How Does Stress Affect Your Body?

Stress is a word that is commonly used today but how much do we really know about how it affects our body and our moods?

One simple description of stress is as a state when a person has insufficient resources to meet his or her demands.

•  Too many demands + too few resources = stress, distress
• Too few demands + too many resources = boredom, apathy
• Demands match resources (or match resources at a stretch) = coping, interest

Each person deals with stress differently, depending on the resources available to them and the way they approach the situation. You can put two people in the same situation and they can produce different reactions. One may cope well with the situation where the other might struggle or even collapse emotionally.

A certain level of stress or challenging yourself is needed in life to keep you on your toes. Think how actors get butterflies before they go on stage, the adrenaline in their body begins to pump and they get the buzz for doing their job. This adrenaline helps to keep their performance fresh and exciting. Once the performance has finished the adrenaline levels go back to normal in their body as they relax after the show. This is a normal/healthy level of stress, keeping you driven and motivated to do the task at hand.

The effects on your body can be :

• Pupils dilate
• Mouth goes dry
• Neck and should muscles tense
• Heart pumps faster
• Chest pains
• Palpitations
• Sweating
• Leg and arm muscles tense for action
• Breathing faster and shallow
• Hyperventilation

It also has hidden effects too:  

• Brain gets body ready for action
• Adrenalin released for flight or flight
• Blood pressure rises
• Liver releases glucose to produce energy for muscles
• Digestion slows or ceases completely
• Sphincters closes or relaxes to empty bowls
• Cortisol released, this depresses the immune system

These effects are all part of the fight or flight mode. They are helpful in daily life, helping us to be ready to deal with situations. Like when you’re in the car and you hear the screams of an ambulance siren warning you to get out of the way. You start to look for a way to move your car and you realize you are bumper to bumper. You enter the stress zone, inside your body the alert goes out. “Attention all parasympathetic forces, urgent! Adrenalin is beginning to pump through your body, the chemical cortisol has just been released mobilising all internal defences.

Your body is full of adrenaline ready to tackle any situation that comes your way, your senses are heightened, you're“running on adrenaline”. This is the stage that people get in when they perform “superhuman” acts of strength, like a mother lifting a car off of her child.

When the danger finally passes or the perceived threat is over, your brain starts a reverse course of action attempting to bring your body and mind back into balance. This is when you tend to feel your heart pumping and you feel "wow that was an adrenaline rush".

Our bodies are built to deal with this level of stress, it is a vital part of our survival.

The problem comes when we continue to keep our bodies in the heightened state, stress state. Our body/mind can’t differentiate between a real threat and a perceived threat. You can get the same chemical reactions just by thinking about a stressful situation, for example, a bill needing to be paid, going over a situation you experienced – reliving it in your mind or worrying about an upcoming situation; then when it happens it was so much better/easier than you thought, but all that energy you spent worrying about it has had a harmful effect on your body. Our body tries to rebalance but the hormones are still flying around, gradually they begin to have a permanent effect on our health, long term health problems start to develop.

The wonderful thing to read is that you can control this; you can learn what your stressors are and how you can de-stress yourself.  A hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP session can help you by working out a range of mechanisms with Erika which will equip you to deal with stress better for the rest of your life.

Here are a few ways you can start to do this:

• Write down your personal strengths and support network· Things you are good at and people respect you for; your areas of good experience, etc
• Family, friends, networks; powerful contacts; resources you can draw on – assets, your standing etc
• Next, list your personal weaknesses and limitations in your life· Areas where you’re aware that you are not strong, or things that people fairly criticise you for;
• Lack of resources – where others at your level have access to these resources, or where the absence of resources impacts on your situation
• Bad situations – where you experience problems with your job or relationships, or where you have a poor living or working environment

Then brainstorm the opportunities available to you:

• Work through strengths you’ve identified. Ask yourself how you can draw on them to manage stress
• Work through the weaknesses you’ve identified. These are opportunities for positive change and for development of new skills

Finally, consider real-world practical opportunities open to you if you took advantage of those opportunities, to improve your stress management

• Look at managing your time and your expectations for the day - are they realistic?
• For threats, consider consequences of leaving your weaknesses uncovered· Consider damage to relationships, career and happiness that would come from failing to manage stress
• Use this consideration of the downside as a spur to ensure that you take stress management seriously

These are just a few things you can start doing today. To find out more about how you can manage your stress levels further, finding time in your day and coping mechanisms that you never knew you had, contact Erika and find out how Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help you to take the steps to a more relaxed happy you.

© EKTherapies

Could Laughter be the Key to Happiness?

Laughter is infectious; we all know the amazing feeling of losing yourself in the energy of laughter. But could laughter be the key to happiness? People have started to harness this and create laughter workshops, where you go to laugh, even if it starts out as a forced laugh, the endorphins and benefits still affect your body and mood.

