STRESS CAN BE FABULOUS, STRESS CAN BE FATAL.

STRESS CAN BE FABULOUS, STRESS CAN BE FATAL.

Good evening, it is 20^th of September, 2022 and 5:30 pm here in India. I am Dr. Aneeta Madhok. I offer services under the name Integrative Living.

I am an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach qualified from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in the US. By profession, I am a Coaching Psychologist and I went through a self-healing health transformation a few years ago. I coach people to lead healthy and vibrant lives, with my six-month Integrative Living program. Because I am a psychologist, for Health Coaching I focus on the mind-body, Heart and Soul of my clients. Each client is on his or her own journey and the coaching helps achieve many milestones along the way.

The Stress Response

There is a unique and individual response each person gives when faced with a stressful situation. Let us go  back to the time when human beings evolved in the prehistoric times. At that time the most important need was to survive all the uncertain vagaries of the world including inclement weather, food, shelter and survival of other animals. At that time when faced with adversity on these counts, the human body evolved to enable the mind to comprehend danger, the heart to feel stressful emotions, and the body to respond with appropriate fight, fright or flight response with an adrenaline-cortisol-insulin response.

Impact of Stress on the Body

Nothing much has changed in the mind, body or heart since then but what has changed is the external environment. The danger elements are now replaced by threatened economic needs (which is the need to earn money to survive), social needs (the need to be accepted and loved) and status needs (to be seen as worthy and competent).  When these needs are threatened, the mind and heart experiences stress, and it creates the same primitive response in the body, that of fight, fright or flight. There is an adrenaline rush that helped in the past to run away from danger, this produces an insulin response, which metabolizes sugar which provides the energy for the fight, fright or flight response. The response of the body is out of proportion to the nature of the actual threat experienced and the adrenaline-cortisol-insulin response of the body creates an imbalance. This creates imbalance in the emotions (heart) and the mind (thoughts) which is experienced as stress. If stress is chronic and ongoing at home and at work whether it is relationships, social pressures, work pressures etc. it can create pathological side effects if not managed appropriately.

Stress Pathologies

Pathological side effects of stress range from insomnia, substance addictions, chronic lifestyle diseases such as chronic heart disease, some forms of cancer, digestive problems, insulin related disorders like diabetes and PCOS, chronic fatigue, panic attacks, anxiety, depression and nervous disorders, and many more. In fact, most psychologists agree that almost 80% of physical diseases are of psychosomatic origin. Some even believe in meta-physical linkages of diseases with the journey of the soul through life.

Bio-Individuality and Stress

As I said before, most behavioural scientists will agree that almost 80 to 90% of chronic diseases have a psychosomatic base underlying their problems. The mind-body link cannot be discounted. In-fact, I do believe that mind and body are one entity and not two, and these are intricately linked in ways we are just beginning to validate scientifically.  Stress is externally created by interpersonal relationships, social pressures, career pressures, work pressures. And stress is internally created by inner emotional patterns, self-defeating behaviours, low self-esteem, lack of resilience, vulnerability and fragility of human emotions and many other psychological orientations. The hormonal imbalances created by chronic stress vary from person to person as stress is a very unique and bio-individual experience. Stress is fabulous for some and fatal for others.

Stress Can Be Fabulous!

Stress is not always bad. Some people thrive on the same conditions which others would consider stressful. Even if the experience of stress is negative it could drive us to make course corrections and seek solutions and lead us on a path of self-healing, learning and growing.

When the individual experience of stress is negative it does show up in our bodies in all the ways that I have just outlined. That is when an Integrative Health Coach can help in ways that the medical world cannot. While the medical world looks at body symptoms and treats these, an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach will look at holistic stress management and learning responses that can transform the client with not just body healing, but also including the mind, heart and soul as well.

Self-help strategies work only some of the time. For many folks, they pick up stress management tips and suggestions from media and social networks and from conversations with others whom they want to emulate. For most folks, such a piecemeal approach often results in further aggravating the stress experience and it is common to hear them saying, “I tried doing this and it worked for some time, but now I need a new practice to do.” Some will say things like, “No matter what I do, this stress will kill me some day.” Others might resort to cynicism and rationalize their experience of the world as, “I’m OK, You’re not OK” or even worse, “I’m not OK, You’re OK” and in the worst case scenario, “I’m not Ok, You’re not OK.” In most of these cases, the pathological side effects I described earlier by way of substance abuse, addictions, blaming behaviour, low self-esteem, ego-problems, will continue to prevail and things don’t really change for the better. It is a very rare case of people who take responsibility for their emotions and experiences and embark on a self-healing holistic transformational change. In India we believe a guru or teacher or Health Coach can help hold hands along the journey of self-healing and learning.

Strategies to Cope, Learn and Grow!

In the world of psychology and behavioural sciences we look at two kinds of stress management. One is a coping strategy that enables our clients to create actions that reduce the impact of stress. This could be meditations, yoga, exercise (exercise is a big stress buster), eating healthy food, sleeping well, and so on. These all help to manage the symptoms of stress in our bodies and give us some relief. But the actual underlying chemistry of stress creation does not change when we ‘cope’. The same things create stress, and with the coping strategies in place, many folks stay on top of the stress, rather than drown under. So, many folks do well throughout their lives using these coping strategies. The other is a ‘growing’ strategy that enables healing at a deeper level. As a Coaching Psychologist, I work with my clients to help identify the behavioural and emotional patterns that underlie the stress experience, which invariably come from unresolved trauma, negative thinking patterns, low self-esteem, self-destructive behaviour. Enabling the clients’ self-awareness and embracing old traumas, creating positive thinking patterns with gratitude, forgiveness, optimism, and building self-esteem and self-love. The same stressful world is now experienced as beautiful and full of joy and positive self-expression.