4 Warning Signs Your Body is Reacting to Stress - Don't Ignore These Physical Symptoms
Most of us believe that when we finally leave an intensely stressful situation, life will be so much better in all the ways. And while it’s true that it’s a relief to not have the original stressors to deal with on a daily or hourly basis, the journey has, in some ways, only just begun.
Most of us believe that when we finally leave an intensely stressful situation, life will be so much better in all the ways.
And while it’s true that it’s a relief to not have the original stressors to deal with on a daily or hourly basis, the journey has, in some ways, only just begun.
In any life situation where you’ve experienced the feeling of not knowing when that next stressful moment will occur––whether you’ve been in an abusive relationship of some nature; you’ve been the caretaker for your loved one and have lived day-to-day, waiting for the phone to ring with more test results; or you’ve gone through a contentious divorce with an anxiety-producing legal battle––your nervous system and your entire body has been deeply affected.
Now that the “cause” of your stress has been removed from your life (and perhaps replaced by other emotions like grief, etc.), you’re left to put yourself back together again. And this can be complex and overwhelming to figure out on your own.
When you’ve been living in a cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol, you will likely be left with health concerns and you might not have even connected them to your stressful life situation.
For example, once I was out of my abusive day to day situation, I was exhausted. I spent most of the next two years lying on the couch in my spare time. Following my departure from my abusive situation, my commute was a 15 minute walk through Capitol Hill to my DC office. I had to leave 30 minutes early so that I could lie down before seeing my first client.
After seeking medical help and being told “it was all in my head,” and I needed to relax, I finally found a functional medicine doctor who agreed to do some more detailed blood tests. I learned that my adrenals were scrapping by. Apparently living in a hormonal cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol takes it toll. It’s taken me several years of conscious eating specific to my condition and rest to support my adrenals. A qualified practitioner guided me to regain my energy.
Some people find their hormones are completely out of wack after a chronic stressful situation. Others have elevated symptoms of fibromyalgia or autoimmune diseases or joint pain.
Many people are left with relentless chronic muscle tension or pain. This can show up in many different ways — one might not even think it’s related to muscle tension.
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Common “muscle tension” from stress and anxiety can look like:
Jaw pain or TMJ symptoms
Neck and shoulder pain
Back or pelvis pain
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But other, less obvious muscle-tension issues can show up as headaches or migraines. When the larger and small muscles of your neck and head contract, this can cause issues you might think are unrelated. You might think all you need to do is stretch or have deep pressure in the specific areas of discomfort. Unfortunately this will not give you lasting relief.
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Some people find they have digestive issues, and this can also be related to muscle tension. The parasympathetic nervous system is designed to “rest and digest,” but when we’re chronically stuck in the sympathetic response, “fight or flight,” our digestion isn’t able to function in a healthy way.
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Insomnia can be another result of a dysregulated nervous system. And lack of sleep creates other health concerns.
Most physical issues can be linked back to a nervous system that is not functioning optimally because of chronic stress and anxiety. This is the time we need the most support and it’s also the time we’re least able to think clearly or take action to help ourselves.
But the root cause of the physical symptoms is a dysregulated nervous system that has been in fight flight response for a long period of time. Chronic stress responses, including muscle contraction, have been practiced over and over again.
Of course you want relief, however the most efficient way to relieve multiple symptoms at once is to calm your nervous system at the level of your body.
Please see my blog post “Recovering your mind, body and nervous system” to learn more about how to cover all bases when you get out of the situation and want an efficient plan to help move yourself forward the most efficiently and in a timely way.
Please try this audio recording to calm your stress and anxiety. Even if you don’t have stress, you might find you feel calmer, physically relaxed, and at peace!
What Does Anxiety Do to Your Body? Look Out for These Patterns
Stress and anxiety are completely normal. The universal response to a difficult situation or to perceived threats are common to every person.
