What will it take to really heal?

I heard this line recently and it just about knocked me over.

Here it is: " You can't heal from a sympathetic state." "What the heck does that mean?" You ask. (One client asked just that when I wrote it in my office whiteboard). To answer that fully, we need to look at what it means to be in a sympathetic state. Picture yourself in prehistoric times. You are a hunter-gatherer. As you're out gathering berries and medicinal herbs, you spot the predecessor of a wild boar, the mighty entelodont. Long, sharp tusks glint in the sunlight. An even smaller creature had just impaled a member of a neighboring tribe while hunting a few weeks ago. The boar hasn't seen you yet, but just knowing it's there, your heart begins to pound quickly in your chest. Your breath quickens. Your pupils expand as you begin to search for a haven to run toward. Just as the boar sees you, you take off running, wild herbs flying into the air. Your legs pump at a furious pace, leaping over branches and rocks as if you were super-human.

Your mind is sharp, and you’re fueled with an intense energy to carry forward your focused purpose—getting to safety. Just as you reach the oversized boulder next to a tree, the boar is at your heels. You reach up to an outstretched branch, and with super-human strength, swing yourself to the top of the boulder just in time, heart and head racing, muscles burning. There, you are safe. The boar can’t reach you. He snorts and squeals angrily until he finally grows weary of waiting for you and trots off. As you sit on the boulder, you feel your breath becoming slower and more even. Your heart, once feeling as if it would burst out of your chest, begins to beat at a more manageable pace. You can feel the tackiness of your skin, as your body cools down from the recent exertion.

You look down and realize you have a massive welting bruise on your torso where a jutting surface of the boulder struck you during the hubbub. You hadn’t felt it happen and there was no pain… until now.

After a while of sitting on your perch, you feel yourself getting a little hungry. You cautiously climb down and begin to make your way home.

So, what happened here?

Recognizing you’re in danger, your body sounds the alert to activate your sympathetic nervous system. This is a component of your autonomic nervous system, the involuntary one.

Chemical messengers, or hormones, are released. The primary stress hormones are cortisol and adrenaline. As these begin to circulate, your blood pressure increases so blood can flow rapidly to your body parts, your breathing quickens, ensuring your brain and muscles receive the oxygen they need to act quickly, your pupils dilate, and pain receptors dull.

You have increased focus, strength, and energy, but the body functions that are not required to get you to safety are put on hold. You won’t be thinking much about sex or food, as reproduction and digestion take a back seat to survival.

What happened after sitting on the rock for a bit? The parasympathetic nervous system was eventually initiated, and all those changes began to reverse.

We no longer run from saber-tooth tigers or entelodonts, like the one in our scenario. Our new stressors are stacked-up emails, family demands, and other daily requirements that make life feel overwhelming.

Unfortunately, these are stressors that don’t get tired of waiting for you and run off into the sunset, leaving you safe and sound. The feedback loop that signals the body's return to normal never completes. You stay in a perpetual sympathetic response.

The impact on your health can be significant.

Short-term, cortisol and adrenaline initiate a helpful response. But, if released continuously, they have serious implications for your energy, mood, focus, immunity, digestion, reproduction, healing, and sleep. That's lot of functions.

Your adrenal glands are two triangle-shaped glands that sit on top of your kidneys. As part of your endocrine system, they’re responsible for releasing hormones that help regulate some key body functions, including metabolism, immune function, stress management, blood pressure and development of sexual characteristics.

When pumping out stress hormones continuously, the adrenal glands can become overworked. This can make you feel fatigued and foggy headed. It can lead to hair loss, weight gain, and lack of rest, even after sleeping through the night.

Your liver also works overtime to buffer the effects of adrenaline, which can be corrosive to your body. Adrenaline that does not get removed safely gets stored in the liver, which compromises its ability to effectively protect you from toxins and pathogens.

The functions that are put on hold can also become compromised. Digestive issues like constipation, bloating and reflux can take hold. You can lose your sex drive and feel thoroughly exhausted around the clock.

We feel degrees of these symptoms and think we’re just getting older, or just going through a stressful period. Only, one stressful period is quickly followed by another…and then another.

It’s clear that you can survive in a sympathetic state. We do it all the time. We tackle our email inboxes, shoulder painful break-ups, nurse sick children, submit reports by ambitious deadlines.

We do what’s expected of us, while our bodies pay the price. Slowly, new symptoms creep up and we accept them, normalize them, and let them become another thing we deal with.

Yes, you can survive in a sympathetic state.

But you can’t heal in one and you certainly can’t thrive in one.

Stress management is an integral part of any program of health and healing. You need healthy soil for strong roots to take hold, and a robust plant to grow and flourish.

To start nurturing your soil, consider your stressors in a new light. Have an honest conversation with yourself about whether certain aspects of your life add to your wellness or take away from it.

What are you empowered to change? What does that change look like for you?

Such exploration opens the door for real adjustments to take place. What are some healthy changes you can make to shift the terrain?

Here are a few suggestions, but the first step is just being aware and willing to change the things you do control.