Being a wreck when 'everything is fine!'

Transcript - Being a wreck when 'everything is fine!'

So this is where we are. everything in your life looks fine from the outside, but on the inside, you're tense. There's a tension in your tummy. [00:01:00] Your shoulders are tight. You're waking in the morning with strained jaw muscles or downright sore teeth. There's a nagging feeling you've forgotten something or that something is about to go wrong Today, we're looking at all of this through the lens of something called allostatic load.

So, what? Well, you may have heard of homeostasis, which is the body's tendency to maintain a relatively stable internal environment. And when I was trying to get my head around this, the way in for me was through body temperature. So let's look at that as an example, right? Your body is constantly working to keep your temperature within a range that allows you to function well and be comfortable.[00:02:00]

But, you know, life and temperature, external temperatures, they don't stay perfectly stable, right? You might exercise. You might move from somewhere cold into somewhere warm. You might become frightened or stressed or anxious, face a deadline. Maybe you don't sleep very well. And so your body is therefore needing to continually adapt to change to bring you back to homeostasis, and this process is called allostasis.

Allostasis meaning maintaining stability through change. So let's say it's twenty-one degrees Celsius in the room that you're in, and you are feeling great. That could be temperature homeostasis. But then you do a high-powered yoga class, you're in the sun, and the temperature is rising.

Allostasis is the process of your body adapting, [00:03:00] bringing your, uh, blood vessels closer to your skin. You starting to sweat to cool the body down. But then let's say you just feel too flipping hot. You just, you can't get the energy to move anymore, and that is moving towards allostatic load. The end of the ability to adapt, and now something big needs to change.

You rest. You move out the sun. You go get a fan, et cetera. Your body is changing what it's doing to keep you safe and functioning. But of course, allostasis and allostatic load are not limited to temperature. All these adaptations happen in your cardiovascular system, your hormones, your immune and inflammatory systems and, of course, your autonomic nervous system, the system within which our fight or [00:04:00] flight and rest and digest stress responses live Your brain plays a central role in coordinating all of this.

It's trying to predict, okay, so what might be needed, and then prepare your body to respond accordingly. So it's not a problem that your body adapts, right? That's actually essential. I'm sure you've got that. But the problem is when all of these systems are having to adapt again and again, and again, and again, and again without enough time to recover.

You know, finishing one deadline and then another appears, or back-to-back nights of poor sleep. Maybe you're worrying about a friend or a family member. You're rushing from one commitment to the other, eating at your desk, answering messages late at night, trying to remember 14 different things at once, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:05:00] Each individual demand is manageable, right? And this is where everything looks fine from the outside. Everything is, in inverted commas, fine. Work is manageable-ish, right? You're getting your exercise in. You have friends and hobbies, but there's this niggling feeling that you can't get rid of, and you're starting to feel like a bit of a wreck.

And this is allostatic load. This is when all of those adaptive systems have been on all the time without the opportunity to recover. This is potentially why you can feel like a wreck even when there's no single dramatic thing that's wrong. You might begin to notice disturbed sleep or that you're really irritable.

You're struggling to concentrate. You're [00:06:00] forgetful. You're really tense, and that might manifest as shoulder pain and back pain. Or you might feel that life is just becoming a bit overwhelming

And importantly, allostatic load is not just in the mind. You are not imagining that things are a little overwhelming. Mental and physical processes, they continually influence one another. That's true in physiology, and yoga philosophy has an approach on this as well called the koshas, the five layers.

I've talked about this before, and I'll link to it in the show notes. The way that you think and you feel, it affects your physiology, and then what is happening physiologically affects how you think and feel. And this is one reason chronic stress can appear in many, many different ways. It can appear in your breath, in your [00:07:00] muscles, your digestion, um, sleep, your ability to concentrate or immune function, and lots and lots of other things.

So when everything in your life looks fine from the outside but you feel like a wreck, it probably-- it doesn't mean that you are weak or you're failing or you're coping badly. It might just mean that your adaptive systems have been on for a very long time, and maybe what you need is not to become even better at pushing through.

Maybe what you need is an opportunity to reduce that load and support your systems. So something like maybe like a really calming yoga flow or yoga nidra to give your systems an opportunity to just start to recover a little. I really hope that you found that useful. And remember, if you have absolutely any questions at all, [00:08:00] please do get in touch.

I would love to help. And as always, happy practicing.