ARE YOU HURTING YOURSELF? ~ STAY JUICY!
Life goes by so quickly that it doesn’t make any sense to allow past pain to continue to harm you. The original experience was painful enough for one lifetime, wasn’t it? Yet each time you remember that past injury or hurtful experience, you are forcing yourself to re-experience the emotional pain that accompanied the experience all over again. Wasn’t once enough?
Did you know that your body doesn’t know the difference between something happening to you right now and something you are simply remembering? Each time you remember the painful experience and feel the pain of that memory, your body experiences the chemical and cellular changes exactly as if you were living in that moment again. In a way, you’re being a bully to your body by repeatedly attacking its wellbeing. Threatening experiences create physically changes disrupting your homeostasis.
Whenever your brain perceives some type of potential pain or danger, it activates your stress response, aka the fight or flight response. This causes a physiological reaction you would feel like anxiety symptoms. This is a natural mechanism that occurs the moment you remember the painful experience. These symptoms are caused by a rush of survival hormones. If you are someone who frequently thinks about how others have hurt you, you’re continually harming your system. It’s very hard on your body when you experience continued stressful situations and this can cause you to produce a lasting, low-level state of stress.
As your stress level stays activated, it continues pumping stress hormones which causes you to have stressful experiences. As a consequence, it can cause symptoms, like:
- insomnia
- overeating
- irritability & moodiness
- alcohol or drug abuse
- anxiety attacks and panic
- episodes of sadness and depression
- feeling constantly pressured, hassled
- allergy reactions like asthma, eczema and hives
- physical symptoms ~ chest pains, stomach aches, headaches
This is the truth. Every change, everything that doesn’t work out the way you thought it should, was an experience you had to have in order to direct you on your current path. Everything happens for a reason, and if we learn from the experience and then let the pain of it go, we can move forward with more clarity and appreciation for what we have now.
So start making nice to yourself. Start appreciating your life and blessings now and only move forward. Stay current and vital by connecting with nature and watching how fresh and alive nature always stays.
STAY JUICY!
Lorraine E. Castro, LMFT 