Symptoms of Stress
How Stress Affects Overall Health

Now that doctors acknowledge that emotional stress does have an adverse effect on our health, most people have grown to accept that stress is indeed as toxic as almost anything else we can do of a negative nature to our bodies. 

My journey into this mind body connection began over 20 years ago when I suffered from a very unusual, and unfortunately un-treatable condition that demanded I do more than visit my family physician.  As such, I have been very fortunate to make the acquaintance of many alternative healers over the years, and I can share that most of them have been acutely aware of the strong, yet greatly undervalued body/mind connection for years.

Therefore, this mind/body "stress thing" is not new information at all; instead it is simply new information being given credence by the traditional medical community. 

Personally, I thank God that the word is finally getting out and that we now understand that we must treat the "whole" person instead of merely their symptoms if we are ever to truly "heal" anyone. 

I have come to believe that if we try to separate a person's mind from their emotions, their past from their present, and their current life situation from their medical situation, we will never heal ANY illness.  We, our mind, body & soul, are united into this one person we call self and all are divinely intertwined, with no system being of greater importance than the other.  All are intricately connected to work in unison, or not work in unison, depending upon the particular situation.

I believe that one part of our being cannot be affected in any way, without it also influencing the other parts of self; thus, physical symptoms are often born out of our frustrations, our emotional pain and our daily interactions with others.

I hope that we are finally approaching an area in our scientific community where eastern and western medical diagnosis and treatments may finally unite.   Which in my mind means we may actually be approaching a place in time where people are healed in this country, not just drugged, operated on or given antidepressants.  All of which may be necessary at specific times to get us through our problem, but none are necessary as often as they are advised, prescribed and/or performed.  Again, only my opinion.

I'm not suggesting that the medical community does not want to help you, I believe they do.  Instead, it has been my experience that they simply do not always know what else to try when we are not healing in the prescribed way, so quite often they assume it has to be "all in our minds".  Unfortunately their definition of this problem is often summed up as depression. 

I believe that many illnesses do indeed come from our minds, and perhaps even our hearts.  But this does not make them imaginary or simplistic simply because something can't be removed or prescribed to heal our discomfort.  Quite often, we simply need to understand that we must treat the root cause, the emotion, if we are ever to eliminate the symptoms.

With this in mind, let's look at some of the things our mind does or says that indeed has a tremendous impact on our physical health.  Again, these are my own opinions, based on my own experiences and knowledge of the power of the mind to influence the health of the body:

Simply stated, anything that affects your mind, affects your body, period.   It is not possible to think a thought and not have that energy manifest somewhere in your world. 

I've seen it happen many times, and I've also witnessed that when the proper part of our being is addressed, the sickness no longer has a purpose, and thus, it leaves us.

Much of this was learned during my time served as a hypnotist.  I became certified in hypnosis as much out of my own need to heal as my desire to help others heal.  Yet what I learned during this time was that if we worked on the wound, the real wound, the healing just happened without any in-put, instruction or advice from myself or anyone else.

It was almost as if once the client were relaxed enough to allow their feelings and their deepest needs & wants to surface, with very little positive reframing of their situation on my part, they got well.  It was almost miraculous; this power we possess to heal ourselves from the inside out. 

Know that the mind powerfully affects the body.  I've seen it happen hundreds of times.  In fact, I believe it is entirely possible that the mind is one of the only things that can either heal and harm the body; other than physical falls, accidents, etc... 

It is my firm belief that many of the negative things that have been said or done to you over the years are indeed the things that have caused, or greatly contributed to your current state of dis-ease. 

To prove this to yourself, stop for one moment and simply tune into what your mind is saying to you, ABOUT you.  This automatic chatter in our minds is so common to us all that we don't even listen to what we are saying to ourselves anymore.  We say things that we would never say to anyone else, so why do we continue to say them to ourselves?

Is it any wonder that most of us possess self destructive habits, phobias, unexplained fears, along with both chronic and acute illnesses?  If our thoughts are indeed creating at least part of our reality, then look at the life you are creating for yourself. 

Your subconscious mind will make choices to either get your attention or keep you alive in the only way that it can...through your body.  And it will sometimes create situations that you absolutely never meant to create, such as illness, in order to try to get your attention.  Of course rationally, consciously, we know this isn't at all conducive to us living a better life and healing our past, but our subconscious doesn't know this.  It's instinctual, not rational.

