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Stress-related health issues

        Your body knows how to heal itself. It knows how to restore healthy physiological functions, repair or eliminate damaged cells, and fight infections. Your body can heal cuts, tears, and injuries, repair broken bones, and heal dysfunctional organs. Since these natural self-healing mechanisms are energy-intensive, they unfortunately cannot unfold when you are exhausted from stress, anxiety, trauma, pain, or other negative feelings*. This is why chronic stress and anxiety are not only facts of modern life, but also the driving factors of mental and physical health disorders.

The physiology of stress — what happens in your body

It is known that the fear response to a sudden dangerous situation — often called acute stress — activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and stimulates the secretion of hormones such as corticosteroids and adrenaline. The resulting high cortisol level leads to, among other things, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and high energy levels. While these natural responses can be helpful in truly dangerous situations, over time they can negatively impact health and well-being.

Long-term, repeated, or chronic stress can have negative effects on many physiological processes, leading to anxiety, depression, insomnia, pain, and cognitive problems, as well as cardiovascular disease, immune system problems, digestive disorders, reproductive problems, and many other health issues. Chronically high cortisol disrupts your metabolism, leads to muscle breakdown and deterioration of brain tissue, weakens your immune system, causes a surge in blood sugar, promotes abdominal fat deposition, causes sleep disturbances and constant fatigue — thereby accelerating aging and compromising your general health.

It is estimated that 75–90% of all visits to primary care physicians are for problems related to stress, anxiety, and other strong emotions. It is important to know, however, that stress and anxiety are not normative concepts, nor are they diseases in themselves. Although your stress and anxiety are not imaginary, there is no laboratory test to confirm or measure them. You do feel them, and you are therefore in the best position to judge whether or not you feel stressed or anxious. Very intense or prolonged stress or anxiety can, however, fuel various health disorders and medical conditions that require medical attention.

Emotions are not just mental states and emotional feelings*. Today's understanding is that emotions are experienced at four different but closely interrelated levels: the mental or psychological level (the brain), the physiological level (the chemistry of your body), the somatic level (bodily emotional feelings*), and the behavioral level. These complementary aspects are present in all human emotions — even in the most basic ones, like stress, fear, and anxiety.

The scientific study of emotions and of the bodily changes that accompany various emotional experiences — known as psychosomatic medicine — marks a relatively new era in medicine. The central concept of psychosomatic medicine is the scientific fact that mind and body are indissoluble and integral aspects of human life. The term "psychosomatic disorder" is used for a physical disease that is thought to be triggered, worsened, or caused by emotional factors. To an extent, most diseases are considered psychosomatic, as there is an emotional aspect to every physical disease.

The autonomic nervous system — your body's inner regulator

Rather than passively observing what happens to you, your subconscious mind is actually in charge of the proper functioning of your conscious mind and your body — through the regulatory mechanisms of your autonomic nervous system. When you feel relaxed and safe, the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system activates — your body is nourished, healed, and energy is restored. Whenever you are facing a threat, the sympathetic branch activates and the stress response mobilizes all your resources for survival through the built-in fight-or-flight response.

While you are in the middle of a stress response, your body's nourishing, restorative, maintenance, and self-repair functions come to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, when the threat is imaginary, the subconscious mind does not realize there is no real danger. Over time, when this stress response is repetitively triggered by imaginary threats, nature's biological response ends up doing more harm than good.

Long term, if your body is not properly nourished, restored, maintained, and repaired, the effects of chronic wear and tear take their toll — and you will end up mentally and physically depleted. The holistic concept of helping to heal the human being as a whole, rather than treating diseases in isolation, is grounded in the fact that the natural state of all living systems is balanced and healthy. The quickest and most natural approach to rebalancing a diseased or dysfunctional living system is therefore to eliminate the imbalance factors — rather than add new elements in the hope of regaining balance and health.

How Somatic Hypnotherapy can help

By releasing trauma, stress, anxiety, and painful feelings*, your body creates a loop of positive feedback through the autonomic nervous system — feedback that can rebalance your sympathetic and parasympathetic branches and lead to improvements in symptoms of autoimmune issues, skin disorders, eating and gastrointestinal issues, pain and idiopathic issues, reproductive issues, multifactorial and systemic issues, behavioral issues, cardiovascular issues, and many other chronic conditions. The degree of improvement you can reasonably expect depends on how much your emotional state is contributing to your health issues.

When dealing with a fractured bone, the standard medical approach is to align and join the broken parts and let it heal — as this ancestral approach works for everyone, every time. When dealing with stress and anxiety, however, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. This is why psychiatry, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming, EFT (emotional freedom tapping), pet therapy, art therapy, mindfulness, yoga, craniosacral therapy, gravity blanket, mini-horse therapy, and many other approaches — each grounded in different yet scientifically supported concepts — are all available to address emotional issues.

As the nervous system modulates physiological functions and the brain takes the emotional state into account in all that it does, strong emotions always end up affecting not only mood and behavior, but also the proper functioning of the body and the development and progression of all kinds of diseases. Chronic, intense, or repetitive stress and anxiety can lead to various emotional troubles and even psychiatric or somatic medical conditions. According to the American Psychosomatic Society: "there is no such thing as psychosomatic disease. All disease can be looked at from this point of view."

The following conditions may be aggravated, triggered, or even caused by stress and anxiety — or represent conditions for which you may be at increased risk if you are exposed to prolonged or intense stress and anxiety. Select any of the areas below to learn more:

Given that today's stressors are among the leading causes of countless chronic diseases, can addressing this bodily reaction be the key to lasting health? You are here for a reason — whatever that reason is, don't allow it to cripple your life.

The "No Results - No Pay" principle guarantees my integrity and applies to all my therapies***

As stress and anxiety are most likely the leading cause of your issues, before filling out the appointment request, please self-assess your anxiety online and make an informed choice.

You can reach me by filling out the contact form below.

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For any medical emergency, call the Info-Santé service by dialing 811.

*In Somatic Hypnotherapy, the terms "feelings" and "emotional feelings" are often used interchangeably and refer to sensory experiences perceived onto or within the body, assessed, interpreted, and integrated through interoception and conceptualized by the rational mind as "emotions" - consistent with their traditional, biological and medical meanings, but differing considerably from the term 'feeling' in cognitive psychology.

**The results may vary from person to person.

***In other words, if at the end of your session you don't see any improvement in the issues addressed in therapy, I won't accept your money!

Disclaimer: The content of this page reflects the opinion of its author, is provided for educational and general informational purposes only, and does not constitute medical, psychological, or professional advice. I do not make any diagnoses according to recognized classifications (DSM-5, ICD-10) and I do not interfere in any way with ongoing treatments.

If you are already under medical care or treatment, follow their advice and treatment. I am not a doctor or licensed psychologist in Quebec; therefore, I cannot establish or continue a treatment based on your diagnosis. If you decide to consult me, be prepared to tell me what is bothering you and how you feel about it.

Somatic Hypnotherapy is an emotional health and wellness practice rooted in ancestral traditions and modern neuroscience insights. It does not constitute psychotherapy, medical treatment, diagnosis, or management of mental disorders, and is not intended to replace professional psychological or medical care.

On this website, the use of the masculine to designate people aims to ensure the fluidity of the reading and has no discriminatory intent.

Somatic Hypnotherapy - 186 Sutton Place, suite 104, Beaconsfield, Quebec H9W 5S3, in the West Island of Montreal.

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