Chronic Stress: How To Release The Emotions That Cause It

Stress inflames, oxidizes and reduces our body’s defenses. We attribute it to a frenetic lifestyle, but its deep origin is in unintegrated emotions that activate repetitive physical and psychic responses.

You can get out of this circle. And neuroscience tells us that we can treat suffering and stress through the body.

Lower the body to reduce stress

We get the best of ourselves when we find ourselves with a relaxed mind. Consciousness flows and manifests on the physical plane.

We experience it as an inspiration that brings creativity, new perspectives, and fresh ideas to our minds. Thanks to the impulse of emotions, when we are relaxed we transform ideas into effective actions that contribute to enjoying a full life.

But the dance between thoughts, emotions and behaviors can cause joys or produce suffering. Emotions play a fundamental role in this regard. Although we feel them as a part of the inner life, of the soul, the truth is that emotions are physically materialized in the body in the form of compounds called peptides.

Emotions are lived in the body (not only in the mind)

Biochemist Candace Pert defined them as “molecules of emotion” that are distributed through the bloodstream throughout the body. In this way, the entire organism participates in the emotional state and that is why it is also possible to access feelings through the skin and physical therapies.

On the other hand, we identify excessively with certain thoughts and emotions and we forget that they are one possibility among many, an expression of our consciousness among other possible ones.

If we believe that we are what we think and feel at a given moment, we will give absolute importance to our thoughts and will resist changing them.

Thoughts can generate contradictions and conflicts with our own experiences or with other people, and as a result, emotions can be painful. Hence the focus of countless spiritual practices is that we disidentify from our mind, emotions, and perceptions.

It is this stop identifying with the mind that allows us to live the present in all its fullness, without attaching ourselves to certain psychological, emotional or physical expressions.

When stress becomes chronic

One of the mechanisms that reinforces mental identification and causes us to experience the pain of resistance is chronic stress.

The causes stress l is a powerful survival mechanism that is intended to protect us from external aggressions. This mechanism is regulated by the nervous system and is triggered at the physiological level in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

The HPA axis is activated when the hypothalamus (a neural structure in the limbic region of the brain) detects a threat signal. Instantly the hypothalamus warns the pituitary gland (ruler of the endocrine system) about the danger detected, so that the pituitary gland orders the adrenal glands to secrete adrenaline, the hormone that prepares us for the protective response: fight or flight.

This mechanism served us perfectly when we needed to quickly climb a tree, but it does not help us when today we need to think creatively or take a new perspective on our situation.

Furthermore, unlike physical threats, whose presence is identifiable and transitory, psychological threats have a constant presence in our mind. Consider, for example, the fear of being affected by the economic crisis, or even more subtly, the concern about not being attractive enough or not achieving our most cherished dreams.

The stressful effect of entrenched emotions

Although it can force us to perform at our best in certain situations, stress does not help us to disidentify from the mind, and this is key to our well-being and our spiritual evolution.

At this point, it is important that we understand how our brain decides that a situation is dangerous for us. The brain is made up of three concentric layers : the brainstem, the limbic region, and the neocortex.

• Brainstem or “reptilian brain”: It is the innermost and oldest layer. It is responsible for regulating basic and involuntary functions (such as breathing or heartbeat) and participates together with the limbic region in the “fight or flight” response.
• Limbic region: It is precisely the one that takes care of making a rapid assessment of situations to warn about danger. It is also sometimes called the “emotional brain.” In this automatic or unconscious part of our brain, information with all the details of each of our experiences is carefully stored, including sensory perceptions, emotional experiences, physical body reactions and protective responses.
• Neocortex: This layer, the most external and evolutionarily recent, allows us to reflect and be aware. Studies carried out with experienced meditators show a greater activation of the neocortex and less of the other two layers.

Of these three layers, the limbic region has the function of constantly comparing the information of the present experience with the stored information of the past and in the event of any minimal similarity that suggests danger, activating the HPA axis.

This can work very precisely with external threats – like the presence of a lion! – but is highly subjective when it comes to psychological threats. In addition, by taking the past as a reference, it makes it difficult for us to live the present experience in all its nuances and possibilities.

Thus, emotions can serve our inspiration and fulfillment or unnecessarily activate protective responses. This occurs when emotions have not been integrated : they were experienced sometime in the past without being able to be fully coped with due to their negative intensity, and they were associated with psychological pain.

When an unintegrated emotion is activated in the neocortex, the negative thoughts that feed it are triggered; a circuit that makes us sick.

Beliefs that reinforce suffering and anxiety

These emotions stored in the unconscious, in the limbic system, are connected to specific beliefs. When an unintegrated emotion is activated, the associated belief serves as a justification for our emotional state, causing a series of negative thoughts that in turn feed the same emotion.

This repetitive circuit in which emotions and associated beliefs feed back each other generates resistance and can take hold of us momentarily or for long periods of time. In some cases it can be a vicious cycle in which we live our entire lives.

