The Fourth Cause of Stress and Disease

Emotional Stress and Strain.
A couple shocking realities that you might not know about emotional stress (of life…job, parents, spouse, children, money, etc.):

1. Stress is most often helpful to our growth and health.

2. Stress isn’t the experience, it’s the meaning you make, and the lessons you take, from your experience.

“What… stress…helpful? You must be out of your mind!”

That is the reality. Your life stress activates healthy response mechanisms that strengthen your body and brain. Much like our little immune challenges, colds and other infections, they actually make you stronger and more resilient.

Much of our internal stress from life’s experiences comes from what we make of it. If we have been trained (by our parents and educators) to be helpless or hopeless, victim or loser, or always on the short end of bad luck…we are going to find almost any situation or experience stressful. If we have been taught that we can figure out anything, we’re winners in winning or losing, and life has a strange way of working out…we are going to endure almost any situation or experience.

And, this is still one of my four categories, so it isn’t all just lessons and growth. Chronic unresolved stress, abuse, trauma, loss, etc., do add up and contribute to our stress load. At some point, either in intensity or longevity, the emotional stress starts to break us down.

With the patients I treat, who have been “through the mill” looking for help, if emotional stress wasn’t an initiating trigger for their health problems, it sooner or later becomes a sustaining factor, as hopelessness creeps in as they go from doctor to doctor, not seeing any improvement in their condition.

The initial point I wanted to make clear is…stress is not the enemy. It is the inability to resolve stress that wears us down, including beginning the cycle of dysfunction, disease, and disability.

So what do we do about life? I have a fairly simple formula to resolve stress, at least enough to return health, and, patient willing, into that wonderful place called happiness. One disclaimer though…life still challenges us, even from that state of happiness.

My simple formula is to treat any perceived threats to survival. Those are mostly the metabolic states such as hypoglycemia, anemia, and immune activation. By the time we clean up the body, life is looking and feeling easier. Next, I use the Dr. Dan Amen brain typing protocols to identify and actively treat the areas of the brain that are stuck, and ultimately keep us in our stress.

Just a quick summary…

1. Frontal Cortex: This part of our brain, located as you might guess, right in the front, helps us see ourselves as whole and powerful, to organize our desires and goals, and maintain focus toward those desires (that feels good to know you are working toward something great!) When this area of the brain gets stuck, we feel depressed, lack focus, experience low self esteem, and don’t know what the heck we want from life.

2. Limbic System: This part of the brain holds our values and principles. It is what helps us emotionally make choices in life. When this area gets stuck, we find ourselves in bad habits, feeling depressed and conflicted, and powerless.

3. Basal Ganglia: This part of the brain holds our beliefs about ourselves, others, and life in general. It has a tuning in effect on life, helping us find more of what we believe in. When this area gets stuck, we feel anxious, even fearful, often predicting poor or the outright worst outcomes, and, of course, we find we were right.

4. Cingulate Gyrus: This area of the brain is our systems analysis. It records what is working (or not) and adjusts our behavior to move towards our desires. When this area gets stuck, we are stuck…think of the psychiatric level of stuckness in this area…OCD. We are unable to make different choices, or can’t see other possibilities, and spin our tires endlessly on the same struggle.

5. Temporal Lobes: This part of our brain moves into interpersonal relationships…accountability and communication. When this area gets stuck, we find ourselves slightly paranoid, feeling unsupported, and have to do everything ourselves…feeling alone or lonely. We often express this as anger or even rage towards others.

In order to move forward in life, we must achieve connection and activation in all these neural areas. By knowing where we are stuck neurologically, we can make adjustments to our nutrition, actions, and even beliefs, allowing the “circuit” to be closed, all areas activated, and forward progress resumed…kind of like getting enough pull on your stuck car, and feeling that relief of “it’s over.” Stress relief!