M1 : Lesson 1 : What is the Chronic Stress Response – General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
What happens when chronic stress doesn’t stop?
Our nervous system tries to continue to adapt, but in a way that often produces symptoms and even chronic illness. If our “allostatic load”, or a cumulative burden of chronic stress and life events exceeds your ability to cope, then ‘allostatic overload’ ensues, and nervous system exhaustion results, and potentially limbic system impairment as well. I refer to the general adaptation syndrome module to help you understand what happens if we do not find a sense of safety under ongoing ‘allostatic load ‘buildup. This is the perfect setup for unresolving chronic illness.
And the good news is this dysregulated nervous system response is reversible, and so are your chronic symptoms!
Here is a link with a bunch of tips to help you as you go through this program.
Check out this category on our forum for some great guidance:
https://portal-of-primal-trust.simplerosites.com/groups/level-1-forum/forum/115800-regulation-tips-resources
Transcript
Welcome to Regulate March the science of the chronic stress response. This is an overview of module 1. As you can see, it is quite a hefty module, and it’s definitely gonna be one of the most complex modules of the entire program. The first lesson will be the chronic stress free spots in learning about the general adaptation syndrome. Lesson 2 will be chronic stress and limbic system impairment understanding the brain to body stress cycle.
Less than 3, when stress doesn’t stop, limbic system overactivation, We’re gonna learn more about limbic system impairment and indicating factors. Lesson 4. Inflammation and cellular danger patterns understanding the mind body connection between illness and our sense of stress. Less than 5. Who gets stuck in stress and illness?
Understanding trauma types and influences. Lesson 6, cell danger response, mitochondria, and cellular threat. This particular lesson is one not to be missed. Less than 7 specific conditions related to chronic stress. We’re gonna cover in detail Lyme disease, chronic pain, mold and chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety, pot, digestion, and how chronic stress specifically impacts these conditions.
Less than 8, You’ll learn your 1st regulate tool called awareness, pattern interrupt, and b here now process. And lesson 9, a module 1 summary where we’ll go over the homework, and we’ll also talk about symptom talk guidelines. Regulate tip number 1. Don’t skip the science. Look, let’s be honest here.
I know many of you just wanna skip the science module because it’s going to feel too detailed, too overwhelming. It may be a lot of information, but I’d like to encourage you to just listen and let yourself absorb what you can. And I also will be repeating things, and that is purpose flee. So if you hear yourself saying, she already said a chronic stress response causes chronic illness, why does she keep saying that I’m trying to help your subconscious mind really take in what might be happening with your chronic symptoms. So it’s not just for your conscious mind that I’m saying that.
It’s also for your subconscious mind. So bear with me with some repetition as I go through this. This is all to give you a thorough understanding and awareness of your specific condition. It’s gonna make a huge impact on your motivation to do the process. Also, to be honest, after several years of coaching others, I see a common pattern.
Those are chronic conditions they run from coach to coach, doctor to doctor, program to program, trying to gain an understanding of a, what’s wrong with her body, and b, how to fix the issue and end up spending likely 1000 of dollars. I’d like to help you interrupt that cycle of needing to be rescued. I know that if you can personally become a master of understanding nervous system regulation and gain a true conviction that you’re dealing with a chronic stress response. You’ll be able to self soothe, self regulate, and know which tools and strategies to implement for yourself. In fact, I’m teaching you the overarching principles behind this so that you can even create your own tools or system for yourself.
I want you to be knowledgeable enough to become your own coach and to be empowered enough to be your own self healer. It’s vital to understand why taking the time to do these self care practices is the most important thing you can do to shift your health and your overall well-being. By concern for those who don’t want to learn this science is that their minds will justify not doing the practices that bring their healing because it seems too hard and too counterintuitive in the moments of stress, or you might experience backlash or resistance and think the process isn’t working because you don’t have a thorough understanding of what to spect during the rewiring process. I’ve had my own experiences of ignoring the practice of nervous system self regulation, and instead, trying to fix my body’s symptoms. And as I stated in the intro video, I was sick for many many years with a plethora of health issues.
You know, it’s kind of ironic for me that when I first got diagnosed with Lyme disease, my doctor at the time encouraged me to look into this new healing program to retrain my brain’s response to stress because he thought, well, maybe that’s contributing. But he wasn’t full of conviction. And at the time, I was just not really buying it. And I remember he literally said, you might benefit from retraining your brain’s amygdala, which is in your limbic system. Well, I heard what he said and I completely ignored his advice because I was so freaked out by the Lyme diagnosis that I immediately spent every ounce of my focus for the next several years researching how to heal from this horrible infection.
