M1 : Lesson-3 : When Stress Doesn’t Stop – Limbic System Overactivation
Lesson 3 worksheet is in your workbook. It is also attached below as a second option.
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While we make every effort to make sure the information in this course and any Primal Trust™ content is accurate and informative, the information does not take the place of professional or medical advice.
Do not use our information to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any physical/mental/emotional disease, or as trauma treatment, or as a substitute for the advice of a health professional.
We do not accept any liability for any injury, loss or damage caused by use of the information provided in any Primal Trust™ content. Although Cathleen King, DPT is a licensed physical therapist. She is not a medical doctor, and this is not physical therapy advice. This is lifestyle education only.
Transcript
Lesson 3, when stress doesn’t stop, lymbic system impairment and chronic illness. What happens if the stress response does not come back to normal? Its Olympic system in your brain does not receive that the threat has passed, or the incoming stress signals from the body Back up to the brain do not stop, then the stress hormone release can be ongoing. This starts to change the brain to react to all sorts of perceived threats. Like food, pain signals, hormone shifts, chemicals with even more hypervigilance and overreaction.
In the later stages of the chronic stress response, almost anything can be misinterpreted as dangerous or threat as the limbic system is now primed to run stress signals. The stage of chronic stress known as limbic system impairment is when The limbic system is thought to have a maladaptive stress response causing the brain’s threat and danger signal to stay on. This runs that stressful can chemistry ongoing. You’ll be in a constant state of fight or flight and eventually freeze and shut down in your body if it doesn’t stop. In my personal and professional experience, I’ve seen over and over again how limbic system impairment can be one of the primary contributors to the unresolved and often very serious chronic illness and mental health challenges.
At this stage, the brain has neurologically become hardwired to expect stress. Sends stress and send messages of stress. It gets stuck in a state of, I’m not okay. I am not safe. Lymics system impairment.
It’s a maladaptive stress response that can lead to neurologic called disorganization and body function. Literally, the wiring in the brain changes, and the body does not function optimally. Making self healing pretty difficult. Again, these stress triggers that the limbic system is overreacting to can be chemicals, food, hormones, pathogens, toxins, even people. And as we learned in the previous lesson, the brain and body is stuck in a stress response, sending repeated messages of danger.
There’s an overall decreased prefrontal rational brain processing. Meaning, you can’t easily tell that you’re not actually in a threatening situation right now. Our conscious brain cannot evaluate whether these triggers and threats are real. The emotional limbic brain is running the show. As you can imagine, this is the kind of response that sets up the perfect condition for chronic illness to be the result.
Some of the common side effects of limbic system impairment are an inability to fight infection and immune dysregulation autoimmune activation, inflammation and brain fog, impaired detoxification, dysautonomia, which affects your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing, digestive issues, Food sensitivities, increased perception and sensitivity to chemicals, light, smell, sound, electromagnetic frequencies and touch difficulty with pain processing, anxiety panic and mood swings, overwhelm difficulty focusing memory issues difficulty with healing injuries. The common causes of Olympic system impairment are a chronic stress response that goes unmanaged. Trauma history, mental, emotional, or physical trauma, attachment and relationship issues, head injury like concussions, mold toxin exposure, chemical exposure, viruses, bacteria, and other infections, And even medical interventions and surgeries that were stressful, also cultural stress and threat plays a part in limbic system impairment. If you’re struggling with chronic illness and you’ve experienced any of the causes listed above, it’s likely you may have a limbic system impairment. But what came first?
The chronic illness or the limbic system impairment of the nervous system. That’s the chicken and egg question that various practitioners will argue against each other, but here’s what I know. One of these issues is something you have direct power and influence over. You can self regulate your biology. You can change your brain and your nervous system.
You might not be able to control, find, and locate the perfect medicine for every pathogen or get rid of every toxin using your conscious mind, but you can calm down your brain and your nervous and improve the function of your immune system and digestive system. So why not let that argument go and just focus on what you can. This is no longer about figuring out your diagnosis. This path is about taking responsibility to change the stress response in your body and letting the universe take care of the rest. Of course, you can partner with doctors if that feels right, But your responsibility is to focus on what you can control, which is activating your self healing mechanisms of the body through targeting your nervous system.
I’ve attached a worksheet under this particular lesson designed to help you assess and track both your symptoms and your progress as you work through this program. In this particular worksheet that’s attached that you can print out, We’re gonna ask yourself if any of these behaviors are something that you do regularly like body check-in and constantly noticing every little thing in your body. Forecasting, are you ruminating and fearing a future before it’s happened? Are you rehearsing the pass? Wishing you could change it, do it differently.
Are you unable to let the pass go or maybe having memory flashbacks? Do you have a negative internal self dialogue? Are you unable to take a break and relax? Are you constantly rushing? Are you feeling overwhelmed, immobilized, or shut down?
Maybe even hopeless. Maybe you have a lot of food restrictions and obsessions. Or emotional outburst and mood swings, or maybe you find that you’re judgmental, resentful, blaming, and pointing out what others are doing to you. And lastly, do you have a fix it focus? This is a big part of my program that I help people to see.
Are you researching every symptom diagnosis and protocol? Are you making tracking charts to help you figure out what caused your symptoms? Are you following excessive protocols going from doctor to doctor, program to program obsessed with what’s wrong and how to fix it? That behavior alone can keep you stuck in a massive stress response. And unfortunately, it’s very tricky because we think we’re helping ourselves.
That behavior of the fix it focus needs to be broken in order to fully heal from chronic illness. So I’ll ask you to rate where you’re at now and then check again in a month and another month. What are your behaviors? What are your feelings? How is it shifting as you’re doing this program?
The second part of this worksheet is all about checking off what physical symptoms you might have that are directly related to a limbic system impairment so that you can see that what diagnoses you’ve been given might actually be directly related to a chronic stress response. I’m not going to go through all of these again. We’ve talked about it a lot in the videos, but make sure you take the time to go through this so that you can get a clear understanding or a clear awareness. Oh, I’ve got a chronic stress response that’s likely affecting my limbic system. That’s likely affecting my body’s ability to self heal.
And the good news is you can do something about all of this. That’s right. All of these things can be addressed in this program. So take heart. But first, you have to find that conviction that what you’re dealing with is something that you need to take the personal responsibility to address, meaning you’re gonna have to do some practices every day to rewire your brain and nervous system.
In the next video lesson 4, we’re gonna talk about a question that I find to be the most powerful question you can ask yourself to help you find a path to recovery. So stay tuned for the next lesson, and I will see you there.