Inability to deal with stress.

[Paul]

I couldn`t think of where to put this question as I am not certain if it is
a body question or a mind question.

I have been gradually recovering from a range of stress induced health
issues.....Well, I think they are stress induced...thats my problem....I don`t
know which came first, the chicken or the egg.

It all started a few years ago with a series of massive mental stresses,
(friends dying, raising small kids etc) On top of that an MD gave me a
massive long term dose of antibiotics that I somehow developed drug
induced Hepatitis from taking...this finished me off but good.

Now the stresses have gone and I should be happy. I gained back all the 20
pounds I lost. I meditated my way out of panic attacks I was getting when
a stressful situation came up.. ..I got over some mild IBS. My huge fatigue
has mostly lifted.


But here is my question.....Did the mental stress bring on this stuff or did I
have some physical problem that caused me to react to stress so badly.
As well, what can I do to strenghten my reaction to stress....I never want
to feel as bad as I did last year.

[shelley]

Hmmm... I can understand why this would bother you and why you'd be wary of a repeat performance, but really, I don't think you can say "it was just the stress" or "it was just the physical." I don't think you can separate it all out and say one came before the other, or caused it. Everything was part of a whole morass, a big mess that hit you on every level that you dealt with best you could!

While our bodies are organized to have a mental/emotional and physical body, they are not at all separated. They are intimately connected via the brain and the entire nervous system and there's a constant flow back and forth. We can have issues with our emotional body first and have them manifest in the physical, that is very true, and this can be prevented by having tools to heal the emotional body.

It sounds to me like you're prepared to handle these kinds of stressors differently in the future and have now added the power of meditation to your 'arsenal' and that's fantastic. That's a great way to cleanse the emotional body.

I recommend adding in flower essences, at the very least Emergency Trauma Solution or Rescue Remedy so that you don't get knocked so far off balance when life throws you another curve ball. After all, no matter what our beliefs about life and death are, losing loved ones is still a terrible thing to go through.

The flower essences re-establish balanced patterns in our electrical field, nervous system and ultimately our entire body. So those and MAP are things we need to have access to, not just herbs and vitamins, because the emotional body needs care and balancing in order to be vital. They will also help you throw off entirely the ramifications of that time in your life, as we do tend to have a lot of cellular memory when things like panic attacks are happening. The triggers may still be there waiting.

So rather than worry about which came first, consider how you can treat the WHOLE you, all of Paul, on every level.