The Problem With Living In Fear
Yesterday I got sucked in. A couple of conversations, a little bit of news and before I knew it, my brain was bogged down in feeling judged, judging others and in a state of overall irritation, otherwise known as stress. With the fear that’s plaguing so many of us lately, I thought it might be useful to revisit what happens when we think, believe and/or experience judgment, irritation, fear, depression, anxiety or any myriad of negative emotions.
As some of you know, I’m part of a global team of consultants trained in the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza. As such, I teach a two-day workshop to individuals and companies, a large section of which covers living in stress.
We’ve become so accustomed to the hormones of negative emotions which cause the stress response that most people don’t realize how often they’re in stress, and what’s happening in their body when they are.
I’m about to give you a little bit of very helpful scientific information for FREE. Ready? Here we go:
The brain doesn’t know the difference between a threat that is really happening, and one that we’re only thinking about. As Dr. Joe says then, we humans are the only species who can turn on the stress response by thought alone. So guess what, that means? If you’re feeling judgmental, if you’re feeling angry, if you’re feeling anxious, or if you have a mild humming of fear in the backdrop of your life, your body is in stress.
What happens to your body when you’re in stress? All living species have an automatic response to stress that is kicked off in our autonomic nervous system. If a wild animal is being chased by another, its blood automatically moves to its extremities, its digestive juices will slow because it’s not a time to eat, it’s heart rate will get ready for emergency and a number of other systems will kick into “Go mode.”
Humans are no different, except we do this to ourselves just by thinking about something that happened yesterday, or something that might happen tomorrow. If this is happening inside your body when you just think about some stressful potential, guess what else? All that energy that your body is using to manage that potential threat is no longer available to boost your immune system, to heal what already ails you or to create what you actually want to have happen in your life. So, let’s just say there were a virus that’s causing us to be in fear, anxiety or judgement of each other. Let’s also say that the precautions we’re needing to take are making us downright grumpy.
When we decide to think about that virus, read about it, complain about it, judge others and fret over it, we are now not only suffering the initial misery, we’re actually increasing our odds of getting it and being symptomatic if we do, because the stress has us in a weakened state!
Thankfully, by employing some tools and reaching out to the right people, I went from despair to quite literally dancing down my walking path, my misbehaving pandemic puppy even trotting harmoniously for once by my side.I don't want to be melodramatic, but from the depth of my soul I will tell you that raising a child as I am with a "degenerative" neuromuscular disorder is not something I choose to do living in fear. You can imagine to avoid that I have to practice what I preach regularly.
The bottom line is we can live in fear or we can live in faith and you just learned some very real consequences of living in fear. Just like when my oldest was thirteen and said, “Mom, I’m a teenager; we’re just going to have to get through this,” so too do we have to get through what we're in right now.
We can't control the limitations in which we have to live right now, but what we can do is not make it worse. We can monitor our internal state, keep our immunity up, and do what it takes to keep our brain and body balanced.
