overly controlling rigid school system, conforming children to meet up to materialistic societal standards is much more commonplace than not. This often generates mental and emotional issues that breed unhealthy coping skills to say the least.
Consequently, due to corrupted sub-conscious programming, people don’t value themselves highly and develop UNREALISTIC fears. Individuals learn to measure their worth based solely on the opinions of others, their appearance, their achievements, and/or their financial status. These things are important of course, but should in no way define you as an individual.
For most, emotional stability is hinging on the circumstantial outcomes in their lives, and they value their worth accordingly. When society and cultural definitions of success are delayed or not achieved, many feel “stressed-out”, depressed, and/or disappointed. Often times they exhibit and react negatively with feelings of anxiety, rage, depression, worthlessness, and self-pity.
So how do you avoid getting caught up in this highly self-defeating negative thought process? Do you make an emergency appointment with your primary doctor? If it were only that simple. In fact, that may only make things worse and add to your problems.
For many decades now, the majority of people have resorted to conventionally based approaches to stress. When they can’t cope with certain mental issues, anxiety, and/or unavoidable life circumstances, they rely on their overworked, pharmaceuticaly educated and misled primary care physician to provide them with the answers. In most instances, these types of doctors are quick to prescribe antidepressants or other medications that mask their symptoms temporarily at best. Too often they label patients with a fabricated condition based on their symptoms and refer them to a psychiatrist. These doctors often prescribe more medications like Xanax or Valium to help their patients ‘cope’, NEVER solving their problem, sometimes even creating worse symptoms.
This is FAR from the ideal way to treat patients when looking to achieve safe and permanent results. The labels these doctors apply to their patients lower their self-worth even further, and the medications prescribed just keep them sedated and numb. These individuals may continue in this kind of therapy for years, keeping symptoms at bay if they are lucky, but never really resolving their most often times ill-perceived stress issues.
Conventional practitioners never get to the root cause of their problems and can’t reach a permanent solution when only addressing local symptoms.
Not to mention the fact that these drugs can become extremely addictive and harmful both physically and mentally. This only compounds their unresolved issues with the likelihood of developing various physical health problems as a result of the medication’s side-effects. It’s nothing less than a barbaric approach (if you really think about it consciously). These medications are toxic band aids at best and should only be used as a temporary fix for extreme cases while making positive conscious minded, dietary, and lifestyle changes. These doctors have big Pharma educations and they are taught to manage disease at BEST with often disastrous consequences with NO cure!
Western medicine focuses on the body, mind, emotions, and spirit separately, as if these pieces of a whole are parts completely disconnected from each other. This mechanistic philosophy promotes specialization as opposed to integration of these four aspects of the human entity. It is taught that organs and body systems are isolated or separated from thoughts, emotions, and spirituality.
On the contrary, you need to be fully aware that your thoughts influence your emotions and consequently your decision making and behavior. How you deal with your emotions, whether you positively express and process them, or negatively repress them, directly affects your physical health. Additionally, the value and belief system you develop also plays a major role in your physical and mental wellness.
The key is to approach stressful situations in a healthy manner. Since it is nearly impossible to rid all stressors from your hectic, demanding lives, you can choose to take a conscious holistic approach to manage all the stress you have on that full plate. Taking a holistic approach to stress management requires that you identify with the “whole person”. When managing stress through this method, you take into account not just the mind, but the body, emotions and spirit as well.
All physical energies, thoughts, emotions, and spirit need to work synergistically in harmony with one another in order to live a limited stress, disease free life, full of joy!!