Stress in transition can leave you feeling as if you have little to no control over your life. Self-doubt and fear surface, and the stress cycle continues to spiral, but you can get comfortable in the discomfort. You can learn to cope with the emotional discomfort even though you know that you need to do something about it. That decision erodes your confidence and is doing you more harm than good.

 

Why A Little Fear Is Good

When you experience fear, self-doubt and lack of confidence, it places stress on your body. The stress fires off chemicals in your brain to tell your body how to respond. This would have been particularly useful in an era when, as humans, we lived in mortal danger, and the ability to fight or flee quickly was a matter of life or death. When the immediate threat is over, the brain fires off chemicals to your body, which tells it to relax.

 

Thankfully, we don’t live with those types of mortal fears anymore, but what we know now is what impact it has on our body and brain. Fear sends signals to your brain and body that it’s in danger, which puts your body in a position to fight or flee, by reducing the capacity of your body to sleep, relax, process emotions, remember things and digest food.

 

The Fear Triggers And Stress Impacts

The reaction can be triggered by sounds, smells, sight and internal feelings of anxiety or fear. We now also understand more about chronic fear or living perpetually in a state of fear. What we know is that chronic fear and anxiety can shrink the amygdala, the area of the brain that controls this reaction, causing your brain and body to react as if it is in fear, even when there is no danger present.

 

The Impact of Fear and Stress

You can imagine the impact this has on your body when your nerves are always heightened to react, sending energy away from normal bodily functions…how sensitive you feel as the energy is directed away from your ability to process emotions, or how self-doubt can arise when energy is directed away from memory and decision making.

 

Interrupting The Pattern

Just as your senses can trigger fear and stress you can also use them to interrupt the pattern. Then use your senses to signal freedom, peace of mind and confidence.

These can be done using your senses –

1. breathe – to calm the mind
2. sight – reading an inspiring quote of passage, colour,
3. taste – the relax you
4. smell – aromas to the trigger pleasant reminders
5. music – to interrupt patterns on a cellular level

In seconds you can stop the fear, worry and anxiety patterns from taking hold of you and sending your body into stress.

Your body needs all of its energy to function normally and stay in balance. When fear, self-doubt and stress become a way of life, it inhibits that ability, and your body doesn’t function normally. Stress, particularly chronic stress, has now been named public enemy number one, because of the effect it has on our bodies.

Love,

Gai

PS Download the quick tip guide here, which gives you five ways to use your senses to interrupt the stress and fear pattern.