The main Cause of Autoimmune Diseases
The direct effects of Stress and Trauma on your Health, and what to do about it.
The most common cause of Autoimmune Diseases is STRESS. It almost seems too simple to be true.
"What about chemicals, food, vaccinations? Are you telling me that my worries caused my Fibromyalgia?"
Well, stress is not only the worry you feel when your wallet is empty or when your boss keeps moving the deadline closer and closer to today. Stress is your body's reaction to a challenge or demand.
There are two main types of stress:
-The internal or intangible stress like mental stress and emotional stress,
-The external or material stress like chemical stress and physical stress.
To understand these types further, take a look at the table below:
Now you can see that you are exposed to these stressors most of the time.
What makes this stress manifest in a specific section of the population as an autoimmune diseases is the frequency and severity of the stress in their life, the health of their immune system, sensitivity to stress, predispositions, family DNA and history, and other factors.
Being exposed to stress so often stes a vicious cycle in motion: one type of stress can start another type of stress. For example:
Emotional stress of feeling lonely → mental stress of thinking “I am not good enough” → chemical stress of eating processed food for comfort → physical stress of lack of sleep → chemical stress of sugary drink for energy → mental stress on the way to work…→ …and so on, and so forth...
You can easily recognize that the stressors existing outside of you or the material, tangible stressors are easier to manage and change. You can:
· Change detergents and cleaning supplies and be good for a month!
· Get a water filter and be good for weeks!
· Get rid of your TV and your sleep will improve immediately ;)
· Turn off your router at night.
· Change your diet to whole foods and organic and feel better in a day!
Stressors inside of you, intangible, non-material stressors are much harder to change! First, you have to be aware of those stressors to be able to make something about it. Some of the stressors that are the hardest to get rid of are:
· Repeating thought patterns.
· Emotional Triggers.
· Unresolved Trauma.
· Limiting Beliefs.
· Coping mechanisms.
Stressors inside of you, like repressed emotions and limiting beliefs, reside mostly outside of your waking consciousness and awareness. To recognize them, you have to actually do some WORK.
The first step to recognizing the emotional and mental stressors is knowing where did the internal stressor come from? How were beliefs, thought and emotional patterns, and triggers FORMED in the first place?
The origin of your beliefs, thought patterns, emotional triggers and self-sabotage lies in:
-Trauma,
-Your upbringing and how you were parented,
-The socialization process you went through,
-The cultural values you were brought up in,
-The religion your family indoctrinated you in.
The environment you grew up in and the events in your life shaped how you think, and by extension, who you are today.
As you were able to conclude by now, trauma (in its different forms) has something significant to do with the many types and kinds of stress we experience in our life.
But what is trauma, really?
Trauma is simply stress without resolution. It makes you feel unsafe and out of control. A traumatic event is ANY event that makes you experience stress and you cannot resolve it right away. In Conclusion, traumatic events are not only accidents, deaths, rape, murder, losing a house in a fire, and other similar, extreme, visible events. Traumatic events are also:
· Reaching out for your mum’s love and protection in the moment of fear (waking up from a nightmare) and finding her disapproval and frustration instead (because you woke her up in the middle of the night, and she has an important meeting in the morning).
· Being laughed at and made fun of by your classmates when you were presenting something or giving a speech.
· Not having your feelings validated and being told “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”.
· Being stuck in between parents during a dispute or divorce and feeling like you cannot choose sides, because you will be punished either way, but still being pressured by both parents to choose a side.
· Being punished for having fun while your drunk dad has a crappy mood and cannot stand your joy and laughter.
You can recall memories of those above mentioned events, because they happened after you reached a certain age, but trauma also occurs in your infancy and also during the time you were in your mother’s womb! The electrical impulses and chemical signals (stress hormones, etc.) were produced in your body during those developmental stages. Your body felt sensations and emotions even when you were just an embryo.
Stress influences every single cell in a body, including your mother’s eggs and your father’s sperm that you came from! Some of the very early trauma includes:
Infancy:
• Feeling attacked when the umbilical cord was cut.
• Feeling assaulted when you were vaccinated.
• Feeling abandoned when mom wouldn’t pick you up from the crib in a timely fashion.
• Feeling unloved when you refused food because you felt full and mom was