Feeling On Edge from Chronic Stress
September 3rd, 2010Written by Angela Sasseville, MA, LPC, NCC
Holly wasn’t sure how many times a day her muscles seized up with tension; she just knew it happened a lot. There are some major ongoing issues in her life and she can feel the impact of her high stress level as it took its toll on her body. Being amped up on adrenaline has become her new norm and being able to physically relax feels impossible as of late. Now that she’s beginning to pay more attention to her body she frequently finds herself unconsciously holding her breath when she’s on edge. She can sense that her body is responding to her emotional stressors.
Things between her and her partner are intense. Recently she’s been getting stress headaches from ruminating over the many ways in which she thought she was letting her partner down. It’s hard to endure the vulnerability she feels when they’re physically intimate, so lately she’s been pulling further and further away from him. That only seems to magnify their problems, though, and the couple seems to be arguing more frequently, making it hard to relax when she comes home at the end of the day.
This isn’t the first time Holly’s stress level had been high for an extended period. She actually went through something a lot worse when she was younger but she really prefers not to think about those days anymore. As hard as those times were, it was a long time ago and she thinks some skeletons are best left alone in her closet. Besides, sometimes she feels dizzy and overwhelmed if she reflects back onto old times for too long. So she copes by pushing the most disturbing events in her life out of her mind entirely. Yet lately, with her stress escalating, it’s becoming harder to avoid those painful memories for some reason.
Regardless of the cause, stress from all sources has a cumulative effect in one’s life. Work problems, relationship issues, economic events, health concerns - they all add to the same metaphorical pile of stress. The mind-body connection is so strong that stress begins to change the physiology of an individual. Ongoing or long-term stressors are particularly problematic in the way that they wear an individual down over time and engrain negative patterns in the body, mind and nervous system.
People who’ve endured high levels of distress earlier in life, especially during the developmental years of childhood, are often predisposed to feeling emotionally and physically unwell during stressful periods later in life. One of the reasons for this predisposition is the existence of well worn neurological pathways that were used previously to experience distress and anxiety on a frequent basis. The mind and body has so much practice feeling these negative ways that being on edge becomes one’s default setting again later in life as the nervous system accesses the pathways it has utilized the most - those associated with feeling stressed. Meanwhile, the neural pathways that help an individual access a sense of being calm and centered may be underutilized, atrophied if you will, and may be difficult to access at times.
Those who have endured numerous disturbing experiences, regardless of how long ago they occurred, are also be predisposed to stress, anxiety and depression. This is because life’s most intense events often leave a residual effect in the nervous system. Unprocessed data often lies dormant in the mind and body for years and years, interfering with an individual’s ability to function optimally.
Individuals facing major stressors should be relieved to know that all therapists have experience helping their clients reduce stress. However, not all forms of therapy are equally effective. Many therapists offer only traditional talk therapy which focuses effectively on thoughts but fails to address the physical symptoms and physiological changes clients frequently endure.
A large and growing body of research on the effectiveness of different forms of therapy shows that holistic therapies that address the mind-body connection, such as a well-researched form of therapy called EMDR, are more effective and often more efficient than talk therapies. That’s because clients experience greater amounts of relief when they not only get to gain insight into their problems but when they also get to practice physically feeling relaxed and gain natural tools to use to lower their stress level anytime. These body-centered therapies effectively help clients change their default settings in daily life from feeling stressed out to feeling grounded and centered.