Chronic stress is, in this case, the determining factor that keeps us in this impasse based on the constant activation of the HPA axis associated with the threat of suffering.

The price our physical and mental health pays

On the other hand, there are multiple negative effects of chronic stress on our physical health.

The constant secretion of cortisol and catecholamines inflames, oxidizes and ages our body. And it is that sugar levels rise, blood pressure increases, some metabolic activities slow down and above all the immune system is inhibited, which favors the development of all kinds of diseases.

In addition to the physical effects, stress favors automatic or unconscious behavior, limits creative capacities, the possibility of making decisions freely and evolving.

It makes us more vulnerable to external manipulation and above all it makes us suffer. If we do not become fully aware of how our mind works and how it is connected with emotions and the physical body, we will be “hijacked” by repetitive automatic patterns and we will lose the ability to be objective, to create and to develop from our neocortex. potential as free individuals.

Mental and physical techniques to combat stress

Fortunately we can put the knowledge of neuroscience at the service of a holistic health that integrates body and mind through consciousness.

We can realize that we are a consciousness that can transcend, self-observe and transform our own thoughts and emotions, without fixing, without identifying with them.

Then we stop feeling threatened by our perception of the situation or by the opinions of others. The survival mechanism is no longer activated. We do not experience stress. Although we may experience pain, we have come out of suffering.

Living the present fully – here and now – without feeling a constant threat, be it physical or psychological, is the spiritual goal par excellence for countless traditions. Many sages throughout history have spoken about this way of perceiving the world and have offered us the techniques to reach this state of consciousness.

The different meditative practices are an example. We know that people who practice zen meditation techniques, advaita vedanta, vipassana or mindfulness, among others, acquire the ability to self-observe dispassionately. In this way, when a stressful situation occurs, they can act thoughtfully, efficiently and appropriately rather than being carried away by fears and other blocks.

In addition to these mental disciplines, we can promote awareness through bodily techniques that deactivate the HPA axis and with it the thought-emotion feedback loop.

One of these therapies, among others that work emotions through the body, is Emotional States Integration Reflexology (ESI Reflexology).

Thanks to the latest knowledge in neuroscience, we know that through the feet we can access the entire nervous system and, therefore, any emotional residue in our body that needs to be integrated. This allows you to avoid the protective response, reduce the degree of resistance, and integrate the traumatic emotions that are causing anxiety.

Reflexology to reach the unconscious through the body

Working on the feet brings awareness to the present moment, while unconscious causes are removed during a relaxing experience. Changes can occur at a profound level, without the patient being aware of it. For example, a person with a phobia checks how he fades without knowing how it happened.

With disciplines such as ESI Reflexology, emotional stability is developed that allows keeping the mind calm, a necessary requirement to increase awareness and free oneself from the causes of anxiety.

Techniques such as foot reflexology deactivate the HPA axis, and with it the feedback loop between thoughts and emotions.

In addition to receiving massages in individual sessions with a professional, it is also possible to learn a short-term massage designed to deactivate the HPA axis. And it is that reflexotherapy is a simple and effective tool with which anyone can facilitate their evolution and well-being, and can also help their loved ones.

How to treat stress with a foot massage

The treatment begins with manipulations of the feet that allow to deactivate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and, therefore, to cut off the physical response to stress. This allows the body to activate all the self-healing mechanisms that were inhibited by stress.

In turn, reflexology allows the feet to regain their function of connecting with the earth and the environment. From this connection, self-confidence is restored and the strength to face emotional swings increases.

An advantage of working with the feet respects the pace of evolution of each person. Unconscious resistance to change is reduced and encouraged, but without imposing anything.

In addition, reflexology is not only not contraindicated with any other therapy, but also enhances its positive effects. That is why it is an integrative technique.

Meditation, a great weapon against stress

During meditation the succession of thoughts and emotions is observed without reacting to them: this helps to accept and integrate them. Changes occur even at the physical level in brain structures (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, amygdala …) related to fear management.

This is reflected in a series of concrete benefits in our physical and mental health :

Meditation initiates a hypothalamic response that reduces the secretion of the hormone cortisol, deactivates the stress-causing sympathetic nervous system, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system that deflates and relaxes.

Consequently, meditation reduces our risk of falling ill. On the one hand, it lowers inflammation levels and improves immune status. Studies show that people who have been meditating regularly for 5 years suffer from 80% fewer cardiovascular diseases and 73% fewer other minor conditions.

On the other hand, it gives us greater serenity. Inés Sagué, meditation institute and yoga teacher, assures us that the practice allows us to go from “a more emotional response to a more serene one; it gives us greater control over our thoughts and emotions and that generates greater self-knowledge, balance and the ability to cope with problems. challenges posed by everyday life “.

Practicing 10 minutes twice a day is enough to get positive changes.