New research documents the link between negative social interactions and the production of proteins that trigger inflammation in the body.
Read Social friction tied to inflammation, on ScienceNews.org.
Story suggested by a Lovefraud reader.
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
This is just one more piece of evidence that stress (called here “Social friction”) leads to some pretty bad things in our bodies and minds.
From the time that Holmes and Rhae did their stress scale and other researchers started to put mice in cages and “stress” them (many times with random electric shocks) and then expose them to diseases, and the “stressed” mice got sick and died, and the ones who lived happily munching their pellets did not get sick, and had health immune systems….we have known that stress, physical, emotional, mental, and social is harmful to the human being.
One of the worst things about the stress I think of dealing with the psychopathic gaslighting and chaos is the weakening of everything about ourselves. Our thinking becomes clouded, fuzzy and unclear. 2+2 begins to equal random numbers when we balance our check book, when we read we are not able to retain what we have read. When we start to make plans, we have difficulty recalling dates and events, we become forgetful and go off to work without our lunch box,, or the report we worked on at home last night. We stutter and stammer trying to find simple words, llike “tree”–we can “see” the object in our mind’s eye, but we just can’t find the WORD.
All these things, including the bad colds, and flu and body aches we get add to the stress we feel and it has a positive feed back loop, with the more stress, the worse it becomes, and the more stress we feel,, and the less we are able to function. The sicker our body gets, the less well our mind functions until in some cases, we just lay down and die.
Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book that I have quoted here talks about the ULTIMATE stress of the Nazi prison camp to the ULTIMATE psychopathic experience…and how some inmates literally gave up and died, not just of starvation, but just of the desire to die…some fought and became like their jailers, and some few, like him, kept their wits.
The ultimate stress for me was a life event, when I lost my husband in a flaming aircraft crash, and my son D was burned as well, but that was when my psychopathic son took his opportunity to use my weakness and vulnerability to strike….it was when I reached out in my pain searching for someone to comfort me and found a psychopathic boy friend who added to my stress….and had 4 life threatening infections…and then came the summer of chaos when I had to flee for my life. My health took a nose dive, partly from the fact that during those years of chaos and pain, I had abused it, and been a life long smoker and abused it….
The past few years I’ve done my best to limit the stress in my life. I’ve cut out the stressful people…but even doing that has also caused some stress and anxiety as I learned how to set boundaries for people in my life. There have been some SIGNIFICANT people that I have cut out of my life including my other biological son and my egg donor, and friends who have been “friends” for decades….loved like family….but who were in the end seen to be toxic.
Of course life goes on too….even when we are trying to get our lives too a level playing field and calm and peaceful. Things happen like an accident that injures an Achilles tendon and puts me on crutches which I sincerely hate…but that’s stressful in itself, because I allow it to be more than it has to be….because I don’t like being dependent on someone else to do
FOR me what I want to do for myself…..so I realize there is a need in me to control my own emotions and feelings to meet reality.
Inflammation effects all parts of our bodies and our minds, shortening our lives and decreasing the ability of our bodies to fight infection and to function, of our hearts to pump blood effectively and our brains to think well.
I’ve sort of preached here about peace and calm, and decreasing stress….of taking care of ourselves…..of not allowing people or things to stress us. I will go on preaching that to LoveFraud, but mostly of preaching that and attempting to practice it for myself. God bless us all. PEACE. LOVE. JOY. HAPPINESS.
Oxy and All,
First Oxy let me say no matter how many times I hear what you have endured and risen above I am just amazed by your resilience (and wisdom). I am not trying to flatter, but give you huge kudos. Your spirit and perseverance has inspired and motivated me for the 4+ years I have been hanging around here at LF.
Thank-you!
I go by Slimone (Slim One) because all the stress I experienced killed my appetite. I weighed 98lbs. Lost 12lbs in six weeks. I am 5’3”. I looked scary.
I felt half dead.
Now, with some time and alot of work to make different choices I understand that I may be a product of my past, but I am not a prisoner of it.
xo, Slim
Oxy and SlimOne, you are both an inspiration!
Dear Slim One, thank you very much, I hope that I can comfort others the way that others have comforted me here on LF…I’m not sure I would be alive wihtout LF and I know I would have NO sanity at all without Donna, Liane, Aloha and LoveFraud. In the summer of Chaos, 2007, I sat at my computer and wept the entire summer because I was not alone….there were others out there just like me. People hurting but who were over coming it, coming out of the FOG, figuring out what was going on….realizing what red flags were, and finding ways to learn to SET BOUNDARIES.
