I’m not the first to tell you that stress is one of the most impactful drivers of health. But, the word has become a bit watered down. Many of my clients are so confused about stress that they glaze 🥱over the discussion, or assume that if they cannot remove “it” completely, there’s not much else they can do.
Here’s the first thing to remember: Stress IS NOT inherently BAD. In fact, it’s part of our body’s way of protecting us 💪🏼.Stress only becomes a problem when your stressors are overwhelming, or continue without relief. The goal is NOT✋🏼to completely remove stress from your life. That’s unrealistic.
Instead, if we can better understand what stress is, where it might be coming from, and what it feels and looks like when things become out of balance,
THEN ⚡️we can address the root causes and better support our body in its own work.
THEN ⚡️we can become resilient to stress.
You’ve heard me say it before, the more we work WITH our bodies, the easier it is to see change.
So over the next few weeks I’m going to do my best to help explain:
⭐️What stress is
⭐️different types of stressors
⭐️How stress impacts your health
⭐️Signs & symptoms that stress is negatively affecting you
* And more!
So, to start, what IS stress?
💥Stress is often defined as the body AND brain’s response to a perceived challenge, threat, or demand.
In short, stress is a reaction💥a series of alarms⏰ in your body AND your brain to something that seems threatening.And often, those alarms cause downstream effects in order to keep you alive.
It’s important to know that the ‘threat’ can be triggered by a huge variety of situations, ranging from actual threats or physical dangers, to how you perceive or react to a situation, to internal stressors such as blood sugar imbalance, infection, and inflammation.
If you’ve read through my previous posts, maybe you already have some ideas💡 about things in your life or in your body, or even about the way that your mind🧠works that could be setting off alarms in your body. And if not, I challenge you to start listening.
👇🏼Comment below with questions you want to makes sure I address about stress! ⚡️