Research has shown the health benefits of laughter are far-reaching, studies have shown that laughter can help pain relief through the releasing of endorphins, increase the immune system, decrease stress, change the “negative” chemicals in the mind, ease conflict, lighten burdens, inspire hope, connect you to others and generally just make you feel better, more energetic and happier, bringing your body and mind back into balance.

“Your sense of humour is one of the most powerful tools you have to make certain that your daily mood and emotional state support good health.” Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D.

This may all seem a bit far-fetched, can laughing really help you to feel better ? We know the benefits of exercise and how that helps us to reduce stress hormones. It helps our bodies to feel more energetic, it clears our minds and allows us to have clear focus again. So can laughter do the same thing? If we build laughter into our day just as we do with exercise we can increase our happiness. Laughter is an incredibly strong medicine for mind and body – it is free, convenient and beneficial in so many ways.

So how do you get more laughter in your life?

We can find laughter in so many ways, maybe for you it is laughing at films or the TV, laughing with friends, comedy clubs, funny clips on line, joining a laughter workshop, the list is endless. Or if all else fails you could just fake it. Just smile and start to laugh – as with listening to a song and how it change your mood, so can laughter. Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can also help. This combination can help you to look at the world with a different perspective, to see the funny side in life. It is too easy to allow life to feel like a weight on our shoulders, but you can learn the tools to see life in a different way. To allow yourself the freedom to let go and just laugh and enjoy the world for what it is.

Try it now - smile, laugh or giggle and feel better about your day.

© EKTherapies

Bye, Bye Olympics

It is the end of two amazing weeks; not only did Great Britain finish third on the medal table we also managed to host an amazing event that will be remembered for years to come, for all the right reasons. It has been wonderful to see all the countries supporting their teams with such pride and passion.

It has been inspiring to watch the athletes pushing themselves to their limits and achieving amazing things. It has also helped me to realise that we don’t have to be perfect. Perfection doesn’t exist. So many of us are striving to be “perfect,” but what is perfection? I watched in awe these athletes who spent their whole life dedicated to one sport and have been focusing on the Olympics for the last four years or sometimes longer, yet they still make “mistakes.” It makes me realise that we can forgive ourselves; we can do the best we can do and be happy with that. We can learn from our mistakes and grow. If we let go of the fear of failure and trust in ourselves and our ability we can achieve the most incredible things.

We are all always growing and striving to be better versions of ourselves, the day we stop doing that is the day we stop learning.

I hope the wonderful energy of the Olympics stays with us for a long time, helping us to unite and to realise that we can achieve anything we put our hearts to.

Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help you to have that same pride and self-worth, helping you to achieve your goals in a positive and focused way.

Personally I feel very proud to be British and to have been privileged enough to live in the host city of the London 2012 Olympics, I have some wonderful memories that will stay with me for a long time. I hope you do too and that the buzz and energy of the Olympics stays with you.

Looking forward to the start of the Paralympics, and watching more amazing, awe inspiring things.

© EKTherapies

What is Fight or Flight Response?

Fight or flight is a natural healthy response within our body to a perceived threat or danger. Thousands of years ago we led very different lives, much more physically challenging and dangerous lives. We didn’t have sharp claws or teeth to protect us from the world around us, and we had to be able to react very quickly to threats around us. In those days there were two simple choices, we could either fight or we could run (flight).

The fight or flight response is one of the most important parts of our make-up and a highly efficient survival response for dangerous times. When we are in fight or flight mode hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released; these speed up the heart rate, slow down digestion, and shift the blood flow to major muscle groups, giving the body a burst of energy and strength so we can react to the situation at hand. In the times of cavemen the threats were simple and straight forward - a wild animal or a member from an enemy tribe for example - these were very serious and dangerous threats requiring a quick reaction.

Nowadays we still have our fight or flight response; the dangerous situations have changed, but the biggest difference is that we now don’t always release that pent up stress.

Our bodies are built to deal with short times of heightened awareness and stress, it is a vital part of our survival, but the problem comes when we continue to keep our bodies in the heightened state, the stress state.

Our body/mind can’t differentiate between a real threat and a perceived threat. You can get the same chemical reactions just by thinking about a stressful situation, for example, a bill needing to be paid,  going over a situation you experienced – reliving it in your mind, or worrying about an upcoming situation; then when it happens it was so much better/easier than you thought, but all that energy you spent worrying about it has had a harmful effect on your body.

Our body tries to re balance but the hormones are still flying around; gradually they begin to have a permanent effect on our health, long-term health problems start to develop.

The wonderful thing is that you can control this; you can learn what your stressors are and how you can de-stress yourself. A hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP session can help you by working out a range of mechanisms with Erika which will equip you to deal with stress better for the rest of your life.


© EKTherapies