16 Jan The Body in Stress and Trauma
Do you know anyone around you who is under immense stress or has lived with a trauma and negative emotions in their life?
I would like to take you on a journey inside your body and mind and show you what is really happening within you when you live with stress or trauma.
At Enhanced Life Coaching, I see clients who are highly stressed and have held the trauma within their minds and bodies for a period of time. For some people, this can be a lifetime.
One of my facets of Enhanced Life Coaching is a modality called Time-Line Therapy™. This is a very powerful and permanent technique which can assist people who live with stress and trauma, fears and phobias in their lives. Let me illustrate what happens.
The body under stress affects the brain and the reverse of this relationship is that the brain, in response to the trauma and stress may alter the body.
The health of the brain relies on the health of the body and vice versa. If trauma has adversely affected either one, you’ve got to find a means of healing that incorporates both brain and body. You can’t fix one until you fix the other.
The spectrum of negative life experiences directly impacts how the brain functions, and in some cases, presents adverse physical changes. These include the loss of neurons in the hippocampus through the effects of cortisol, the stress hormone.
Stress and trauma may damage the brain. It is no surprise that when the brain functions under stress and trauma, the body becomes damaged too.
This singular approach has been around for a long time, giving rise to what is now known as the mind-body connection. Western medicine depends on a significant degree of measurements of the body’s chemical and physiological state at a fixed point in time.
X-rays, scans and blood tests present an impression of the body suspended in the moment of the test results.
All of these tests can be monitored for a longer period, but this is costly and excessive, while only showing us a brief picture of which is associated with emotional disruption and distress. This emotional component often leads to a doctor to pinpoint the medical syndromes of trauma such as Psychosomatic diseases.
Knowing it to be emotional and not a physical cause, perhaps calling it Neuro-somatic might be more of an accurate term, as these disorders are related to flaws in the balanced function of the brain and nervous system.
Trauma creates dissociation.
In fact, the increase of a stressful situation to actually being a life-threatening situation is entirely possible. But, if the stress continues without ever becoming a life threat, the brain takes another neural pathway than it normally does in trauma to adapt.The result is the release of cortisol from the adrenal cortex. Cortisol corrupts the neurons of the hippocampus and is likely to cause memory and cognitive problems in these trauma victims in the future.
As long as the stress remains present, cortisol will continue to elevate to help the body deal with the on-going, low-grade threat.
Automatic regulating within the body promotes the capability of our heart and circulatory system to cope with the elevated physical needs of our body, especially in the brain. In the relatively short term, this stress promotes survival. But in the long run, it can cause diseases within the body.
Suppression of the immune system, causes the person to be more prone to infections either by bacteria and viruses that are not normally very infectious to humans as a result of prolonged stress. That is why cold sores are common under anxious and stressful times.
- Cortisol also causes kidneys to reduce their excretion of salt in the urine. This is an important piece of survival protection, as the threat becomes physical and the person experiences injuries causing loss of blood.
- Cortisol also causes increase in cholesterol.
- It creates an increase in secretion of stomach acid, which leads to elevated blood pressure. This may later contribute to sustained hypertension and stroke.
- Constant raised blood sugar may trigger clinical diabetes.
- High blood lipids may lead to artery disease.
- Immune suppression may lead to infections and inflammation and conceivably cancer.
- Elevated stomach acid secretion may lead to peptic ulcers.
Cortisol is responsible for the destruction and shifting of skin tissues. It causes wasting of muscles, fat around the tummy, osteoporosis, puffiness in the face, acne and increased facial hair growth in women and men. The element of powerlessness in a continuously stressful situation may grow with the passage of time.
The burden of severe money problems, lawsuits, problems with relationships and increasing social isolation may cause a shift in brain and body physiology.
If this article resonates with you and you see the value of healing your past in order to enhance your future, contact me or visit my social media platforms.
-Liza Perks, Co-Founder and Integrative Life Coach at Enhanced Life-Coaching.