The cost of living in stress, fear and overwhelm

Confession: I am not taking good care of myself and my adrenals are suffering. Remember a few weeks ago how chilled out and relaxed I was? Yep, that is all gone now! And that calm has been replaced lately with near constant stress, anxiety, fear and overwhelm.

Every day I wake up stressed and overwhelmed and go to bed even more stressed, fueled by adrenaline.

Every day I am running around juggling a million different tasks and to-dos involving work and care-taking. 

Every day I fall behind with doing basic selfcare things like eating and sleeping because I am running around trying to put out fires and take care of everyone else before myself.

I am perpetually sleep-deprived, going to bed at close to 1am or even later on a regular basis. And every day I say that today is the day when things will be different. Today is the day that I will get my mountain of tasks done and get to bed at a more reasonable time… at least by midnight! Yet no matter how I seem to try, the amount of things I have to take care of does not lessen and make an earlier bedtime possible.

I get at most 6 hours of sleep a night, sometimes 5 or even less.

As a health advocate I realize how ironic this all is. We health peeps are supposed to be teaching by action, walking the walk (or is it walking the talk?! LOL). Yet I want to be honest and share that I am truly struggling right now and that even those who may seem well-versed in health still struggle sometimes with good selfcare.

How did this happen you ask? How did you go in a matter of weeks from calm, cool and collected to this frenzied anxiety-ridden and fear-filled mess?

A lot of it has to do with the amount of healing that has taken place in my body actually. 

In case you are not already aware, I have been recovering from the lowest rock-bottom health crisis I’ve ever experienced in my life — severe crippling eczema, chronic fatigue, and long-term chronic edema, all of which left me completely bedridden for the past 9 months. 

I am no longer bedridden now. My eczema has cleared up by 99% and I am left with just the edema in my right hand that still needs healing.

In my eagerness to start getting my life back now that so much healing has occurred, I have taken on a LOT lately — full bunny care, a variety of time-consuming and ambitious gardening projects, making all my own meals throughout the day (3-4 hours worth of cooking in total) plus my boyfriend’s breakfast, cleaning the house, doing a lot of yard work to get the garden in order. This is all in addition to my freelance work which, by the way, is insane again. Somehow despite this pandemic and an initial reduction in client work, my workload has now substantially increased.

In a short amount of time, I have gone from being 24/7 bedridden and not capable of doing any of this, to what feels like the Energizer Bunny now… just going going going with endless tasks and to-dos from morning to night without barely ever stopping until I go to sleep.

Stress and worries seem to be hitting from every angle. And my to-do list is only getting longer.

By far my biggest worry lately has been bunny care. In the midst of this pandemic Meadow, my rabbit, had to be rushed to the vet as I was concerned she wasn’t eating enough hay and didn’t like her current batch. Rabbits will quickly decline if they do not eat often; even half a day without eating can shut their digestive system down.

For the past several weeks I have been painstakingly monitoring Meadow like a hawk, hand-feeding her strands of hay throughout the day, trying to coax her to eat more hay, constantly digging through her hay bale multiple times a day to see if I can find the only strands of hay she seems to like in this entire batch. A few times I have stayed up half the night with her frought with worry. This has been SO hard and exhausting on my mind and my body. I cannot even fully explain the level of panic one feels when your baby’s health is at stake. I’m sure any mothers out there can relate.

Simultaneously, my worst fears have come true with the rabbit virus I previously mentioned in this post, which is spreading rapidly throughout the US. Already more than half a dozen states have been affected by RHDV2. This isn’t like many other viruses where those affected may get sick but the vast majority recover. This particular virus, the equivalent of human Ebola, has nearly a 100% fatality rate. Every day I’m overcome with immense fear and panic wondering if today may be the last day of Meadow’s life because the virus has gotten into our house. I realize this probably sounds extreme but this virus can literally be brought into the home by anyone or anything, as it’s able to survive on objects or other carriers for 4 months without a host. It seems inevitable that the virus will eventually find its way into the home of rabbit owners everywhere.

I am SO scared and feel that this fear for Meadow’s safety and overall health is manifesting into my being one of those hovering overprotective care-takers – you know, the kind that won’t let their kids out of their sight because they are so afraid of what might happen.

I don’t want to live in fear. 

I don’t want to live in fear!

I just don’t know how to NOT be afraid.

To ignore what’s going on and just try to focus on other things won’t protect my rabbit’s health. But there are no answers out there as to what can be done, other than increased biosecurity at all times. It is a hard and scary time to be a rabbit owner right now, that’s for sure.

To top off my personal bunny stress, there’s the stress of our continuing quarantine, family health issues, riots, the recession and downfall of the economy, mass censorship in the media and on social media, and certain very scary mandatory medical laws looming on the horizon – I won’t get into them here because of the widespread censorship happening on the internet in the name of “health safety” but let’s just say I am VERY upset and angry about a lot of things happening in the world right now.

My stress, anxiety and fear levels feel amped up all the time. I literally feel like I do not have the mental capacity to take in any more bad news. Yet it continues to pile in from all areas.

By some miracle my hands and overall health are staying relatively strong. No eczema flare ups or outbreaks; my immune system seems to be doing well. Thank God. However, I am rundown from constant stress and am beginning to see signs of increased viral activity cropping up. More swelling in my right hand for instance, in addition to swelling in one of my toes that is not clearing out due to a stagnant lymph system.

Something needs to change. And I think it starts with addressing the “cost” of living in a stressed out and fearful state of mind.

