How Full is your chest? – Lets talk about stress part 2.

In my previous blog Lets Talk About Stress we established that we have a chest which can only hold so much stress. If the chest becomes full it eventually busts opens and creates a big fucking mess. In this blog I would like to talk about how our chest is filled, often without us knowing!

Stress starts affecting our nervous system from when we are carried in our mothers womb. Our nervous system is one of the first things to develop, it is immature and highly sensitive. If our nervous system develops incorrectly it dysfunctions and is unable to regulate correctly causing malfunctions and in turn illness.

If your mother was going through stress when she was carrying you, your nervous system would have suffered. Already your chest is beginning to fill! Then when you are born you have the chance of acquiring more if the birth is stressful. Our nervous system remembers everything and starts to programme how we should deal with life before we are even born. Why do you think some babies don’t cry? Crying is a babies only way to express its needs, hungry, tired, in need of love, dirty bum etc it cries. When a babies needs are not met or it is scared to express its needs because of the reaction it stops crying and validating its needs. As we grow we continue to live by the same rule. Think about controlled crying or just leaving a baby to cry out? Some people will say that you are teaching a child to self soothe which is very important as adults we need to learn to self soothe however before we can learn to self soothe we must be taught this by our care giver.

We learn all our behaviour from those around us. Here is another example of how something can traumatise us when we are a child. You are riding a bike or climbing a tree, you fall, there is blood and you are hurt and you parent freaks the fuck out. Their reaction (completely unintentional) can traumatise you.

I have been scared of heights specifically going down stairs, this is from falling down them when I was a baby and breaking my arm. I do not remember the incident but my nervous system does and it remembers it as trauma. These seemingly small incidents can add up!

Then we take into consideration unhealthy or toxic relationships with parents and the chances of us suffering from some type of mental or physical illness increases dramatically. The sad thing is a lot people don’t have a clue how toxic their relationships with their family is. They often think it is normal to a have a dispondant or emotionally unavailable parent, A parent who is highly critical or controlling. They believe that they were loved, taken on days out, bought things, fed and clothed so their upbringing was good.

Our peers at school can also fill our chest, bullying has a huge impact. If we feel under to pressure to perform at school or work this will also start filling our chest.

I ask you take a look at this ACE quiz, ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Effects. This study began 1995 and 1997 when it recruited participants (mainly from white middle class back grounds) which have since been in long term follow up for health outcomes. This study was lead by the US health maintenance organisation Kaiser Permanent and the Cents for Disease Control and Prevention. It shows the relationship between experiences within our childhood and chances of mental or physical health issues later on in life. This is just a guide and does not take into consideration other factors e.g., school, society, diet etc or the good experiences or influences we have in our life will builds our resilience. Even if you get a high score it does not mean you will definitely develop a physical or mental illness.

For some people they haven’t even completed school and their chest if full! Once we are adults we then have even more factors to take into consideration. Bills, relationships, work, social media all take its toll. It is so important that we learn healthy ways to empty our chest rather than escaping and ignoring the ever filling chest.

If you would like to find out more about how you can empty your chest, drop me a message or book your free video consultation now!