Stress Set Point In The Emergency Danger Zone

This is the continuation in a series on allostatic load.  In part 3, we discussed being disconnected from allostatic load and stress. 

If you haven't seen Part 3, go there first.

In Part 4, we will be discussing the stress set point in the emergency danger zone.

So what can you do if your set point has entered the emergency danger zone?

The first thing is to recognize it.  You can't keep running from the body and the mind.  You can't keep pushing your body past its limits.  You can't keep running from your past even if it is so horrible and painful to see.  Okay, you can keep running, but sooner or later, it will take you down to your knees and trust me, it gets much harder to come back.  I speak from experience on this.

In the early stages of recovering your set point and reducing allostatic load, you may need to take drastic measures for your own survival.  This may include medications and life saving procedures, but you must be careful that these do not become a crutch that is misinterpreted and misrepresented as healing.  It is far too easy to do this in your mind.  If you stay in this mode, it will not go easy for you in the physical side of your mind and body.

Support and stress reduction activities can be helpful, but they will only take you so far if you ignore what else is going on underneath.  Yoga, QiGong, and other movement activities can also help, but again, you need to go to the root cause.  It requires traveling into the pain and difficulty, not just treating the surface.

Even massage and bodywork of different flavors can help you to begin the process of balancing out and resetting the set point of your life.  Keep in mind though, these things can become the healing crutch rather than the healing.  They may often be good for you, but they can become a routine that keeps you at arms length from that which is raising the alarms within your body.

The best thing you can do to help reduce the allostatic load is by going in and learning to connect with your body.  Through the felt-sense, breathwork, and movement connected together with someone who is trained, you can begin to feel your body deep within.  You can begin to go into the outer edges of what is comfortable, thereby training your mind and body to increase your resilience and take back the power of what is draining your life.

This is not just a mind exercise.  It needs to happen at the cellular level to bring about true change in a body.  If you don't engage the body and nervous system at a cellular level, you're just putting a band-aid on a gushing wound, hoping it will stop the bleeding.

Sometimes this process is not easy in the beginning, but it is like an Olympic athlete training for the Olympics.  They don't start out on day one being able to run 25 miles.  They work their way up to it and often through the process, there is muscle discomfort and pain.  If they keep training and allowing for recovering, their muscles and body will be ready to do more and to take on more.

The same goes for healing your life and dropping the allostatic load you are under.  This is not pie-in-the-sky thinking.  It has been proven many times over with those that know how to take someone in and guide them through the process of waking up.  The important point though is that you have to go through the process to wake up and stop disconnecting from your life.  Anything short of that pushes the set point further and further toward the danger zone, past the point of no return.

The process I've gone through with Dr. Paul Canali of Evolutionary Healing Institute in Miami is called Unified Therapy.  In this process, he draws on the core truths of many modalities and then applies them at the right time.  He constantly keeps the person engaged through the process and keeps them feeling in their body.  When you are feeling in the body, you are in control, but when you have disconnected and are not feeling, that is when you're heading for the cliff.

It sounds so simple and yet complex to go through this, but I know for a fact that many people, including myself, have dropped the allostatic load in their lives.  It isn't just a one time moment of healing.  As you go through the process you learn to become more aware --  and the more aware you become, the more life shifts so that you can adapt better to stress, heal your life, and keep yourself from maladaptive problem solving.

Make sure you check out the next part in this 5 part series.  

 Part 5 is "The Best Part Of Dealing With Stress"

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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If You Don't Deal With Stress

This is the continuation of a series on allostatic load.  In part 1, there are notes from a video discussion with Dr. Donald Bosch of the Headington Institute on allostatic load.  He does a very good job of explaining what allostatic load and allostasis are.

I really enjoy how he explains allostatic load.

If you have not seen Part 1, go there first.

I have always said that if you don't deal with stress, stress will deal with you.  We all will probably shake our heads and agree, but that's about as far as we take it.  We don't fully understand and comprehend what that means.  We are disconnected from what it means, in many ways.  However, I keep attempting to write about this so others can begin to understand it more.  I realize it is a complex subject that tends to sail right by, but it is important.

I speak from my own experience and that of what I have learned from Dr. Paul Canali of Evolutionary Healing Institute.  He understands this far better than I do , but I have experienced it firsthand in many ways.

Trauma can be simple everyday stuff...

In the video from part 1, Dr. Bosch talks about the set point and how the further we veer out of allostatic load, the further this set point gets moved.  It does not have to be trauma or child abuse or war or other means to cause this set point to shift.  It can be as simple as office work stress, caring for others, or just dealing with life when you were not taught great skills in adapting to stress that comes along.

