15 | When Survival Mode Becomes Normal: Calming the Nervous System with Crystal Barnett

Well, and so I think we can carry stress for months.

And I've even said before, just in my own research, like when you talk about burnout specifically, that can live within you for weeks to months to years.

It takes forever sometimes to heal from based on your individual situation, but we're still incredibly high functioning.

We're still going to work, we're taking care of our kids, we're doing all the things.

What would you say are some of those ways prolonged stress can really show up physically? I think it's all of it.

I think it's your

headache.

It's your chronic headache.

It's your chronic neck pain.

It's your chronic back pain.

Anything that's chronic and there's no structural reason for it.

So stress is not supposed to be.

We're not supposed to hold on to stress.

We're not supposed to just carry it and keep going.

Imagine your deer in the woods.

OK, and it's being chased by a wolf.

and it was just sitting there and it was eating its grass and it was having the best day and all of a sudden this wolf comes and so it's scared it's in fight or flight it is running it is just scared out of its mind finally gets away from this wolf and it stops and you'll notice what it does it just shakes it all out like it just shakes it out and then what does it do it goes right back to eating It doesn't stop and look around and wonder if the wolf is still present or if it's going to come out from the woods.

It just goes about its day.

We don't do that.

We hold that stress and then we continue to look around even unconsciously, even unconsciously.

We are going throughout our day, but subconsciously our mind is constantly on alert.

We're constantly thinking about this or that or what happened then or what's going to happen in the future.

And we are never settled.

and present.

I mean, and the way that you describe that is really good.