Everyone has different strategies for dealing with stress. Some people magnify it to create an urgent response while others repress it, pretending it’s not there. Both are survival strategies that we formed as children to help us navigate life. These strategies are often called personality traits.
And what seemed to work well for us when we were little, we typically carry with us for the rest of our lives. Even when it stops working.
Of course, we can change our strategy. But it’s not easy. It takes awareness and conscious effort and repetition to learn a new and better strategy that fits our adult lives. This is often referred to as neural rewiring, but it’s really just about learning a new life strategy. How to better cope with stress, how to better take care of ourselves, how to say no, how to stop pushing, how to get more rest….
Our strategy for dealing with stress is the focus on this blog post because stress directly impacts gut function. And determines how fast we heal. When we’re stressed the body puts digestion and detox on the back burner to prioritize survival. In this light it makes sense why our body is not prioritizing healing. Because survival is more important.
And if you are someone who represses their stress, you are still affected by it physically, just without being aware of it.
This can be solved by first bringing awareness to our strategy of dealing with stress. Knowing that it is there is a huge first step.
Telling yourself that you don’t experience a lot of stress (maybe a little bit of anxiety) can be comforting psychologically. It can make you feel more in control or stronger. More socially acceptable.
But repressed stress, over time can cause accumulated tension in the body in the form of tight muscles, contracted joints, shallow breathing, low stomach acid and constricted blood and lymph flow.
It can cause low cellular energy and adrenal burn out. The body simply does not have the resources to heal. Because of this build up in the body, repressed stress can cause more damage than stress that’s felt and released. To repress your stress you have to contract your body further which contributes to the list of stress symptoms above.
Repressing stress can be a dangerous and toxic pattern if it is extreme and goes on for too long.
How do you know if you are a stress repressor?
There are many ways of measuring the effects of stress in the body. I will discuss my favorites in this post.
My clients self report their stress levels on the health history intake form they fill out before we first meet.
Many report stress and tension but others don’t. Most people with chronic digestive issues experience some sort of stress, be it psychological, emotional or physical. If they didn’t the body would most likely heal itself like it was designed to do.
People who have trouble healing believe that there is something wrong with their body or that they are broken or hopeless. But in most cases the body is doing what it thinks best. It puts most of its energy toward dealing with this stress, in the form of blood sugar deregulation, inflammation, detoxing toxins, killing pathogens and responding to emotional distress signals by pumping out cortisol.
Understanding that your body is stressed and prioritizing survival over healing is the first step to overcoming healing blocks.
Then we have to identify the stressors. Dietary. Lifestyle. Psychological. Emotional.
I do this through testing. The GI Map and SIBO breath test look for pathogenic overgrowths, poor digestion, inflammation, gluten sensitivity, poor motility, low stomach acid, low immunity, poor detox and bacterial diversity.
I use another test to measure stress levels in the body by looking at mineral levels and heavy metal toxicity. The test is called the hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA) and has been instrumental is show my unstressed clients how stressed they really are.
Shining a light on hidden stressors and subconscious patterns using objective data (minerals never lie) gives my clients the opportunity to examine their life deeper for causes of stress. With my help of course.
Minerals are depleted with stress. So provide a 3 month view of the body’s stress patterns. A diet that lacks minerals can also be to blame. Or poor mineral absorption due to low stomach acid. These are also stressors on the body that will increase mental and emotional stress or poor stress resilience (you have a hard time dealing with stress).
I consider my job to be helping people remove the obstacles to healing so the body can take over and repair.
No one else can heal you. Supplements can help but they won’t heal you. The only thing that heals you is your body and it needs to feel safe enough to heal.
We do this by removing stressors one by one so healing is possible at the cellular level.
If we don’t have enough minerals to detox or produce energy, we are going to be depleted and burned out. And the best we can hope for in this state is not to get worse.
The HTMA test measures resiliency at the deepest levels so we can address mitochondrial, adrenal, thyroid, blood sugar and immunity on a cellular and metabolic level.
This is going deep into root cause solutions.
There is also a mindset aspect to mineral patterns. And provides revelations to people who have a strategy of denying or repressing their feeling or patterns.
This repression is affecting the nervous system at some level as we hold our stress down deep inside.
The HTMA test catching thyroid dysfunction at a cellular level and tells us if it needs more iodine or selenium to function better. Thyroid has a big influence on weight, mood, bowel movements, body temperature and a slow thyroid is a root cause for SIBO by slowing down motility.
We also learn from HTMA results, which heavy metal are disrupting thyroid function or how well the body detoxed.
And it shows the effects of diet and stress on blood sugar.
If you are curious about how stressed or depleted your body is, this will provide a lot of information. And lots of material for self reflection (which is the most healing thing you can do for yourself).
Building resilience comes from awareness of what is blocking it. And of course you can support your mineral to start increasing energy and cellular function.
This whole picture view of your body is priceless in my opinion for those who are ready to really look at themselves.
How to run an HTMA test
I have built an HTMA test into both of my coaching packages and also offer it as a stand alone test. Get in touch for pricing for that.
My 4 month coaching package includes basic gut tests (GI Map and SIBO breath test) to get a gut health baseline and a hair mineral test to measure resilience and see what is supporting or stressing the gut.
To do the HTMA test you have to have hair that is free of hair dye or chemical processes for 4 to 8 weeks. That means growing out any chemical processing that was done on your hair.
In the program not only do we understand what’s going on in the gut better but come up with a strategy to the systems that help heal it ( nervous system, immune system, adrenals, mitochondria, stomach acid, etc.)
The HTMA test can determine if your system is in flight or flight mode (go! go! go!) or exhaustion and collapse (can’t seem to get going).
If you get anything out of this post, I hope you understand that healing can’t happen in a stress state or burn out.
Awareness about where you are at is the first step.
If this resonates and you want to understand your body better, and how everything is connected send an e-mail to angelaprivin@yahoo.com with your questions. Or check out my programs here.
If you find yourself wanting to recover more than anything but constantly doubting or dragging your feet, know that this is probably a childhood strategy developed when you were very young. What worked for you then may not be working for you now.
Things that worked for us when we were little could be hurting us or stressing us out now.
This is not your fault. We are designed to run our lives through subconscious programs. And changing these are often difficult and uncomfortable but also doable and incredibly liberating.
As health coach, that’s what I help people do. Through these blog posts or through one on one work.
Life-changing awareness of your patterns, strategies and subconscious stressors could change your life and give you real power.
While repression only makes it worse.
Good candidates for my programs experience these stressors…
Trouble with consistency around a protocol or diet.
Micromanaging and stressing about every aspect of healing/protocol.
Not prioritizing health over work, social life, appearance, comfort.
Jumping around to new diets, supplements, protocols when results aren’t instant.
Refusing to make uncomfortable changes or spend money on yourself.
Believing nothing will work, but still trying because you can’t live like this.
Overwhelmed with one or more of these: anxiety, distrust, scarcity, low worth, resentment, self sabotage, control, perfectionism or despair.
Angela Privin is proof that IBS is NOT an incurable disease, but a cry for help from a gut out of balance. When the body AND mind are complaining, it’s an opportunity to examine what’s not working and change it. After solving her own IBS mystery almost two decades ago, Angela became as a health coach to help others. Angela uses root cause medicine protocols personalized to the individual to solve each IBS mystery. Her tools are lab testing, dietary changes, supplementation, subconscious mind work and nervous system rebalancing . Learn more here.