Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
How our bodies bear the brunt of our mind’s stresses.
As cognitive beings, our brains go to many subconscious lengths to avoid and dissipate pain. We block it out through distraction techniques, denial and the old favourite — repression. This means we can go about our day to day lives, function and ‘not feel’.
On a psychological level we ‘store’ stress, trauma and experiences and pass this down generations, and children can develop similar attachment styles or patterns of behaviour to their parents.
But what about our physical selves? Our bodies are not just the physical case to house us.
As part of our ‘bottling up’ of feelings our bodies take the hit. We can forget the brain and body are linked. Somatic symptoms are often (but, of course, not always) a direct response to psychological trauma. Trauma can come in the form of one-off, significant, life changing experiences and periods of prolonged distress. However trauma also exists as a cumulative effect of stressful circumstances where normal functioning is disrupted. For further reading, the hero that is Babette Rothschild dissects this in her book ‘The Body Remembers’ and talks about our survival response to both ‘life or limb’.
Back to the body. Muscular pains, fatigue, headaches can often be a sign of an impasse. Chronic pain has also long been linked to psychological distress. Our bodies literally take the hit of our lived experience and store them up as tension.
Under stress, the fight or flight response is ignited and the brain and the body work together to keep us safe. Fine, not new. However, some traumas can shock our autonomic nervous system into a state of hyperarousal. This is when we get stuck in a cycle of permanent fight or flight, our amygdala becomes oversensitive and the communication between the brain and the body goes awry. The brain then works hard to ‘learn’ a suitable and ‘successful’ way to deal with the (usually emotional) pain, and thus a habit and neural pathway is formed. And physical tension remains.
Okay, enough of the underlying theory. It’s not all bad — our bodies are doing their jobs to keep us alive — it just may need a little attention to recalibrate. The long term management of this requires us to not neglect our bodies and recognise the importance they hold in keeping us well, physically and emotionally.
Now may be a good time to get in to the body — by treating it right with regular exercise, rest and relaxation.
- Nature — this may be difficult at this current time but still doable. Get out in your garden and feel the grass between toes. Your child may have sand to run fingers through. Connecting with the outside and different textures can really help ground us.
- Yoga — a great way to reconnect with the body and can be done from the comfort of your living room. Many organisations are offering live stream sessions daily which can help us feel both calm and strong.
- Eat well — the digestive system is where it all happens hence why our relationship with food is so heavily linked to our emotions (feeling hungry during lockdown? Blame your cortisol levels — the hormone released when we are stressed or anxious). Try to eat intuitively and respect your body with how you fuel it.
Happy Monday :)