The subconscious mind is literal, not calculating.  It can't reason and come to a logical conclusion; that is the conscious mind's job.  Instead it very literally understands a thought or a feeling, and then it literally works with what it has under its control (your body) to create a literal solution; albeit one that sometimes makes very little sense to the rational part of us. 

In conclusion, please don't ever believe that what you think does not directly reflect itself in your health, body image, and virtually every part of you, because your thoughts are the exact things that do create your physical reality.

Therefore, if you find yourself stressed a great deal of the time, know that whatever situation is stressing you in a negative way, your subconscious is trying to get you to change doing whatever this thing is.  If you don't change it, it has no choice but to continue setting off your alarms, which can quite literally mean that illness will follow.  Be it high blood pressure, heart attack or even a broken bone. 

If you want to change your health, you must change your thinking.  There's just no way around it.  Know too that many hypnotists believe in negative programming; which is where they try to convince you to stop a negative habit through more negative thought.  Don't buy into this.  If you listened to your thoughts earlier when I suggested it, I'm sure you realize that if negative thoughts were effective, you'd already be well by now.

So if you do visit a hypnotist, you might want to check out their philosophies on programming before you commit to following their lead. 

So moving on, let's look at our illnesses and our thoughts more closely.  Again, understand these are some of the things that I have noticed within my own life and those of my clients. 

-When you have a virus, you might ask "Who or what has gotten inside of me and is bugging me?"

-When you have allergies you might ask "Who or what am I allergic to?"

-When you have a pain in your body, ask "Who or what is the source of this pain in my life (ie...who or what is the pain in my neck)?"

Sometimes you will find you have even just thought or said something like "Boy, that Bob really is a pain in my neck".  And later on in the day, you discover you have a pain in your neck....stiff neck....sore neck.  It is your subconscious "literally" translating your thoughts into body action.

So lets look at the various organs and what they represent in alternative medicine practices.  This way if you have a pain in this part of the body, or a sickness that involves these organs, because you can do the mental rehashing that needed in order to discover the emotional component behind your problem.  For simplicity sake I will only mention a few:

-The Lungs are Grief

-The Liver is Anger

-The Heart is Love-Heartache-Sadness-Loss

-The Large Intestines represent Release-How well or easily are you releasing the things that no longer serve you from your life? 

-The Small Intestines represent How well you absorb the things in your life?  How well can you take what you need from the experience and let the rest go (large intestines)?

I believe cancer is literally something eating you up inside.  I have found many lovely souls who have experienced cancer to be harboring strong resentments from their past.  Things they dare not get out, but keep inside festering, growing and spreading.  Perhaps they were taught to not express their pain, so instead it never goes away but instead simply grows inside of them.  Energy doesn't just leave us, even when in the form of emotion....we have to work with releasing the energy so it doesn't build inside.

I believe poor circulation is the blocking of the life flow through you.  Somewhere you have put up an energy block in order to protect yourself.  The area the block forms in will tell you a great deal about the problem, i.e. your legs represent how well you stand up for yourself & the ease in which you exert forward motion in your goals, ambitions and life changes.  The knees tell you how well you can bend to meet other's needs.  The arms are how easily you reach out to others, and I believe the heart is how well you allow other's to reach out to you.

There are so many great books on the subject.  I find much credible insight into how the Taoist think of the body and spirit.  I love the work Louise Hay does on summing things up....I also think there is much to be said for the art of acupuncture and acupressure, as they have both benefited me and stirred up some toxins, both emotionally and physically, that made me quite ill.  I believe massage is tremendously beneficial to unlocking blocks, reflexology sends remarkable recuperative energies to the organs themselves and cranial sacral work is extraordinary for the mind and the soul. 

In short, if you want to heal your body, you must first heal your mind, which often requires going into all of those emotional places from the past that you would rather let lie.  Yet if there are still emotions stored inside of you, when you really let yourself go to these memories that are not yet healed....realize that the gun is still loaded.  We must go into the experience, find what it was we learned from that particular situation that has the potential to make us stronger and better people and then release the rest. 

When it comes to the releasing, if I simply can't find a way to really let go, I ask God to take it from me as I realize something's we could go round and round with for years and never reach the end.  So when I come upon one of these particularly sensitive spots from my past, I look into it and I ask for guidance and wisdom in both the understanding of it and the letting go.  And when you truly release it, you will feel it.  You may feel lighter, your headache may subside, you may feel more positive about your life and you no longer catch every virus that is going around.

