By Ox Drover
Since I have been in the medical profession for many years as a Registered Nurse Practitioner (now retired) I have been interested in the reactions our bodies and our minds have from stress.
Stress is a contributing factor to poor health and decreased immune response. Increases in the frequency of infection for individuals with a high level of stressful events in their lives have been well researched by many researchers. It is also well proven that our thinking and ideal mental responses are also diminished by high levels of stress.
Stress is not just the negative things that happen to us, but according to researchers Holmes and Rahe, stress is the result of “life events.”
I have been aware of this and have “charted” my high stress levels throughout most of my adult life using the “Holmes & Rahe Stress Scale” of “life events.”
Holmes and Rahe studied the effects of stress on humans (both positive stress/change and negative stress/change) and came up with a way to measure the intensity of stress. A score at or above 300 on their scale within a three-year period gave a person a higher than average chance of having illness or an accident happen to them. (Which of course adds even more stress to the person.)
The “take home lesson” from their scale of intensity of stress is that when life is throwing us stressful situations we cannot control, we need to keep the level of changes we voluntarily make at a minimum.
Since my life seems to have been a continual cycle of huge stresses, many of which have not been under my control, I have consciously tried to keep the voluntary contributions to this stress level at a minimum. For years, though, I was actually not doing a very good job, as I was still engaging in interactions with the psychopaths and their dupes. Recently, though, after going NC with the Ps and their dupes, I thought I was doing a pretty good job here lately, and I actually was.
Yesterday, however, after several peaceful, low stress months, I encountered my mother as my son and I were coming out of a checkout line in a store. There was a short “scene” in which I was “triggered” and angered. Wounds were ripped open. I was highly and instantly stressed! Shot full of adrenaline.
I came home, had a pity party, and ranted some and went to sleep. When I woke up this morning, I felt much better emotionally, and was back on a “level road.” Physically, though, I felt wrung out, like I had dug ditches with a shovel all day yesterday and was still so residually tired, even after a good night’s sleep, that I was just needing a day of rest.
This feeling lead me to an “ah ha” moment, when I realized that I hadn’t had a big adrenaline rush in quite some time. I had been living in a peaceful and pretty calm state of mind, fear was low, and my body had not been having to deal with high stress levels either internally or externally.
Though I am entirely convinced that it will take several more years of consistent peace, low anxiety, and little change, for me to completely recover from the effects of the high stress levels for such long periods of time, I do realize I have come a long ways in living a life of peace and calm.
When I was having adrenaline rushes almost on a daily, or even hourly, basis during the “crisis” mode, never coming down from that adrenaline rush, I didn’t know how it felt when I did come down. I saw the way I felt (pretty bad) as “normal.” (Because it was the “usual” state.)
Now that I have lived in peaceful circumstances long enough that I haven’t been under a continual surge of stress hormones for a while (literally enough of them to make my body shape change), I can easily tell what I feel physically and mentally today is a response to what happened yesterday.
My body shuttled the blood to my muscles (in a fight or flight scenario) and used up all the glucose stored in my liver to feed them. So I really AM tired, not just “feeling” tired. So, today I rest, exercise a bit, but not too much, and recover my physical normalcy. I will continue to try to keep changes of any kind at a minimum, and not make any voluntary significant changes in my life. I will keep my environment as calm and peaceful as I possibly can.
The damage done to my immune system and to my body and psyche from years of continual bombardment from stress hormones will take years to resolve (if it ever does completely resolve), but it is important that I do my part to keep stressors at a low level. No Contact is the biggest tool in my “tool belt” to keep stress at a lower level. Avoiding any situations and persons that irritate me or add to my stress level is another good tool.
Doing positive things for myself, pampering myself, are more great tools in my belt. Being aware that I need to rest physically (I acknowledge that I am somewhat a workaholic) is also very important. My dishes are still in the sink—the world has not come to an end! I’ll do them when I feel like doing them—today, tomorrow, who cares?
Today I will focus in the good things in my life—the love of my sons, and the positive aspects of my world.
two years. thought he was the love of my life.
I kept losing horrible amounts of weight- even when I was with him– with no reason cuz I was eating well. I think my body was tryng to tell me something.
Akitameg: I was with the S/P for 18 months, and he kept up the “love of my life” charade for almost the entire time.
