Fear And Stress , The Impact On Your Body

Fear and stress, I would say, is the thing I work with clients on the most in coaching because for most it is the base of their unhappiness, issues etc…. Being a Fearless Living Life Coach I am honored to see time and time again how life changing it is for my clients when they learn how to manage the fear and stress in their lives, I I have experienced it first hand as well. That is why I wanted to help you understand a little more about what it does to our body and for you to know that YOU have the power to decide how it will impact you.

Most of our stress is caused by our fears. You might wonder what fear has to do with stress? Well fear is often the driving factor behind stress. Are you really stressed about not getting a promotion or is it your fear of not getting the promotion that is making you feel stressed? Fears and stress might be physical; like being chased by a dog, they might be emotional; like fear of not being loved by our partner or fear of losing our job… they can be based on facts and they can also be fragment of our imaginations; we are making it up. Our bodies react to fear in the same way regardless of if that fear is true or not and if it is physical or emotional; our brain doesn't know the difference.

I am sure you have heard the term fight or flight? Our brain when it senses fear, more precisely the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal that is responsible for our bodies fear responses, will send signals to secrete adrenaline and cortisol to prepare our body for a fight or flight reaction. By secreting adrenaline and cortisol our blood pressure goes up to give an energy boost and our blood sugar goes up to give rapid fueling. It will also shut down our digestive system, our reproductive system and our immune system… because if you our running for your life or fighting for your life you don’t need these right now.

Why is Stress and Fear something you need to learn to manage?

Well the problem is that the fight or flight response from our body should not last weeks, months, years or decades, this should be short lived. Our body can handle that state of stress or fear for a moment so we can survive the threat and then go back to the parasympathetic system where our body is calm and in repair and healing mode. But what happens when we are keeping this constant state of fear/stress, a perception of urgency? Well after a while our body stops the adrenaline release and just keeps the cortisol because it knows it would be too damaging to continue this way. So the insulin goes up to deal with the sugar in our blood, the high insulin will then encourage fat storage, our thyroid slows down and our immune system is suppressed. Now if you stay even longer into this phase of high cortisol release you end up exhausting your adrenals and that will cause inflammation because now your adrenals are not producing any cortisol to manage the inflammation, you feel joint pain, increase damage to cardiovascular system, your blood sugar will still be high or erratic, you feel depleted and you will feel tired but can't sleep well. In every phase of stress your body is not in repair mode or healing mode, it's in survival mode.

On top of all the physical impact stress and fear has on our bodies, we definitely can feel it on an emotional level as well. Stress and fear can cause anxiety, panic attacks, mood swings, anger, depression, despair, feeling overwhelmed, feeling not good enough and that is just to name to name a few.

To me it is important to understand the effects of fear and stress on our bodies and emotions because it can explain a lot. For example, if you are having a hard time conceiving or you have digestive issues, sleep issues, body pain or mood swings, a multitude of reasons can be causing these and yet, when do we ever consider that our poor management of fear and stress could be contributing to these ailments or even causing them? I know first hand that eating well and exercising is not always enough, that stress, fear and worry can have a huge impact on your physical and mental health. This is empowering because in the end YOU have the power to shift this, to change it. By changing your thoughts and changing your perceptions into ones that serve you better, I truly believe, will change your physical and mental health. The more you repeat a thought in your head the more it becomes a fact. Now I know it can be challenging, yet the more you do it the easier it will get. You can retrain your thoughts , your perception. And remember stress is normal, we live in a high past world, we just want to learn to shift it and the sooner the better.

What are some solutions?

Self care, self care, self care! We don’t have the resilience to manage our feelings our thoughts if we don’t take care of ourselves. What does that look like? Here are a few tips I give my clients:

· Eat regularly, ideally at the same time every day to keep your blood sugar stable: doing so alleviates stress on your body as well as helping to stabilize your mood.

· Sleep: try and go to bed at the same time and sleep your 7-8 hours a night preferably before 12am. Your cortisol levels are the highest in the morning and they slowly lower throughout the day for bedtime… they slowly go back up as we sleep to be ready for a bright eye wakeup.

· Eat a healthy diet at least 90 % of the time: you can treat yourself once in while :) the better you eat the less stress on your body and the better equipped you will be to manage your stress emotionally and physically.

· Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day: same as eating healthy, this will reduce the stress on your body.

· Exercise as feel appropriate: you might prefer walks, yoga or you want a high intensity circuit training. Listen to where your energy level is and be gentle with yourself. When you exercise it boosts your feel good endorphins and is proven to improve overall mood and releases stress.

· Shift your thoughts when they don’t serve you: don’t feed into a negative thought and give it life, your life. YOU control your thoughts.

· Meditation: Proven to control anxiety, promote emotional health, enhance self awareness, improve sleep, helps control pain, the best part you can do it anywhere and many APPS are free.

· Deep breathing exercises: Reduce stress in your body, lower your heart rate, reduce depression, boost your immune system, helps to better regulate your body reaction to stress and fatigue. Try it next time you are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, stressed, take 4-5 deep breaths, breathing full capacity in and full capacity out. You can practice deep breathing every day many times a day, for example each time you are at red light going to work. You can find breathing exercises APPS as well.

· Write your 5 gratitudes each day: this will support you in shifting your perception on life, to focus on the good. Training your brain to see the good. Today I am grateful for …

· Write your 5 acknowledgments each day: this support you in shifting your perception of yourself, to focus on the good. See yourself through new lenses. I acknowledge myself for …

· Ask yourself, is this a fact or am I making this up? We make a lot of stuff up and as Rhonda Britten says: “ If you are going to make it up, make it up good” So instead of making it up as a bad scenario if you need to make it up, make it up as a good one :)

So bottom line, managing our stress, fears and worries are as important as eating healthy and exercising and it is a huge part of our physical and emotional wellbeing. I hope this empowers you and supports you in finding what works best for you to manage stress and fear in your life so you can live your best life :)

Take care!

xoxo 1/2

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