It seemed like each week there was another hurdle to pass, but as each one was over come, we get stronger and stronger. Learn more and KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, and we take back our power.
Keep on trucking and learning and growing, and remember it is a JOURNEY not a destination. (((hugs))) and God bless.
Oxy, my 2007 was last month when after years of praying, writing, walking, crying, depression, and heart surgery I was thankfully guided to this website. I had been trying to get over the anger, resentment, and utter confusion of what happened. This person was pure evil, but I kept trying to change him and help him only to be destroyed. I suffered for a long time with that because I didn’t know the truth of what he really was, so I couldn’t heal. God and my guardian angel (my beloved grandmother) helped me to start the real recovery from what the ex spath turned me into because I was literally told in a vision to look up the word “sociopath”. I was FLOORED, shocked, and SO relieved that finally after searching for answers for so long that I now had a real starting point for healing. That one word lead me to lovefraud and here is where I can feel human again, little by little.
I do actually feel healthier since being on this website, not just emotionally but physically, too….er, despite my holiday weight gain.
Thank you Oxy, because reading your posts early on is what TRULY kick-started my healing. You are very wise and strong. Discovering what you have gone through in your comments I have been able to piece together a life that I don’t think I could have endured. What you went through is an inspiration to people like me that any problem can be overcome by knowledge, acceptance, change, and faith.
Thank you Woundlicker…we CAN over come any situation. One of the things that helped me the most was reading Dr. Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s search for meaning” He wrote this after spending 4 years in a Nazi concentration camp and losing everything in his world except his life (wife, manuscript he had written but not yet published, home, friends, family….Everything) and yet, he found meaning in being in the concentration camp even after all that. It inspired me that no matter what I have lost it is not as bad as it could have been, and in this world there are worse things than what I’ve had to endure so I need to FIND MEANING in what has happened.
I’m no stronger than any other person here at lovefraud…we all have more strength than we realize, but we need to be shown some times that we have this strength. It is amazing just HOW STRONG we really are.
I’m glad you are here at LoveFraud Woundllicker, and glad that you are on the healing road….just keep one foot in front of another and you will succeed. I can promise that, even if sometimes you stumble. (((hugs))) and my prayers for you.
I firmly believe that inflammation is linked to all sorts of disorders and diseases that may otherwise seem disconnected. There is a reason “inflammation” is in the news — a lot of new research has been done about this. To be sure, we have all been through the wringer with regard to stress. I think a lot of the physical damage can be reversed, but it also depends how long it’s been going on, and maybe also how old we are. While it may be very difficult to avoid stress entirely if we have spaths in our lives (whether in a relationship, being stalked by them, having to raise kids with them, in court battles with them, being financially devastated by them, physical scars from abuse, etc.) — I do think there are some very real things we can all do, to help ourselves heal and recover.
It is a gift to ourselves to undertake this healing. I believe it is what we are supposed to do, or why we are here. Some of the healing takes place in our mind.
But I believe there are also some practical things we can deliberately and consciously do, to re-build our damaged bodies. The approaches are personal and individual. For me, I have found some of these things to help: spend time out in nature, soaking up vitamin D (and taking a vitamin D supplement); making music; practicing EFT, studying nutrition and feeding myself only “real food” (no processed food) which I make myself; lifting weights to build strength and flexibility; go to bed early every night, no matter what, in a very dark room, and get my 8.5 hours of sleep. I absolutely insist on my sleep!
So… while it is about stress, it’s not ALL about stress, as though we might think, “well, of COURSE I’m stressed!!! Sigh. Not that I can do much about that…” because I think there are other things we can do, and doing nice things to take care of ourselves helps our stress, helps our inflammation, helps our healing. Be compassionate towards YOU.
This is a great blog topic. Your responses are like soaking in an oasis 🙂
20 years!!!! Great post, and absolutely true!!!! Taking care of ourselves is vital to recovery…physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. It is important that we recognize that decreasing our stress, doing healthy things for ourselves and that includes eating right, sleeping right, exercising and so on. ALL important to our well being! Good job!
I second 20years comments.
I can certainly second that negative interactions lead to inflammation, as I suffered with Shingles as a result of my x-spath’s hot and cold treatment of me.