What is Your Biggest Stressor?
May 25, 2023
Lisa Jackson
Lifestyle
Here’s a question I commonly ask clients in my groups…. What is the biggest stressor?
I get all kinds of answers: sugar, alcohol, food, water, air, toxins, heavy metals, mold….
True, all of these things can affect our health and wellbeing.
But what is the number one thing that you can learn to control that is with you all the time?? (Click below to watch the video)
Your thoughts…. In my book, Savvy Secrets, Eat, Think & Thrive, I talk about the ANTs in your head. The Automatic Negative Thoughts that create stress. These may even be driven by unconscious programming that happened when you were a baby. Thoughts that can keep you on a stressful roller coaster, Thoughts like, “There is never enough time.” Or “Don’t be so stupid”, or that if you aren’t crazy busy you are wasting your time. Thoughts that denote you are not good enough. You may judge yourself as being “too fat” or “too slow” or, in my case, “talk too much and are too loud”. Maybe thoughts that silence you from speaking your truth. This can definitely lead to depression.
Thoughts and fears that create anxiety and hypervigilance. Thoughts that may keep you walking on eggshells.
Maybe you have told yourself a story based on your fears or loss. Stories that may lead to self-fulfilling prophesies or keep you stuck and feeling like a victim. Thoughts that are disempowering and lead to hopelessness.
The most common ANT I hear in my practice is around physical symptoms, “What’s wrong with me?”
These thoughts keep us in a stressfull sympathetic dominance or “fight or flight” mode.
Instead, please ask yourself the following question,
“What is my self-loving, self-healing, self-repairing body trying to tell me?”
What is my headache telling me? What is my anxiety, fatigue or depression saying to me? Is it asking for change? What can I do differently?
This is how we turn fear and self-doubt into curiosity and empowerment.
Recently, I was asked to review lab work for a client’s child suffering from anxiety and depression. She had been to different doctors who offered functional medicine tests where we discovered several imbalances and healing opportunities. When we reviewed her history, timeline, current medications and supplements, I made the following assessment:
Her body is not broken. Her body is acting appropriately given her stressors. Her labs revealed several healing opportunities, starting with her diet. (See my previous post for specifics).
Her current dis-ease is a direct result of her diet, lifestyle and medication.
Genetics may also play a role in necessitating extra nutritional support.
She can continue to treat her symptoms with multiple physicians and multiple medications, go to the doctors to be “fixed” (giving up her power), or
She can also, in addition, choose to make changes to what she eats, thinks and does.
Specifically, to heal the brain, you must heal the gut. Leaky gut equals leaky brain. Her medications contribute to multiple nutrient and neurotransmitter deficiencies. Her addiction to sugar directly correlates to her symptoms. Treating the symptoms without the root cause was no longer working for her. She also had environmental exposures that were interfering with her gut and her brain. These need to be addressed from a place of strength once she has healed her gastrointestinal tract and received dietary and nutritional support.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I do not diagnose, treat or cure diseases. No one really does. The doctor doesn’t heal you, the medications don’t heal you, they are merely tools to help your body do what it does naturally…which is to heal from within.
If you are willing to get out of your own way.
If you are open and willing to change.
Diagnoses are just labels. They do not define you. They are not finite. They can be changed.
So, what are some Savvy Secrets to support healing?
- 1. First, know that what you focus on is what you will get. If you focus on your label or dis-ease you will get more of it. More anxiety and more depression. Instead, focus on where you want to go and how you want to feel. Then close your eyes and visualize feeling that way now.
2. Know that a heart in love is physically different than a heart that is angry, resentful, jealous, lonely, or in rage. Find ways to cultivate self-love. This may be new to you. You may or may not have felt this or had good role models as a child. Or you simply may have lost yourself along the way, perhaps by giving all of yourself to others. Now is the time to find ways to cultivate self-love. Choose a song that makes your heart sing and then, while listening to it, repeat loving thoughts to yourself. Say, “I love you (your name)” over and over until you believe it and feel it. This may sound hokey, but believe me, it works! My song I use for my own love meditation is Ave Maria by Ashana. It brings me to tears sometimes. This practice definitely puts me in a healing, parasympathetic state.
3. What you resist, persists. Get in touch with your emotions and feelings. Get out of your head and into your body. There are many tools to help you. I love yoga-dance, journaling, and coaching. Breathwork is extremely powerful. The body follows the mind and the mind follows the breath. The fastest way to flip from a stress response to a calm parasympathetic response is through the breath. It is free and available to you at all times. I once helped a client overcome a fear of flying through yoga, visualization and breathwork. 4, 7, 8 breathwork is one I teach all of my clients. Here’s another short video that may be helpful.
We rarely, if ever, change in isolation. Find a group, coach or guide to help you cross the chasm between where you are and where you want to go. Unresolved feelings and emotions can create physical disease in the body. The first step is to take an honest personal assessment and then to surround yourself with others who can help.
Do you know you are only as healthy as the people you surround yourself with? Find a group that is focused on optimal health and wellbeing and can support you in your health goals. Like our Live Young with Lisa Program.
Let me know if I can help.
Carpe Diem,
Lisa Jackson
