Remember ‘stressors”? They are things that activate the stress / trauma response in the nervous system because the brain interprets them as a ‘threat’.
What if I told vou stressor aren’t just obvious current life stressors like bills, family,
work, pace of life.
What if I told you our conditioned personality traits and beliefs can become internal stressors, the things we say to ourselves – or indeed the things we don’t say – can be interpreted by the brain as threat’.
In a previous post I touched on the conflict between attachment and authenticity.
As children, we are at a time in our lives when we literally need attachment to survive, so we adapt our behaviour to ensure attachment with our caregivers which is great because that way we survive and get to grow up into adults. However, the way we learn to survive in the world as babies and children tends to stay with us, we continue to be eg a people pleaser and we reject the parts of ourselves that don’t align to that. So we spend our lives pleasing other people but never ourselves.
What to do about it? First, become aware this is a thing. Get curious. Awareness is the first step to healing. Exploring your internal stressors, learning to become comfortable with what perhaps feels very uncomfortable right now, learn to please yourself as well as others, learn how to show your nervous system you are safe in the world.
Interesting? I can help, get in touch for a free chat if you’d like to get curious.