I learned a big lesson in chronic stress and slowing down last week. I talked in my last post about acknowledging my chronic stress as pain and disease manifested in my body. Within 24 hours of publishing that post, I would be faced with exactly how true those statements were.
Slowing down is something I’ve been big about for getting centered and dispatching energy appropriately. But I’m learning that saying you’ll slow down, and thinking about how to slow down, and actually slowing down are three very different things. And if the universe wants you to go more slowly, it will F you up if you aren’t listening.
Forced to Slow Down
When I was in undergrad I had a full credit schedule and worked two part-time jobs. Pretty much every quarter, after I’d sustained this level of activity for twelve weeks or so, I would come down with something that would knock me on my keister for a couple of days. I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed and maybe watch television or read if my head didn’t hurt too badly. I always assumed it was because stress had weakened my immunity and I’d finally picked up one of the many bugs floating around campus at any given time.
It is true that stress weakens immunity, which in and of itself is enough of a sign that I needed to slow down and destress. But instead of paying attention when I started to get a sore throat or something, I had to be forced to slow down by some bigger, badder illness.
Well, last week brought with it a new health-related experience that I’ve never had before: Labyrinthitis.
A Big Lesson in Chronic Stress
Labyrinthitis is an inner ear infection that causes vertigo, nausea and vomiting. “Vertigo” seems an inadequate term to describe my experience. I literally could not get out of bed on my own for the first two days. Even with assistance, the spinning sensation was so bad that I vomited any time I had to get up. It’s a miracle I survived the car ride to the doctor’s office to get some much-needed medication.
Even though doctors are able to diagnose labyrinthitis by process of elimination, and they can prescribe medication for the vertigo and associated nausea, they don’t know what causes labyrinthitis. It is commonly a viral infection, typically a secondary infection. I’m not a doctor, but my understanding of secondary infections is that they arise during or after treatment of a primary infection. They are sometimes caused by the bacteria or virus that caused the primary infection, and other times it is a change in immune system activity that causes them.
Well, my ears, nose, and throat were clear, and I hadn’t been recently sick or treated for anything.
The second cause is more accurately described as another symptom than an actual cause. Labyrinthitis literally translates as inflammation of the inner ear. The inner ear is membranous labyrinth, and -itis is a general suffix that means inflammation.
But what causes the inflammation that leads to labyrinthitis? It could be any number of things. But generalized inflammation in the body is a common side effect of long-term, chronic stress. Instead of ignoring this wisdom, (or continuing to acknowledge it and still not make any changes in my life), I took the diagnosis of labyrinthitis as a very real wakeup call.
Facing the Source
On the first day the symptoms presented, I did sleep quite a lot as a first step toward healing. I fell over the first time I got out of bed, and I couldn’t stay vertical for the rest of the day without vomiting. When we got to the doctor’s office that day I only made it halfway across the parking lot. The nurses had to come out to get me with a wheelchair. The whole experience was physically draining.
On day two, I wasn’t as tired. Medication alleviated the intense nausea, but I still had strong feelings of dizziness and disorientation. I was able to stand, but had difficulty going much further than the bathroom. Watching television or skimming my eyes back and forth across the pages of a book both triggered the vertigo, so I didn’t have distractions. I more or less had to lay in bed staring at nothing for several hours at a time.
This went on for two more days. For the first time in ages, I was stuck being fully awake but unable to do any of the things I would typically do with down time. This allowed me to get very still. And the universe couldn’t have created a better scenario to force me to be present with my thoughts and fears.
Awareness is the First Step
I’m an extrovert, so processing things for hours at a time inside my own head is difficult. I tried something new to help, and if you’re an extrovert like me I highly recommend it. I downloaded a voice recorder app on my phone, hit record, and started talking. Then I listened to it play back twice. It’s odd, because I heard myself say things I didn’t realize I’d even said.
I want to share with you all the general, profound feeling of hopelessness I faced. I knew that there were major changes in my life, and in my approach to life, that I wanted to make, but I had no idea where to start. Adding insult to injury, I realized that I’ve spent the past seven years of my life pushing myself and not getting anywhere I was trying to go.
That isn’t to say I haven’t learned a lot along the way. Looking back, I can see how many attempts I’ve made to go farther, work harder, and achieve better. I’ve changed how I exercise and what I eat more times than I can count. So many different things have influenced me and made me feel like I “should” have been doing something other than what I was doing; I got absorbed in different themes and genres on YouTube, and put myself out there (at one time or another) as a beauty guru, a fitness buff, a bikini competitor, and a fashion maven. I learned and grew from each thing I attempted, but the one thing I never learned was that I was constantly trying to be something, instead of just being. To touch on my previous post, I have spent several years trying to live up to expectations I didn’t even know I was trying to live up to.
Awareness is the first step. I started paying attention to physical and mental cues to zero in on when I felt like I was failing to live up to an expectation.
Chronic Stress as Physical Tension
Physical tension reigned supreme.
Think of yourself as a being of light that exists inside your physical body. Now imagine that your mindset and emotions have made living inside your body extremely uncomfortable. You might imagine it as darkness, or a space that is too cold or hot, or perhaps too tight and constricting. The thoughts and emotions are too much to be still with and too uncomfortable to hold.
Now imagine yourself as that being of light, squirming and twisting around inside your physical body searching for escape, trying to get away from all those thoughts and emotions. This inner squirming presents as tension, twisting, clenching, and fidgeting in your physical body. I started to catch myself crossing my legs tightly and clenching my hips, bunching one shoulder up near my ear, hunching over and twisting my torso in one direction or the other. It takes a great deal of effort to become present, release that tension, and identify the thought or feeling I was trying to escape from. But now that I am aware of what I’m doing, I can move through it to change it.
We can’t fix things we aren’t aware of.
Questioning Our Core Beliefs
My core beliefs about myself and my life have come to the forefront because of this work. You may also have heard your core beliefs referred to as the stories you tell yourself. I prefer to call them beliefs, because a story sounds made up and easy to change. Your beliefs are what they are for very real reasons, and they’ve been reinforced by very real experiences. But it’s up to you to dive into what those reasons are, how those experiences impacted you, and forgive yourself for what you’ve chosen to believe as a result. Then you can choose to believe something different.
I’m just at the beginning of this journey. Sometimes it isn’t day by day, it’s hour by hour. One minute I’ve finished an amazing meditation and yoga flow and feel wonderful, and an hour later I’m berating myself for overindulging in nighttime snacks. I’m learning to take it as it comes.
It Takes a Village
I’m writing to you here, dear reader, because I believe I can’t be the only woman experiencing these feelings. Whether you’ve awoken yet to the war you’re waging on yourself or not, I hope that sharing my experience with you is helpful in some small way. Remember, we have to deepen and grow from hearty foundations within ourselves if we want to prosper. That’s what this blog is ultimately about. We have to set aside pretenses if we want to get centered within ourselves and bring inner poise to everything we do.
I will continue to share my path with you all. As I wrap up this blog post, I’ll leave you with a couple of questions. What are you hiding from in your own life that’s causing chronic stress? When do you find yourself squirming, writhing, or seeking escape? What triggers those feelings for you, and what deeper meaning lies beneath them?