Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume - 3, issue 12, I June 2019 | Page 30

Stress fills our system pretty much like water fills a bucket, and in doing so it
will diminish our access to our abilities of cognition and fine motors as they
are drowned in a sea of stress hormones. 
Your resilience is connected to how much space there is in the bucket from
your current level to the top. This is what Dr Ronald Ruden calls your
"neurological landscape” which is how “vulnerable” your system is to more
stress and possibly traumatisation in stressful events.  
As your bucket of resilience is filled with stress, your system is physically and
measurably filled with hormones of stress, and radically simplified we can
often talk about adrenaline (action), cortisol (energy) and noradrenaline (pain
regulation). The interaction of these hormones is complex and involves a lot
of other factors, especially in women where the monthly rhythms of hormones
interplay. 
Once your stress levels reach the top of the bucket your physiology and
whole system of cognition and hormone regulation starts changing and
preparing for what happens when the bucket overflows - the amygdala
hijacking into a reactive, life saving, freeze, flight or fight state. 
In fight or flight your body will go into a chain reaction of shutting down certain
functions in favour of others, it will pause your immune system, stop noticing
pain, turn off short term memory and it will either empty your intestines or
stop all activity, resulting in constipation, diarrhea or vomiting (I was so scared
I shit myself, I threw up out of fear). 
The physiological activities that will be enhanced are your heartbeat, to get
more blood into arms and legs, tunnel vision will be activated to notice
enemies and possible escape routes, cognitive activity will be set to a
minimum to speed up physical reactions and breathing will speed up to get
more oxygen to the brain for fast decision making. 
This is all good if you are doing a split second fight or flight move. However, if
the “danger” is in your head, like “being stuck in a terrible economical
situation” or “trying to care for a sick child and feeling inadequate” then the
reallocation of resources may lead to a number of physical manifestations
such as chronic pain, migraine headaches, inflammations, back pains,
irritable bowels syndrome and generalised anxiety. 
These are the physiologically driven physical needs that often drive
behaviours of self-medication and addiction. Instead of addressing the