Conquering Stress and Illness

"Someday the medical profession will wake up and realize that unresolved emotional issues are the main cause of 85% of all illnesses."
-Eric Robins, MD. Co-author of Your Hands Can Heal You.

I meet a lot of people who just don’t believe that stress can actually be one of the biggest factors attributing to illness. Stress and illness go hand-in-hand, like it or not. And yet we live in a society that appears to celebrate the stressed-out.

It’s as if the more stressed out you are the more approval the world will offer you. People move around these days experiencing stress as if it were some kind of badge of honor.

But are we cheering each other on to our own demise? Have we come to believe that we are only worthy of a good life if we are experiencing stress, even the kind of stress that leads to illness?

I’ve worked with many clients who have been completely unaware of how vulnerable they’ve been to stress and illness. Stress has become the acceptable norm so much so that most people believe it to be a necessary evil. I don’t think that most people have any idea how powerful and negative a role stress can have on their lives until illness seeps in.

Most clients that come to me experiencing the symptoms of stress and illness usually share some story about how they were perfectly healthy people and all of a sudden out of nowhere they were struck by illness.

Yet to date, everyone who has shared some version of that story with me eventually discovered a plethora of signs, symptoms, beliefs, behaviors and actions that were a kindred spirit to stress.

Stress and illness doesn’t actually sneak up on us so much as we would like to think. Stress is typically something we’ve had a long term relationship with before illness shows up. We’ve all just gotten really good at denying our stress or perpetuating it by giving it permission to run our lives.

Hysterical really has become the new calm. Intensity and urgency set the tone for most of what we do throughout the day. And personal awareness has gone right out the window. We don’t even realize that our stress levels are through the roof because we’ve been maintaining them for so long that it’s become the new normal.

Bottom Line: Stress and illness like to perpetuate one another. Stress leads to illness which leads to more stress which keeps illness in place therefore creating more stress and so on…

The good news is that we are all capable of choosing habits and behaviors that relieve stress. So, the next time you find yourself spinning in the whirlwind known as stress ask yourself, "Am I really willing to allow anything to take precedence over my peace and health?"

Let's create a world without Stress and illness