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The human thing to do when we get worried and stressed out is to try to think and deliberate over everything going wrong in desperate attempts to “figure stuff out” and find a solution. We think and think and think over the problems. We talk about the problems and tell others about the problems. We research the problems. We spend a whole lot of brain space and time worrying about the problems and worst case scenarios creating even more fear and panic within us. 

We think all this focus is helpful – how else do you solve a problem after all? But all this deliberating and fixating on the things that stress us out and upset us has a cost — it fuels the fire and strengthens all current and underlying health problems.

How are stress and fear-based thoughts connected to poor health?

Fear, stress, overwhelm, anxiety and anger don’t create illness. Negative emotions do not by themselves make us sick. But ultimately anything that makes you feel bad is most likely running your adrenals and creating toxic adrenaline in the body. And this toxic adrenaline is what lowers our immune system.

Adrenaline from negative emotional states is not a good thing to have. If we regularly spend our days with adrenaline coursing through our body, it’s a recipe for disaster, burning out our adrenals and setting us up for developing adrenal fatigue and a host of other health issues down the line.

Speaking of adrenal fatigue… I’ll never forget the first time I developed this in 2013. I collapsed in bed, and literally could not get up. At the time I was in nutrition school and had learned about adrenal fatigue there, which was the only reason I was able to recognize it when it hit. I remember lying in bed at that time trying to get my body to move for hours and it just would not. I was overcome with a full body heavy exhaustion that felt like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, that feeling of having zero control over your body and not being able to budge even an inch because you are that burned out. That was a very severe bout of adrenal fatigue and it took months of being fully bedridden and unable to walk in 2013 before I recovered.

What else does adrenaline do to us? It intensely fuels and exacerbates health conditions of all kind, whether they are autoimmune conditions, chronic illnesses, disease; even something as mild as a simple cold can amplify and get stronger when adrenaline is in the mix. If we have a health issue brewing under the surface that we’re not yet aware of, adrenaline can launch this health issue to appear, sometimes in an overwhelming way. I believe huge amounts of adrenaline from my dad’s death and the subsequent law suit that followed is what was responsible for the severe eczema attack I developed last year.

It’s only when we start to really understand the connection between stress, adrenaline and poor health can we then start making changes that will ADD to our well-being.

This post isn’t really about all the various steps we can take to calm our stress responses and get out of the fear zone. We all know what we have to do more of — sleep, meditate, take deep breaths, journal, pray, rest, nap, eat supportive foods, commune with nature. The list goes on and on. For most of us, myself included, it’s not a matter of not knowing what to do (although it’s certainly easy to forget at times!) It’s a matter of prioritizing the work especially during chaotic, busy, and stressful periods in life.

How many of us say we KNOW we need to take better care of ourselves but we’re too busy and don’t have enough time?

How many of us say we KNOW we need better self-care but the needs of a loved one are coming first? *me raising hand*

Life doesn’t always give us the ideal scenarios we want and need to thrive. If it did, we would surely do better.

For me, I think I mostly need these reminders from my physical body every now and then to serve as a warning sign of where I’ve gone astray and off track. As my coach and mentor, Tara Bliss, always used to say, “We fall off the wagon so we can remember how good it feels to get back on.”

I am realizing I need to pull back a bit, for the sake of my health. It’s amazing how much I have healed these past few months (just a few months ago I could not be out of bed for more than 10 minutes at a time! I am SO proud of how far I’ve come since then). But I think I have gotten a little carried away in going from zero to 100 trying to live a normal life again. Baby steps are needed here.

It’s so hard because I want Meadow to have a good life and I want to be the best caretaker I can be for her. I want to be able to do things like maintain a garden and create a beautiful space to relax in and enjoy. I want to help my boyfriend out more, take care of him and be a good partner. I want to help take care of family members financially because some of them really need it and they aren’t getting help from anyone else. My desire is so big and my capability feels so small, like it doesn’t match up right now. I am trying so hard and pushing myself to be the best I can be in all these different areas but I have to pull back, for the sake of my own well-being, because I am not there yet. And it’s so hard. 

Does anyone else struggle with this?

As of right now, I don’t think I can stop worrying. I can’t stop being concerned about certain things in the world like my rabbit’s health and safety for instance. I can’t stop caring and wanting to find solutions.

I don’t have all the answers. And I am juggling so very much. But writing this post to you, my dear reader, has actually helped me find clarity and commitment in how I want to move forward.

Keeping in mind the cost of holding onto stress, fear, anxiety and anger, I want to be better about letting these things go.

Letting go doesn’t mean ignoring or trying not to care about a problem. We can be scared and stressed and angry about something but at the same time not drive ourselves crazy with it. We can be upset and at the same time keep perspective and not work ourselves up making the problem bigger than it actually is. We can pray and ask for help and support in letting go of negative emotions and stresses for the sake of our well-being.

It’s about taking a deep breath and a step back, creating some space from being so IN IT.

I want to let go so that I can keep my adrenals and nervous system calm, so that my body can heal even more and I can be of better service to those around me. I want to let go so that I can get through stressful moments with more strength and ease than if I allowed myself to get worked up.

It’s not possible to never feel stress or fear. But we can detach so that it’s impact is not quite so big.

I am trying to keep in mind: The more we think and focus on a stressful situation, the more the thoughts escalate and become bigger in our mind. The more STRESS and FEAR is then created… which leads to fueling underlying health problems and triggering illness… which ultimately creates more STRESS and FEAR in our life!

It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it? 🙈

The way out, I believe, is to take a step back, and learn to let go.

And keep reaching for the Light.