4 Powerful Lessons Chronic Stress Taught Me About Healing and Awakening My True Self

Everything in our lives, including chronic stress, can be a portal to awakening our true nature and bringing us a deeper sense of vitality, connection, and purpose.

I learned these lessons the hard way after going through a very challenging time in my life that gave me an up close and personal taste of what it felt like to experience profound stress and the impact on my physical and emotional health.

Like many people, for most of my life, I thought it was normal to feel anxious and stressed.

I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the chronic tension headaches, aura-filled migraines, hormone imbalances, gut issues, restless nights, irritability, and the need to unwind with an occasional drink were all symptoms that I was experiencing the effects of chronic stress.

All of these stress-related symptoms that I had most of my adult life improved a lot when I started my regular meditation practice over ten years ago. Meditation became like brushing my teeth, and I rarely missed a day. I settled into a false sense of confidence that I was resilient enough to handle the stressful seasons in my life. The article, With So Many Choices, What’s The Best Meditation Practice For Me?, will give you tips and resources, including a link to “A Beginner’s Guide To Meditation” if you need some inspiration to start or get back on track with a simple practice.

Then, as the Universe would have it, I needed to learn yet more intimate lessons about chronic stress and, ultimately, my SELF. These lessons were significant and honestly surprising because I, as a meditation teacher who meditated every day, could get to a place where the effects of stress forced me to PAUSE my entire life, which was profoundly humbling.

In my particular case, the chronic stress symptoms manifested with a whole cluster of new mystery physical and emotional symptoms that were both confusing and frightening to me.

These symptoms arose after spending over a year caring for my aging parents and other compounding stressors. Trying to live up to societal expectations of what it meant to be a good woman added to this stress. The article Why Awakening Women Are Ditching Their Conditioning To Say Hello To Their Souls sheds light on this and what the research says about the impact on women’s health.

Honestly, watching the depth of my parent’s suffering and the death of my mom in a very traumatic way was too much for my body and brain to weather, even with my regular meditation habit.

I felt caught in a storm in the vast ocean with angry skies and huge swells. My sole focus was on survival, and I felt much of my life fade away as I navigated the rough seas that began to take their toll on my boat. I felt like I was hanging on for dear life, and with such violent weather and so much out of my control, I often felt like I didn’t know if I was meant to survive.

But the storm did begin to subside, and I could see the sun starting to peak through the slowly fading dark skies. What a welcome relief!

After my mom died, I was so ready to jump right back into my life that I didn’t pause to deal with the effects that the accumulation of the stressors had on me. The storm had caused some damage, and I didn’t realize how much until I threw myself back into my life, ready to put the past and struggles behind me.

I ignored the first clues that my vessel needed repair, and this subtle diminishment of my life force energy evolved into a full-blown shutdown. With barely enough energy to get off the couch and many disturbing and confusing symptoms, I had no choice but to turn my attention to repairing and restoring my health and ultimately learning the lessons that would enable me to create meaning out of the storm.

I learned the following 4 lessons about chronic stress:

1. Stress isn’t the problem, but getting STUCK is.

And that’s precisely what happened to me. My body and brain had been stuck in fight or flight for too long and then ultimately began to shut down for the survival of the organism- which just happened to be me.

While amid a profoundly stressful time, I didn’t create enough space in my life to deal with the effects that the many stressors were having on my body.

I can now see more clearly that I needed more intentional practices to shift out of fight-or-flight and into the rest and restore state in my body. While my meditation practices were a lifeline, they weren’t enough to counterbalance the constant feeling of threat that my body was under.

I had been SO focused on external stressors that I ignored one of my core teachings that I share with others in meditation workshops.

2. Deal with the effects of chronic stress on our bodies so we’re better able to deal with stressors.

I hadn’t paused to deal with the effects of stress, and so my body did it for me by withdrawing my life force energy and producing other weird symptoms.

I knew that when our nervous system isn’t regulated, it creates endless physical and mental health problems. But I guess I had to understand what that meant by living it and how far-reaching the symptoms could be!

After much digging into the current research and how to create healing states in our bodies, I learned that at the root of many chronic symptoms and illnesses is the effect that being chronically STUCK in a state of stress has on us. The article Top 10 Signs of a Dysregulated Nervous System provides a helpful list to assess whether you’re experiencing nervous system dysregulation.

But the empowering part of the story is that our bodies and brains will heal when we create inner alignment and the conditions for healing. And when they do, we reclaim our lives from many stress-related issues that impact our lives in small and big ways.

3. We heal by creating physical and spiritual inner alignment.

The article the 4 Elements For True Self-Self-Discovey: The Path To Becoming You describes a holistic framework that integrates our bodies, minds and souls. I started with the first element, focusing on self-regulation with intentional breathing, limbic system regulation and vagus nerve toning to create an inner healing environment.

In addition to physical homeostasis at the mitochondria cellular level, I knew I needed to achieve spiritual homeostasis. The Universe was giving me the opportunity to walk the talk as a guide for spiritual beings having stressful human experiences.

As my life force energy slowly returned, and the mystery symptoms began to subside, I had the energy to mine for the gold of the deeper lessons I was meant to learn – my soul lessons.

The soul is the organ of meaning, and this time of suffering was intended to trigger further spiritual and personal growth. One of the big ones was that I knew how precious my life force energy was and how important it would be to make conscious choices about how I would spend it. What was my life and life force energy in service of?

4. Allow the storm to change us and integrate the soul lessons from chronic stress into our lives.

The common thread I noticed in all the research and stories about healing from physical and emotional health problems is that beyond the cellular repair that needs to happen, we are being called to become different people, which means being more of our true selves and less influenced by our conditioned, fearful personalities and histories.

Evolving arises when we allow the energy of our soul or higher self to propel us to a higher level of consciousness with greater love and wisdom.

Many folks get stuck because they can’t visualize their true selves or know the steps to become them.

For me, that was about seeing clearly how my Enneagram type 9 people-pleasing, conflict-avoidant personality led to the suppression of too much emotion, including anger, and this, combined with other personality traits, got me into a nervous system dysregulation problem.

I know I’m not the same person who walked into the storm, and while I’m glad this storm is over, I’m grateful for the lessons learned from chronic stress and the freedom I now feel to be one step closer to my true nature with greater inner peace, well-being and joy.

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