When you find yourself in a stressed or anxious state, there is a typical “body pattern” that takes place unconsciously—a general set of muscular contractions that are linked to each other and affect a person’s entire body. This physical pattern is universal to all humans.
In fact, this general pattern of muscle tension is innate—that is, we’re born with it!
Physical pattern of stress and anxiety
The pattern looks something like this:
• There is a tendency to round forward: shoulders round forward (protectively), our entire spine/back rounds, and we roll slightly backwards on the pelvis into a sort of “pelvic tilt.”
• On the back of our body, we feel this as pulling or muscular tension in various areas of the back: neck, shoulders, shoulder blades, mid/lower back, pelvis/hip tightness or pain, sciatica.
• This rounded muscle pattern in the back on the body creates an opposite pattern In the front of our body. We feel tightness in our throat or chest and our chest stiffens, which also changes our breathing to be shallow (because our diaphragm is contracted from the rounding forward), our abdominal muscles contract (which often shows up as digestive discomfort).
• Because we organize our entire body around where our eyes are looking, our head comes forward and down and our neck muscles strain to hold our heavy head in this position. This contracts the muscle tension around the face and jaw, and vision can be affected
In other words, this innate physical pattern of stress and anxiety affects the movement in our back, neck and shoulders and jaw, as well as our freedom in breathing and digestion.
This muscular pattern is common in every person.
This becomes a problem for us when stress or anxiety occurs over a period of time. We unconsciously habituate toward this restrained state of tension, contraction and restricted mobility.
Over time, it becomes painful. And when these unconscious stress response patterns are practiced over and over again, it reinforces in the brain (and neural pathways) that this stressful situation is still present, even if that situation happened five or even twently years ago.
We develop this muscular situation and have adapted to it over time, so we forgot what it feels like to feel comfortable and loose and easeful in our bodies. We’ve forgotten what easy breathing is and what feeling freedom in movement is like.
We’ve unconsciously created a habit of being stressed muscularly.
The good news is that as human beings, we’re very good at creating habits, and because of something called neural plasticity—the ability for our brains to change—we can also change muscle contraction habits to something more functional and healthy.
Our brain and nervous system is extraordinary and capable of change.
Our brain only needs to be reminded of a healthier, more efficient way becayse our nervous system is attracted to feeling better and will always move in this direction of health when given the option to do so.
How do you do this?
You begin to learn how to observe where you feel these unconscious contractions in your body that have become a habit over time, and then you can learn to organize yourself to move away from these habitual stress patterns and to move toward ease and relief.
The Feldenkrais Method® is one effective way to change these old unhealthy unconscious muscle tension patters to new, healthier patterns. When taking group classes or working privately with a practitioner, you learn to make small, slow movements and pay attention to what you sense and feel in your body as you do them. The movements themselves are less important than your ability to pay attention to where you feel the slightest bit of resistance or tightness or discomfort. And then you make the movement even smaller and slower and, almost spontaneously, you find that the ease and comfort of the movement improves. Your brain takes in this sensory information and processes it, and then immediately comes up with a more efficient way for you to move with ease.
When you become aware of what it is that you’re doing, you’re able to interrupt what you do. That habitual thing you’ve done for years or even decades suddenly becomes responsive to change.
It seems almost “magical,” but the brain in nothing less than brilliant!
Maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel better.
You want to be able to bring yourself back to a state of homeostasis — a state where you’re able to restore yourself–to a calm alertness vs. an anxious alertness.
In conclusion, many of us experience chronic stress and anxiety and so many of us hold this muscular tension unconsciously in our bodies in very predictable patterns that we practice continuously for many years.
We’re not doing something wrong—what we’re doing simply doesn’t serve us anymore.
We don’t even realize these are the contraction patterns that are causing us pain after time, because they’ve become so “normal” to us. But this is not a life sentence! These patterns can be released.
Our brain and nervous system is always working in our best interest. Our nervous system must be made aware of the patterns, and then be presented with other, healthier options.
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