Your instincts take over during times of trauma, stress, mental,
emotional and or physical.
Your brain (Central Nervous System) provides instructions
for every function that occurs inside your body. Your body is in constant communication with your brain at all times, every
second of your life.
Your brain is this amazing super computer that receives, processes and
analyzes a staggering amount of information every second of your life...
Your brain also
provides specific instructions to every tissue, organ and system within your body... every second of your life!
Your brainstem houses a part of your Central Nervous System that controls ALL of the automatic functions that occur
within your body to keep you alive.
Things like: breathing, management of every internal
organ and system (not to mention the interaction of all organs and systems), fight and flight protective reflexes...
This part of your Central Nervous System (called the Autonomic (automatic) Nervous System), is always functioning,
every second of your life. This is the part of your brain that "takes over" when you experience trauma/stress. This
is where your brain stores your Survival Instincts, in the hard drive... in the most primitive, base level your brain... so
that your instincts can protect your life.
When you experience trauma through injury, accident, abuse of any kind,
stress (death, loss of job, divorce, illness) or any situation combined with a sense of helplessness, your survival instincts
of Fight and Flight turn on without your conscious permission or awareness.
Most of you will recognize the pattern of
Fight and Flight in the body:
Increased heart rate
Increased breathing rate
Increased blood pressure
Hormone
shift toward producing more adrenalin
Dry mouth
Butterflies in Stomach
Sweaty palms
Poor focus / concentration
Increased frustration / anxiety
Muscle tension and pain
These are normal reactions when your protective instincts
take over. As your brain shifts into protection mode, your body's organs and systems receive new instructions from your brain's
hard drive (Autonomic Nervous System).
These instructions result in the patterns you see listed above...
the patterns
of Chronic Conditions!
The problem for those of you suffering from chronic conditions is the repetitive activation of
this instinctive process over time. When you have been suffering for a long time, your brain has inevitably activated this
protective pattern over and over and over.
Repetition = Habit
For many of you reading this, your Nervous Systems
have formed a habit of activating this instinctive protection inappropriately. Like a false alarm.
When this false
alarm is activated so many times and for so long, the result is a habit of your brain always instructing your body to maintain
a pattern of high level protection.
You begin to develop emotional associations of anger, helplessness, sadness, frustration,
hopelessness, fear... throughout your experiences.
In time, your emotions have a dramatic impact upon your chronic patterns.
For
most of you, when your stress levels increase, so do your physical symptom patterns.
As you develop emotional associations
to your chronic condition, you also begin to develop experiential associations (memories) of your limitations and even anticipatory
fears based upon those memories. This occurs within your conscious brain, or Neo-Cortex. This is the big noodle you think
of when you picture your brain. This is where you live: your awareness, memories, creativity, logic, humor, problem solving,
concentration...
Your thoughts, memories and their associations, as well as anticipatory expectations can also heavily
influence the activation of fight and flight protective patterns.
* The
integumentary system is an organ system consisting of the skin, hair, nails, and exocrine glands. The skin is only
a few millimeters thick yet is by far the largest organ in the body. The average person's skin weighs 10 pounds and has a
surface area of almost 20 square feet. Skin forms the body's outer covering and forms a barrier to protect the body from chemicals,
disease, UV light, and physical damage. Hair and nails extend from the skin to reinforce the skin and protect it from environmental
damage