When I realized intellectually what I was dealing with, I was about three months out of the so-called relationship. (I did a lot of reading to get to that point.) I started to work on setting things to rights with people I had wronged: In that context, I went to Social Services to tell them that I thought their original suspicions about his behavior with his children were in fact correct. I was very concerned about acting in integrity and correcting mistakes I had made. And in that context, I explained what I had found out about the man.
I remember a social worker giving me a funny look and saying, “What are you doing about yourself?” I was feeling empowered in my actions to right the wrongs, and I really didn’t understand her. Now I believe she knew that I was just in the early stages of recognizing what I’d been dealing with, and the damage wasn’t yet apparent.
I want to encourage you to consider that you’ve been in the real emotional and psychological equivalent of a bad car accident. Be gentle with yourself. Yes, this is a shock on the psychical level, and few people understand it that way.
First of all, reassure yourself that THEY CAN FOOL ANYONE! This is not about you missing obvious clues. Right now, embrace your incredible strength in just getting away from him, and tell yourself how amazingly smart you are to have figured out this much this quickly.
Thank YOu soo much Rune. I needed that.
akitameg,
To follow up on Rune’s comment, you are wounded and need to recover. I know it probably won’t do any good right now to tell you not to dwell on the past more than you have to, but the most important thing in your life right now is getting well.
You have every reason to feel awful. You’ve been through an experience that has sapped your spirit and physical health. If, as Rune said, you’d been in a accident, the first thing you’d do would be to inventory yourself to see where you’re injured. That’s a good thing to do right now.
How does your body feel? What is your emotional condition? Are you in pain?
Right-now awareness is going to help to re-ground you so you can start healing. If you’re like the rest of us, the answers are probably going to be that you feel like you’ve got all kinds of physical symptoms, you ‘re in emotional pain that doesn’t stop, you’re vacillating between anger and tears, and you’re afraid that you’ve permanently lost a lot of important things like the ability to love or trust again.
I feel for you. We all do.
There are a lot of us here that can tell you that you will get better. Really.
But right now, as Rune said, take care of yourself. Whatever your circumstances are, look for ways to be kind to yourself. You need to replenish those “someone cares about me” reserves. (If you are feeling like an idiot and not sure that you deserve to be cared about, take time out from beating yourself up to comfort and believe in yourself whenever you can. It will pay off.)
You’ve had an encounter with a bad, bad person. But you’re still you, and your going to come out of this surprisingly well. You’ll see.
Kathy
Thank you Kathleen. I left you a post on the other blog about the Warcraft guy in your office– sounds JUST like mine Hope I did not go overboard. Just tired of good people being victimized by these “trust bandits”– hey– that was good– did I come up with that?
Thanks for your concern, akitameg,
I’m working on my self-protective samurai thing, and he working at being more dependable. It’s working out.
Dear Akitameg,
I’m so sorry for all that you have been through and I think that many of us can relate to one degree or another with the physical ills, stress effects, that come from a continual high dose of stress hormones.
One analogy I can come up with is the guy who drinks a fifth of booze a day. Since booze is poison, the man’s body has to “adjust” in order to live with that much poison in it. It eventually does adjust but at a COST in terms of health, and the liver starts to fail, etc. etc. and as each organ system starts to fail to one degree or another, it effects the next organ system that depends on the first, and so on.
Stress hormones, while “good” in a situation where we are encountering a life and death situation and we NEED them in order to fight or flee, if we get them in high doses EVERYDAY they start to act like POISON to our systems. So the body, in order to survive these poisons, starts to adjust but it isn’t a healthy adjustment and one of the things that happens is that our immune system starts to break down and not be able to protect us as well from a constant battering from viruses and bacteria, so we get sick, and that puts more stress on the body and so on.
I have always had a “waist” even if I was somewhat overweight. But research has shown that stress puts fat on in the MID SECTION of the body, and with this high stress I ended up shaped like a beach ball with legs. My son C who had never had a “gut” like many men, had put on quite a bit of fat, ALL in his mid section.
Now that our stress levels are down, I am again getting a “waist” even though I have not lost any weight. He is losing weight AND his “belly” is gone almost completely and more back to his normal shape. He is still eating like a horse (my household grocery consumption has doubled since he came home to live LOL) But in the past he always DID eat like a horse and not gain weight.
He has done much healing during the year and a half he was living out of state, but I can also see that he still has quite a ways to go. His sleep patterns are still irratic and he has the occasional migraine head ache. He is hypervigilent, though that has decreased down to a more manageable level since his return home and feels safer and more supported living here with me and his good brother.