We all like to think that we've got life by the horns and we are in control.  We all like to think that if we have a beer or a glass of wine that we've relaxed and the stress has all vanished.  We all like to think that if we manage to squeeze in a day off here and there or maybe a few days for a vacation once every couple of years that we're in charge of the stress in our life.  "We're handling it" is what we tell ourselves.

Daily buildup of stress is as harmful...

However, this could not be further from the truth.  The daily build up of stress is just as harmful as if we encountered some traumatic event in our life.  If we don't discharge that, it finds a home in our mind and body.  It moves the set point just a little further away from homeostasis.  Our body ends up staying in that constant state of alertness ready to handle what is bombarding us in life.  We have ended up pushing our allostatic load to the point where it is getting so far into the danger zone that turning back gets more difficult with each passing moment.

It happens before you know it.  It takes place in the blink of an eye.  It is not like you wake up one day and go, wow - I've pushed my set point way too far.  Okay, it can happen that way but more often than not, it goes unnoticed.  It goes undetected until something in our life happens that tries to wake us up.

In the meantime, we maybe experience things like headaches and muscle pains.  Sometimes we find out in a routine doctor visit that our blood pressure is high or our pulse rate stays at a constant high rate instead of dropping down into rest and repair mode.

We may experience fatigue, sleeplessness and nervous stomachs, acid reflux or other conditions.  Chronic health issues may set in and begin to become more pronounced.  We may encounter all kinds of health conditions as issues progress.

In worst case situations, we may go into Conversion Disorder like I did or experience health situations that are life and death.  It varies by person and it depends upon so many factors.  I'm not trying to say that there are not other underlying factors in the exhibition of illness and pain, but I am saying that allostatic load is the cart pushing the horse over the cliff.

Make sure you check out the next part in this 5 part series.  

 Part 3 is "Disconnected From Allostatic Load & Stress"

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Allostatic Load with Dr Don Bosch

In this video, Dr. Don Bosch talks about Allostatic Load and Allostasis.  He is the Senior Advisor and Director of Risk Environment Psychology at the Headington, Institute.

For more information, visit their website at  www.headington-institute.org

This is part 1 of a 5 part series where we will be discussing Allostatic Load and what I've learned in my own life.  I have gone through work with Dr. Paul Canali called Unified Therapy that has helped me deal with Allostatic Load.

Notes From The Video

• Allostasis is achieving stability in the midst of change.
• Researchers helpful on Allostasis 
• Bruce McEwen - Rockefeller University
• Teresa Seeman - UCLA
•  Allostasis is closely related to Homeostasis
• Homeostasis keeps our body within very narrow limits that allows us to survive.
• Body Temperature Example:  If our body is too hot, we sweat to cool down.  If our body is too cold, blood gets pulled back into our vital organs to keep us functioning.  The set point of our body temperature does not change.  If it varies too much, we are in serious danger.
• Allostasis is similar to homeostasis
• It is our response to some challenge outside or inside ourselves.
• Our response is a way to get us ready to handle the challenge.
• With allostasis we can respond and the set point can change over time.
• When the set point changes, it becomes allostatic load.
• Dangerous for us in the long run.
• Flight or fight response initiated by the amygdala
•  Danger is sensed and the amygdala initiates a major response in the brain and body to prepare for the action.
• Things like blood pressure and heart rate increase to get blood into our muscles to be ready for action.
• Breathing increases to get more oxygen into our cells and body.
• The immune system goes into emergency mode to flood our body with proinflamatory substances which enable us to respond to infection or injury immediately.
• Blood sugar, insulin and cholesterol all go up in the bloodstream to provide us energy to respond
• Enables us to survive the flight or fight and even chronic stress
• Problem is when it does not turn off and we get stuck in this state of allostatic load.
• When we are stuck in allostatic load
• We are not aware of it.
• You may be cold and freezing to death but in allostatic load, you don't necessarily know you are there.
• This is where the risk lies.
•  It is very easy for us to get into allostatic load, no matter what your job is or where you are or what situations you may be experiencing life.
• We need to find a way to turn it off.
• We need to find a way to be aware of it.
• Resiliency is anything that helps us turn allostatic load off
• Things that help us manage allostatic load
• Social Support
• Physical Exercise
• Sense of meaning and purpose
• Allostatic load in the long run is dangerous

Make sure you check out the next part in this 5 part series.  

 Part 2 is "If You Don't Deal With Stress"

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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