And though I knew I was chronically stressed and in trauma patterns, I felt more inclined to label all of my issues based on my medical diagnosis. Didn’t wanna do the work to take responsibility on a nervous system level, and it didn’t make sense to just focus on my stress response. Instead, I became obsessed with fixing my body in other ways for many many years. Now, this doesn’t mean I’m an advocate of not taking appropriate medical action with various diagnoses. But what I’m saying is that I put all of my intention onto a diagnosis that I personally did not have the power or the tools to help myself to heal.
I put all of my authority and even the responsibility onto my doctors to figure it out and fix me. My biggest regret was not learning about my brain’s limbic system and the involvement it might be having with my illness. If I had early on embrace practices like the ones you’re gonna learn in this program, it would have saved me years of being stuck. And years of spending 1000 of dollars. So I urge you to at least try to implement a basic under standing of the science of nervous system regulation, and the vital role that your brain and nervous system play in your body’s ability to heal infections clear detoxification issues, and rebalance every organ system in the body.
Let the science convince you that learning the tools that I’m presenting is worth the effort because these tools have been proven to help people heal and find freedom from so many conditions. Now again, to be clear, I am in no way saying that everyone should ignore appropriate medical treatment or other therapies in exchange for nervous system healing alone. Quite the opposite. I can attest that the treatments you might be receiving for your body will have better results if your nervous system is more regulated and your brain is functioning better. And there’s so much you can do in your own home to bring a sense of well-being and vitality without going to medical treatment.
What I’m saying is to stop focusing on how to fix your body’s issues. And instead, focus on becoming aware of your nervous system and your brain state, and practice implementing proven tools to bring calm, safety, connection, and joy into your experience. Please trust me. Brain retraining and other nervous system self regulation tools might be the most important skill set you learn in your life. It has been for me.
To summarize, I’m teaching you the science of the stress response to convince your rational mind that it’s imperative to practice self regulation even when you don’t feel like it and especially when you don’t feel like it. We need to get your brain on board to be able to go against the habits of the nervous system’s response to stress. And the process will seem very counterintuitive. It’ll feel at times like I’m asking you to hug a metaphoric tiger that’s wanting to eat you But when you learn the science, you’re gonna learn that the tiger is not the threat that it feels like at the moment. And it’s that inner awareness of how your brain and nervous the system are working, that’s your first key to healing.
Lesson number 1. What is the chronic stress response? A definition of chronic stress response, definition of CAN or can stress biochemistry, chronic stress response, the general adaptation syndrome stages. Step 1 is awareness of the chronic stress response. This module is an introduction to the science of the chronic stress response, it explains how stress affects the body, and what approach is needed to shift the nervous system into a state of calm and regulation to improve health and well-being.
What is a chronic stress response? Chronic stress negatively affects the body’s systems organs, and tissues. Chronic illness happens when hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine are released in excessive amounts over a period of time. The release of these 3 hormones is often nicknamed that can response, c for cortisol, a for adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, and n for norepinephrine. These stress hormones are actually released to help us deal with emotional and physical stressors of the body.
These hormones increase your strength, concentration, and ability to react and respond to stress. They also increase your heart rate, blood pressure, enhance memory, and activate the immune system. Over time, these hormones can cause dys regulation in your body systems if produced in excess and can also lead to adrenal exhaustion. Under normal circumstances, the release of these hormones is temporary. And after the injury’s been dealt with, the release of these hormones returns back to normal.
Unfortunately, for those in a dysregulated nervous system, these stress hormones often do not return to normal, but stay stuck in overdrive I will explain how chronic stress results in a chronic mental health challenge and physical health challenge in a moment. Chronic stress response. As we learned in the introduction of regulate, chronic stress response is an underlying factor that must be addressed for a host of issues such as this list. Do you suffer from any of these conditions? Please give yourself the gift of gaining a thorough understanding of why your stress response might be the most important treatment you can give yourself to help you be motivated to change how you’re reacting to the underlying stress in your life.
As you can see, this list is quite extensive, I’m not gonna repeat everything again because we’ve talked about it in the intro. But just really take a moment and relabel what might be going on with you. If you see your diagnosis on this list, are you willing to relabel it as a chronic stress response? Remember, chronic unresolved stress plus an injury or infection will lead to nervous system dysregulation and chronic illness. There are 3 stages that we’re going to learn about with the general adaptation syndrome.
