Negative Stress And Immune System

Negative Stress And Immune System

Negative Stress And Immune System. How chronic stress, chronic fear can have a serious impact on our immune system. Why Fear is one of the biggest toxins to our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing.

Daily Stress And Immune System

Like every sort of stressful life or world challenge, the stress response can be both positive and negative. The short-term survival response is our innate way of responding to life-threatening and life challenging situations.

The fight or flight response can pivot us in an emergency situation to respond very quickly, to do things we normally wouldn’t even imagine or consider doing.

But with long-term chronic stress, we get caught in the chronic stress cycle, where our mind, and emotions can get trapped into responding to everyday situations almost as if it was a life-threatening situation.

We are physiologically designed to be resilient to certain stressors but the problem is long-term stress tends to change into chronic stress. And when we become chronically stressed our mind, body and emotions begin to be seriously compromised.

 

Chronic Fear, Chronic Stress And Immune System

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Fear is what triggers stress. So chronic fear is one way to disable us all mentally, emotionally and physically into a chronically anxious or stressed state. No wonder so many people are acting more like headless chickens, than calm, rational, compassionate human beings during the pandemic.

It is understandable that when we are faced with aspects of our own mortality or the possibility of losing our loved ones fear kick’s in. That we can quickly feel powerless. But the reality is fear is what triggers stress and anxiety. Chronic fear causes chronic stress and chronic anxiety. And chronic stress causes dis-ease.

Stress And Immune System

Stress and immune system. We all know how much long-term and chronic stress can seriously impact our health. The wide medical research that demonstrates clearly how much Chronic Stress reduces our immune system and our mental health.

But despite this, we are allowing our minds to be bombarded daily with fear-induced media and news reports. In-fact some of us are actually addicted to the news, addicted to the doom and gloom. Instead of actually, being more pro-active doing something actually helpful or productive. Instead of doing something that will help cushion our immune system from this perceived threat.

As someone who has survived and lived with chronic and serious health challenges that have impacted my health for the last 30 years. I know the challenges of being more vulnerable in society, the challenges of dealing with or facing the unknown. But the reality is ruminating over the drama, focusing on the fear, rarely help’s anyone become healthier or mentally resilient.

Time To Support Your Immune System

During our most stressful life challenges are when we should be doing what we can to support our immune system. Doing everything we can to boost a healthy immune system while reducing our anxiety and stress levels. But for some reason we are not seeing much of that in the media around us.

This is when we should be teaching our kids to be more calmer, compassionate and resourceful. A time when we all should be supporting our vulnerable and elderly to nurture more self-care. A time when we should all be making much wiser decisions to help us become more mentally, emotionally and physically resilient.

Cushioning Yourself From Crisis And Drama

Fear can easily take over your life if you let it do. It can be so easy to ruminate on the what if’s. It can be very tempting even addictive to check up on the latest news feed, the latest death rate, the latest shut down.

But what about the survival rate? What about the people who have recovered? What about all the inspiring things people are doing in the world. Sadly that doesn’t make as much news, that doesn’t sell, that doesn’t trigger fear, because that triggers hope.

What about looking at what you can do? In stress management, we talk a lot about cushioning and stress resilience. We remind our clients and students of the importance of cushioning ourselves from the impact of life’s stressors. There as so many things you can do to cushion yourself from the stressors of the coronavirus. Do what you can to support you and your family’s immune system.

Stress Management To Support Your Immune System

Stress Management is all about reducing our stressors and increasing our resilience. Teaching others how to become more stress-resilient to whatever life throws at us. In many ways, I am so glad I began studying stress management formally over 25 years ago. It helped cushion me from extremely challenging and at times frightening health challenges, which include threatened eye loss in my twenties. It helped me cope with the discrimination and neglect I faced living with chronic health conditions that were misunderstood particulary M.E, Fibromyalgia, and Lyme alongside living with Parry Romberg’s Syndrome, Mercury Toxicity Issues.

Stress Tips To Support Your Immune System

1. Time To Switch OFF And Unplug: Time out to unplug and switch off is importantly, especially from the drama, chaos and fear.
2. Take Time To Relax Or Meditate: This can seriously help reduce anxiety and stress levels. Learn how to relax deeply and effectively and learn how to meditate properly. Check out my Free Meditation Course.
3. Get Enough Sleep And Rest: Good quality sleep does wonder for the mind, body, and emotions. Good quality sleep helps repair the body.
4. Eat To Fuel The Body: Eat plenty of healthy unprocessed, nutritent filled food. Avoid stimulants like caffeine and sugar that play havoc with the immune and central nervous system.
5. Avoid Self-Soothing Or Self-Medicating Temptations: Try and avoid the use of alcohol, drugs, comfort eating, nicotine which act as stressors on the body.
6. Encourage Healthy Thinking Patterns: Address unhealthy negative thinking, catastrophising, black and white thinking. CBT can be useful at addressing aspects of negative thinking.

You can reduce your anxiety and stress levels, by reducing how much you expose yourself to the drama and fear of social media, TV and those around you. It is not about denial but it is about taking action on the things you do have control over and letting go of those thing’s you don’t. Check out my 6 Tips To Cope with Self-Isolation

Anxiety, Worry, Stress And Immune System 

Remember focusing on the what if’s focusing on the drama only increases our stress and anxiety levels. The very time when we should be more mindful of our thoughts, a time when we should be cushioning ourselves from the impact of fear, anxiety, and stress. A time in history time where we should be working together to do what we can to reduce the psychological damage this fear is having on the young to old.

Looking after our mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing should be a top priority. A time when the media should be encouraging and promoting more healthy habits that help build and maintain a healthy immune system, especially healthy eating, healthy exercise.

We should be doing everything we can to reduce anxiety and stress especially in those who are extremely vulnerable. For those who are already sick, at-risk, or struggling mentally and emotionally. Fear feeds more fear. Control over others leads to feelings of disempowerment. Even people who tend not to get too anxious or stressed can find it difficult to not get sucked into the collective fear, the rumination, doom, and gloom of those around them.

This is a time in history time where we all should be working together to do what we can to not just reduce the risk of fear. We should be working together to help boost and build our immune system not put more stress on it. A period in our life where we should be encouraging a more calm, healthy, mental, emotional, and spiritual way of being.