You don't have to be hypnotized to experience all of these things, simple grow quiet and ask that your angels show you what you most need to see, and then allow them to walk with you as you go through it.  There is always something of benefit buried behind every event in our lives, and the more painful the event, probably the more profound the possible learning.  Nothing horrible happens just because it does....it happens for a reason.  Once we find the reason, the healing simply begins to happen.  Real healing, permanent healing, not just the repressed kind of putting it out of our mind and refusing to look at it type, which causes you stress, irritability, unhealthy relationships, an unhappy life, and most probably recurring health problems.

It is my philosophy that when something traumatic happens to you, you must allow yourself to really feel it.  Really feel it...yell, scream, rant, rage, cuss, whatever.  Then after you've really had your way with it, let it go.  Just release it from your life.  Consider yourself stronger and wiser for having made it through refusing to repress or suppress any longer.  And for Pete's sake, don't take it out on someone else, take it out on the air, the pillow, the chair, the television, whatever you can afford to lose, and then release it.  Don't let the emotional garbage of the situation stay in you, in your house.  Toss it out, don't keep rethinking it, chances are there's nothing you can change about it anyway, just let it go.

I believe in asking for help when you need it.  I believe that can be through a friend, a spouse, a doctor, whomever....but always include the healing angels or God in the equation.  I'm not necessarily a religious person, so please don't believe I'm shoving my religion down your throat.  I am instead a realistic person who is full of faith and belief that come  from my own personal experiences with the asking for help through the higher realms and then being open to receiving it! 

I believe in prayer, meditation, guided thoughts, improving your self talk so that you no longer sabotage your mind and your body.  I believe in research and reading and exploring new ideas and solutions.  I believe in living everyday to its fullest and doing what you love to do.  I believe in new beginnings and even endings when they are necessary.  I believe that you alone have the power to heal your life.  Other's may help you through it, offer you a bandage or support, but only you can really heal you.

Personally, I would never try to walk through this world and all of its frustrations, limitations, emotional highs and lows alone.  I need help sometimes too, and who better than someone who knows my pain inside and out, who knows me inside and out, and in all reality probably knows what I need to heal more than I could ever possibly comprehend than my angels, my deceased loved ones or God himself.  Try it.....I promise you if you do, it'll become a habit....a good one.   

Emotional Suppression takes huge amounts of energy, which in turn creates fatigue, irritability, sadness, depression and unhealed wounds.

This in turn creates an enormous taxation effect upon your organs, muscles, and all of the systems in your body, which in turn creates more stress until eventually you become sick.  Now you know why.  I hope I've also given you some ideas about where to begin to fix it. 

Please remember, when I'm talking about health problems, I am talking about are generalizations.  Everyone has a problem and everyone has their own story.  Again, I am not a doctor, therapist, counselor, nor even a hypnotist any longer.  I am simply a person relaying to you what I have seen and experienced in my own life and the lives of many, many others. 

If you take nothing else away with you, take this....you can be your own best friend, or your own worst enemy.  If you don't heal your past, your traumas and your pain, I don't believe it is possible to ever truly overcome your physical limitations.  They are simply a response to your thoughts, a reminder that you still have internal pain...they are the siren outside that let's you know something is on fire inside.  And while you may need to be under the care of a physician or on medications while you extinguish the fire, that's fine, I say the more support the better.  But in the end, you can never really get well if you're too afraid or too unwilling to look inside and see where the damage really is.

We are a work in progress, allow yourself that.  But take back your power and realize that your health is really under your control....and only your control.  No matter what organ they remove or cancer they defeat or muscle they massage or energy they send....until you reduce the amount of stress you carry with you, whether from past or present, you can't really "get well".  The work that others can do for you is sometimes necessary, beneficial and oftentimes quite pleasant, but the true healing is up to you. 

I realize it would be easier if someone else could do it for you, but they can't.  Personally, I seek out every type of aid and assistance I can find in my healing journey, but ultimately I know, in the end, it's all up to me and what I am willing to settle for.  Or better yet, what I'm not willing to settle for....so I keep on climbing those rocks and meeting every new challenge with the knowledge that what I decide to do and think about every situation that I find difficult will ultimately determine the state of my health.  I take responsibility for me, and I realize this is how it's meant to be.

Remember to think about what you do want more than you think about what you don't want, and watch your life, your health, steadily, perhaps even rapidly get better.

Here's to your health. 

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