Resilience - Building your emotional immunity in a pandemic

Stress is inevitable in life. Even in our pre –pandemic life - it’s the weather, the news, our job, the boss, friends or an influx of emails can trigger our system of stress . We may not wholly conscious of it, in fact beneath all conscious thought, our body starts to react.

I have recently studied the response of the nervous system to stress. There is so much information available via books, Vlogs, news and articles on our nervous systems response to stress. One thing that became clear to me – the body is biologically created for our survival and that is it’s sole purpose. We are primed for survival. This inclination to be acutely responsive to stress is in our body – and keeps us oriented to the environment. This is what we do!

You may be lucky to have had a “normal upbringing” or unlucky to have had a “traumatic upbringing”, then this “customises” your automatic response to stress and builds our foundational leaning towards life’s experiences. This is a familiar energy – and it’s what our subconscious steers us towards when we experience other adverse situations

So, what are your innate patterns of handling stress? How did you manage stress when you were growing up? How did your parents? How are you accessing the environment – the news, the disease, kids at home, work disrupted, travel at a halt, the relationships, - is it confrontational, in denial or ‘doing nothing?

If you see an accident on an highway, you would get stressed but take a moment to breathe and get back into homeostatis before moving on. First, we move out of the survival mode –which is this stored stress and then we begin to respond clearly. But what if the stress is prolonged? How do we steer ourselves with our feelings exhausted?

Your body is smart - it will heal itself but can’t stay resilient in a constant state of stress. It needs to rest. So, then we have to consciously shift gears. System deregulation causes long term health issues, as energy meant for creation and thriving is now solely focusing on survival. So, how will you steer your body today - in these unprecedented times? If your inclination was to get stressed easily, if your emotional body was not resilient, this will be an opportunity for you to shift those emotional gears.

What needs to happen to bring down stress in our body is a deep sense of connection and trust with itself. Safety – a feeling of trust – is important and that takes time. You don’t poke a system that is used to protecting itself. First, approach and let it be. Build safety over time before you can deactivate the system. Let the system do what it needs to do before it comes to a calm. That is how the danger response retracts. Imagine, poking a Turtle, it will withdraw. So, we first start with the small moves. We start with the small things :

Again, I will emphasise - Regulating our body is critical and not easy. We have to reprogram. This takes work! I can’t emphasise it enough – it takes work and practice. Imagine you are learning to teach your body to walk all over again? Or imagine you are learning a new language? You are rewiring the system and when you are determined to do it - You start with the basics.

1. Feel your emotions. Repressed emotions engulfs us. They reside like energy blocks in our system. If you are grieving, grieve. If you want to cry, cry. Tears can be healing

2. You might be angry – allow yourself to acknowledge that. Feel it’s effect in your body. De clench the jaw, the stiff ness in the shoulder, etc. We need to calm the system. Don’t just talk about it – do the actual physical stuff

3. Talk kindly to your body – that way we would to a small terrorized animal. Be mindful of where you are putting stress on yourself by negative self talk.

4. Ground yourself – Use your body to bring your senses back to yourself. Feel your feet on the ground, your sensations in the room, the sounds and the smells. ( have your favourite flowers in the room, aromatherapy oils, music etc) I use a cup of peppermint tea!

5. Simple meditations and mindfulness exercises.

There are so many choices these days. Tune in to understand what works with your emotional body.

But the biggest block maybe that we don’t see the choices and we don’t do the practice. Ask yourself – What is the worst that will happen if you do any of the above? Many of us fear the healing process. Because healing is painful, lonely, non linear, messy and unpredictable. But, what else you got? Understand that, if you are not doing anything about the drama in your life, you are experiencing some payoff - and that payoff is benefitting you in some way. Do you use the drama of stress - to hide your biggest fear?

If you are not willing to pay the price of emotional dysregulation, ask yourself what is the cost of constant stress? You are taking the stress into all your activities and the Universe is responding to that. So, hopefully, the cost is higher than the payoff - and you can start with the basic moves of healing.

Partnering with a life coach is a powerful step - someone who will give you the assistance to help you grow and strengthen those muscles of emotional regulation.