Stress isn’t going anywhere for any of us anytime soon.
There’s a lot of focus on stress management as a technique to help ourselves. This is where an awesome and varied diet, married with dynamic exercise, time out in nature and good sleep and rest habits come into play.
For me, finding ways to put this into practice and overcoming my excuses and bad habits was work in itself, but when I got around to it, it helped pretty quickly and noticeably.
But naps and organic quinoa are sadly not solutions to all stresses.
I found mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual stresses far more prevalent in my life than physical ones, and the stress management techniques, while awesome, didn’t help here as much.
Eventually, I realized that there were ways in which I could help my system metabolize stress more effectively day to day.
We understand metabolism in the body when it comes to food. It is the process by which the steak and kale salad on your plate convert to usable and useful nutrients and energy in your body.
We can use this similar understanding with stress, because it isn’t inherently a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s an ingenuous communication protocol within the body.
Breaking it Down
Just like our body’s breaks down food, it is important to break down what is happening to us in moments of stress or strain.
Stress feels different to different people, at different ages, at different times. Male and female bodies have different sex hormones as part of the endocrine system, so which body you biologically find yourself, in matters too.
Stress to me most often, is paralyzing, which is weird because of all the cortisol and adrenaline coursing through. I do experience shortness of breath, or a fast pumping heart, but that often gives way to crushing doubt and a sense of freezing or stuck-ness. This simplest of tasks become overwhelming and my mind races to find all the things I should be doing, but are not doing in the moment.
I have come to understand my emotional make-up and that a lot of life’s complexities for me, boil down to self-worth and self-deserving. This includes but is not limited to experiences like:
FOMO
Imposter complex and lack of fitting in and belonging with peers
Fears of authenticity and intimacy
Self-compromising activities to fit in, be accepted or please people
Constant comparison and judgement
Wearing a brave and happy face to mask how I’m feeling
Depression, doubt, anxieties and panic disorders at the extreme
Lack of energy, creativity and faith in myself
Irritation, anger and rage at the extreme
Apathy, deflation, point-less-ness, which generally gives way to an existential crisis.
I thought everyone went through this every few days, but turns out that isn’t the case.
It’s actually amazing how different people with their different bodies, cultural, genetic, emotional and mental make-up react so differently.
But once the actual feeling and nature of stresses are broken down, it can become easier to help ourselves through the experience.
Digestion
Figuring out that most of my stresses at some point in my day’s journey were because of, or at least related to self-worth, non-deserving and a struggling sense of self was incredibly deflating.
I was paralyzed once again by all this awful stuff I experienced everyday and I felt helpless.
I worked with a variety of Healers from different traditions and disciplines, and one day the Animal Spirit Medicine of Earthworm was gifted to me.
Earthworms, are little engineers of the soil. They digest everything in their path without any discernment. As it masses through their system, they get the nourishment they need, and the soil is turned and moved. Both soil and worm benefit from the process.
This ended up being the next step in my path.
The realization that like everything else, digestion, stress, and life is a process. I got caught up in the next step, the next goal, the next victory and not knowing how to get there, that I took no step at all. I felt stuck, because I wasn’t actually going anywhere. This wrecked my always low sense of purpose, direction and worth because I was felt I was always failing.
The digestion process requires tons of enzymes and a truly phenomenal and complicated occurrence in our body, which is accomplished efficiently, gracefully and with lots of signals and communication.
Digesting our causes of the stress is a bit like this.
Self worth issues feels a like indigestion - emotional, physical, mental or spiritual. We have the same thoughts, memories, dreads and emotions regurgitating keeping us stagnant with no movement.
It was like I had indigestion all this time, because all my effort went towards pretending I was confident and compensating for what I felt I lacked, and not towards what was actually going on.
Sometimes, our life situation is the cause of this indigestion. Other times, we do it to ourselves.
I had moments where when good things happened, I didn’t feel like I deserved them, so it felt bad. And when bad things happened, it also felt bad. So my system never got to experience relief, movement, flow or vitality.
My work here was to create and understand value for myself, that wasn’t dictated (as much) by the outside world. This showed me that the uncomfortable truth of how I managed my compensation-mechanism, but not the actual issue.