The “trust bandits” term I have heard referred to before, but that doesn’t mean that you didn’t “come up with it” on your own. Great minds run in the same ditch! LOL
IN a way I think of the P-experience like a giant jig-saw puzzle, and each of us contributes our experiences to the picture. The more people we have working on the puzzle, the faster we can see the “picture”—-unfortunately, I think there are duplicate pieces mixed in, and also some from other puzzles mixed in, so we have to work together to SORT IT ALL OUT.
There are MANY things we have to come to grips with. The stress being one of them. The betrayal. Previous abuse/betrayals. Our self esteem, or lack there of. Our missing or weak bondaries. The guilt and/or shame we feel for having allowed this to go on and on and on. The anger. The rage. The wrath. The desire for revenge of our hurt. The confusion, and so on.
When we “get it” about one aspect of ourselves, we feel good about it, but then there is the NEXT hurdle to jump.
In the end, if we heal, we have to REDEFINE OURSELVES AND OUR FUTURE LIFE. We may have to “give up” some dreams we held dearly as unrealistic. Folks, at 62 years old, no matter how badly I want to be a ballet dancer, I can’t hold on to that “dream.” LOL ROTFLMAO And actually, I have held on to some dreams that were just as UN realistic as that one would be. Held on to those unrealistic dreams like superglue, couldn’t imagine happiness without them. BULL HOCKEY! We CAN have happiness within ourselves in WHATEVER STATE WE FIND OURSELVES. The Apostle St. Paul advised his flock that they should be content in whatever situation they found themselves that they could NOT change, they could accept it and STILL BE HAPPY, even if they were slaves and couldn’t get their freedom, they could still be happy and content.
I used to work with people who had severe spinal cord injuries, and/or head injuries. These injuries totally dashed any hopes and dreams these people had for themselves that required walking….some managed to reorient their dreams and live happy and good lives, others hung on to the LOSS AND GRIEF OF THOSE UNREALISTIC DREAMS and were miserable for the rest of their short lives, because invariably those that were miserable didn’t take good care of themselves, lived under a cloud, and died way before they had to.
Also family members who had “dreams” of their child’s success in this or that thing, were devestated that THEIR dreams for their kids weren’t realized. I fall into that catagory with my P-son, who had IT ALL GOING FOR HIM for a successful life, brains, brains and more brains and talent to do all kinds of things—-he just didn’t have a conscience.
After he went to prison for murder MY DREAMS FOR HIM were dashed and it took me a long time to see it, to give up on it as UNreasonable. So I GRIEVED AND TRIED TO FIX him. DUH!? Now, I have given up on that unrealistic dream that he would come home from prison on parole and acheive my dreams for him. He doesn’t want my dreams for him. LOL He never did have any intention of acheiving my dreams for him. I predicated MY happiness on HIS acheivement of my dreams for him. Talk about BAD JUDGMENT on MY PART.
I no longer hold to those dreams. I am realistic that they are not possible. And, because I no longer accept those as remotely possible if I work hard enough, I no longer focus on HIM, but on ME. Deciding what my NEW dreams for ME are. My happiness is no longer focused on others, but on my own dreams for ME. Therefore I can acheive them because I focus on NEW DREAMS THAT ARE POSSIBLE. These dreams are not “far off stars” to shoot for though, they are the small dreams of every day life, one day at a time. Sure, I have some “far off goals” but I realize they may never happen, so my happiness is not predicated upon their realization.
Happiness comes onemoment at a time, one day at a time…not in some far off future IF X HAPPENS. It is NOW, today. This minute.
thank you OxDRover. I worked with spinal cord injuries as well and he saw me do so– even accompanied me when i visited the unit on Thanksgiving/xmas. How oh how could he ruthlessly demean, belittle, ABANDON and betray– someone like us? How???
funny you said your son had migraines. I am suffering them something fierce. One side of head. Nausea–vision/ dizzy– all of it.
Ox Drover,
As always you have given good, sound and rational advice filled with truth and common sense…and that is why so many of us love you on here! You always share your experiences and knowledge to help others grow and heal. The insight of that face to face meeting must have hit you like a ton of bricks. BTW my Yahoo account has been down for over a month and I finally got this fixed!! It is 4:00am here, girl!! I shall pay for this late night tomorrow for sure. My best to you and your sons and thanks for the great article. May my computer stay running properly…I have missed you and some other fine people here. Hey, I got an email from Sandra Brown and will email you later to show you this. It is really awesome!Take care and Love and Blessings to you and your loved ones, Breach