The first stage is the alarm stage where your sympathetic nervous system is activated. 2nd stage is called the resistance stage when dress is ongoing and isn’t resolving. And the 3rd stage is the exhaustion stage. And I’m gonna go through what each of these are in more detail in the following slides. Stage 1, sympathetic nervous system activation happens.
This alarm stage refers to the initial symptoms and body experiences when you’re under stress. This is when your sympathetic nervous system is activated and often referred to as a fight or flight response. This is a normal response. This natural response prepares you to either flee or protect yourself in a dangerous situation. Your heart rate increases, your amygdala sends danger messages to your limbic system, and you release distress can hormones.
What should happen in a normal stress response recovery stage? Well, your body typically begins to repair itself. After the initial shock, after the sympathetic nervous system has calmed down, it typically releases a lower level of cortisol, your heart rate, blood pressure, come back to normal. And if you overcome the stress and the situation is no longer an issue, Your body will continue to repair until your hormones, your heart rates, your blood pressure is all at a pre stressed state. The parasympathetic nervous system engages and helps to bring the body back into a sense of safety and ease and now the stress response is complete.
But what happens if you do not have a sense of safety to return your brain and nervous system too. Well, this is stage 2, the resistance stage. The body eventually adapts and learns how to live with a higher level of stress. It will feel like you’re calming down But what’s actually happening is something called stress adaptation. This is really important to understand You began making more cellular hormone receptors to uptake and handle high levels of stress hormones in your blood, so you’re still producing the stress hormones, but you’re absorbing them intracellularly so you don’t feel the underlying fight flight response is acutely.
You have entered the chronic stress cycle at this point. This is so important to understand because Again, a lot of people with chronic illness do not feel or realize they are stuck in chronic stress because their body has adapted to all of the stress hormones in the body. Now, when we get stuck in this phase of producing chronic stress hormones. This might indicate the onset of something known as a limbic system impairment, which is a major contributing actor to unresolved in chronic illness. When your body gets stuck in an overactive stress response, it continues to secrete that can stress hormones.
Again, you think you might be managing stress well because your body has adapted to deal with the constant influx of stress hormones. But if this resistance stage continues for too long, over a period without pauses to offset the effects of the stress chemistry, it can lead to the exhaustion stage. General dilation syndrome stage 3, exhaustion stage of ongoing chronic stress. In this stage, although we are often unaware we are stuck in a chronic stress response, our immune functioning becomes quite dysregulated, and many vital processes in the body become compromised. In the exhaustion phase, the body is directing more of its energy and resources to deal with stress and keep you safe rather than regulating your immune system, your digestion, and your endocrine system.
Your body is now stuck in a protective fear based state, which feels like an overall emotional state of, I’m not okay. And we can also feel quite tired. The exhaustion stage is often the result of a combination of the following. A prolonged state of chronic stressful situations internally in x internally, Olympic system impairment of the brain, and unresolved trauma, stress, or even suppressed emotions. This exhaustion stage can present with the biochemistry of low cortisol, adrenaline, and epinephrine because either a, You’ve developed excessive cellular receptors specific for the can hormones.
These higher levels of stress hormone receptors result in a lower level amount of the hormones in your bloodstream. Again, the hormones get absorbed intracellularly and they’re not in the bloodstream at this stage. Or b, you lack the capacity to continue to produce the excessive can stress hormones to run the body and that happens with adrenal exhaustion. Signs of exhaustion stage include fatigue, burnout, overwhelm, The freeze response are shut down. You’ll learn about that in module 2.
Depression, anxiety, decreased stress tolerance. The physical effects of the stage also weaken your immune system and put you at risk for stress related illnesses. Well, despite all of that, the good news is that stress based chronic illness is reversible. And I’m gonna teach you just how to do that. But I want you to take a moment and repeat the ABC algorithm we learned in the intro video.
A, what did you just become aware of that maybe you didn’t know before? Are you aware that maybe you might be having a lot of chronic stress that you’re not feeling because of the way the stress hormone receptors affect the chemistry in your bloodstream. I know for me, I didn’t realize how stressed I was. I that’s why I didn’t do this kind of work for many years. B, being present in the body.
How can you be a little more present in the body with what might be actually happening and get in touch with Is there a stress happening inside of me? Do I have a underlying feeling of I’m not okay? And c, choice. What choices are you learning that you might need to make right now? Maybe choosing to perceive what might be actually happening as far as your stress response or choosing to continue with this program and learn the science.
Again, just take a moment, abc, and integrate the learnings that you just had before we move on to lesson 2. Which is more about the chronic stress response and something known as limbic system impairment. See you in the next video.