A simple situation where someone complimented me would, for me, turn into this awkward deflection as I gave into my immense discomfort in being seen. Alternatively, I would coldly say, thank you, in a way to distract from the discomfort I felt.
When I realized I did this regardless of whether situations were good or bad, I realized it didn’t have much to do with the outside world, but with how I interpreted it and where I saw myself fit in the world.
This requires re-building trust within the self. Trust that we are good, healthy, whole, capable, beautiful, possible, aware, creative, fierce even when circumstances have been us feel less.
There was a lot of learning around comparison as well.
Many of us learn this at school as we experience comparison and competition. This is an aspect of learning that motivates at times. The other aspects include creativity and collaboration, within the self and wither others.
This takes great love, patience and understanding.
Once I got to face to some of the realities that were hidden within me around sense of self, they started moving along the ‘digestion tract’.
The remembrance here is that we are learning ourselves as well as figuring out how to move through the situation.
We will move through it, because no thing is permanent in this universe.
Metabolize
In my journey, there were memories and confusions from childhood experiences that lead me to come to a warped sense of Self and Other. This lead to beliefs, perspective and thoughts unconsciously that influenced my learning, motivation, how I received praise or criticism, general life experience and sense of (mis)trust within, when it came to situations that were not of my choosing.
Once things started moving for me, more of these memories and beliefs came up along with a lot of repressed emotions, like shame or disgust.
When we get really good at repressing ourselves, it becomes a habit. Breaking that habit takes effort and feels truly awful in the beginning. But it is a part of facing ourselves.
Once we get to feel our emotions, they no longer have a hold over us, and we stop fearing or doubting them as much. Since we have gone through this process, we mine our own nourishment and this allows us the ability to articulate what we are going through to others in our circle with confidence and discernment.
The other awesome outcome of this metabolism, is that we get to neutralize and expand our perspectives on what we label and good and what we label as bad.
Like our Earthworm cousins, we learn strength and grace to move through life with our intuition and intellect, our openness and awareness, with a mix of nervousness and excitement in the face of the unknown. As we do this, things that seem bad, can and often do turn into great lessons and blessings; sometimes, much later we realize that it was the best thing that happened to us at that moment.
Elimination
Everyone needs a good release - a good cry, a letter or a list written, and a purge of things in our basement.
We get to release the habits that kept us stuck and stagnant in our stress patterns; and start a new relationship with the ones that help us feel empowered, in flow, truly confident in our abilities to handle what comes in our way.
Getting to experience ourselves overcome something that once overwhelmed or paralyzed us is a singular experience. Sometimes, we don’t notice how far we have come and it is truly amazing because we get to feel how strong, creative and surrender we are.
This is an important part of the process because we often create an identity and a narrative around our struggles; especially if we have struggled for months and years. This elimination process gives us a chance to evaluate if that story is still our present; if the characters and things around that story are still in the orbit of our lives.
It gives us a chance to release the old versions of ourselves and what held those version back. It also makes room for the new.
In this way, we honour the change that we are and the evolution of our Bodies, Soul and Spirit.
Trust the path you walk; it will protect you.
As long as you listen. Always listen
- Geralt of Rivia
Coming to understand what motivates us, what scares, limits or overwhelms us, what makes us reflect, soar, break free or buckle down is all a part of getting to know ourselves.
Stress and our responses and reactions are not static. Family related experiences are different from work ones; and how we respond to them is different from when we are 20 to when we are 45. Listening to our body, our gut and our feelings gives us all the information we need to take our next steps.
Stress then, becomes our invitation into ourselves and a great teacher as we learn to learn ourselves.
Starting to see and perceive things in a more empowered light allows us choice and we didn’t have when we were imprisoned by our problems.
This is how we continually learn, grow, appreciate and support life experience as it moves through us and those we love.
When we manage and metabolize our stresses they eventually have less and less hold over us. We give ourselves space to respond instead of react and we get to know our self-sabotage patterns, the nature of our undoings and where and how imprison ourselves. We also get to know our edges and uncover courage, strength, compassion and agility we didn’t know we had.