Hi, I’m Chris Collins.
I help career driven people prevent and manage stress related illness in Chattanooga Tennessee.
When I first started my practice,
I was really excited to help people with all the “things” I knew chiropractors were supposed to fix. Things you may know like neck and back pain, migraines, vertigo, and other chronic conditions.
To my surprise, I quickly noticed a common pattern among ALL of my patients. Almost everyone told me they were experiencing stress and anxiety (which led me to realize the majority of people’s number one problem when it comes to their health is preventing and managing stress).
Maybe you are too. When I realized this, everything clicked —I felt compelled to help my community prevent and manage stress-related illnesses, and that’s why I created this guide.
What I want to do for you now is give you some information about how stress presents itself, how it affects you, and what you can do about it now. This guide will give you practical tools to start making improvements right away.
Start by taking 1 small step in each area of stress.
This will help you decrease your stress load and create an opportunity for increase in your ability to adapt to stress.
Awareness:
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What is my number one challenge in this area?
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How have I been successful in the past?
Action:
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What is one thing I can add?
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What is one thing I can take away?
Accountability:
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How was I successful?
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How was I challenged?
Action: Define how much time you can devote to activity and schedule in 5 minutes increments 2-3x each day.
Accountability: Ask yourself the following questions: What was successful? What was challenging? What can I keep doing? What can I do differently next time?
Awareness: I am getting in my own way.
Actions: Meditate. Write down three things you are grateful for every morning. Keep a list of nice things people say about you.
Accountability: Ask yourself the following questions: Are my thoughts helping me? What can I replace them with?
Awareness: Cooking intimidates me.
Action: Choose 1 night in the week to follow a simple recipe to cook at home. Write down what you need to prepare.
Accountability: Ask yourself the following questions: What was successful? What was challenging? What can I keep doing? What can I do differently next time?
Your ability to adapt to stress is critically dependent on the ability of your brain and nervous system to maintain balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic modes.
Here Is A Break Down Of The Two Modes:
Sympathetic: Fight and Flight Mode
Parasympathetic: Rest and Digest Mode
The rising problem in healthcare is that we find most people live in a constant state of sympathetic “Fight and Flight” mode.
Fight and flight was designed to keep you alive and out of trouble. Modern society is activating that mechanism on a regular basis which is causing you to live in this state. That puts incredible stress on the nervous system. That is why it is so hard to keep up with the constant demands of our modern lifestyle, social media.
The short answer is we need to be in rest mode more often. (Easier said than done.)
The last piece of the puzzle is one of the most overlooked aspects affecting our ability to overcome stress.
Underlying problems in our health create an endless cycle where those health problems cause more stress which causes more health problems and so on and so on.
See why it can be so hard to keep up?
Some of this is in your control and some of it is not.
So what’s the answer? How can you stop this cycle of stress? The first thing you can do is get started with the exercises and information I’ve given you here to take control of some things.
That will get you started.
The key is to understand the role that your nervous system plays in managing and preventing the effects of stress on your body.
Your nervous system holds the key to unlocking your potential to be truly well.
No matter what you do, if your nervous system is not functioning optimally, your body is not functioning optimally.
This is why at The Specific Chiropractic Centers of Chattanooga, we begin every discussion of a client’s health status with the need to check and test the nervous system.
If you want to learn more about YOUR nervous system and how it’s affecting your stress levels send me an email at chattanooga@thespecific.com.
I’d love to help you manage and eliminate stress so you can get back to the things you love.
