Are You Overlooking this Impact?

by Glen Depke, Traditional Naturopath

There are many factors that impact your health that we discuss often. This may include:

• Hormones
• Gut health
• Brain health
• Inflammation
• Food sensitivity
• Thyroid health
• And so much more…

While all of these factors impact your health, this is leaving out one of the most significant factors that is most often overlooked.

This factor is stress!

In honor of April being Stress Awareness Month I wanted to shed some light on this subject for you here.

If you’re thinking…

• this is not me.
• I don’t have an issue with stress.
• my stress level does not affect my health.
• I can’t change my stress levels.
• stress is just all in the mind.

Be sure to read on if you are thinking any of these thoughts.

After all, you don’t want to be that person who overlooks one of the most significant factors regarding your health.

Stress is something we experience on a regular basis. You do, I do and everybody we know does.

Stress my be tied into many different factors for you.

• Traffic on the interstate
• Your spouse
• Your job
• Bills in the mail
• Your children
• Your boss
• And the list goes on

Understand that the problem with stress is truly not the event or situation you are in.

The biggest impact of an event or situation is how you perceive this and how you react to this.

You’re wondering what determines this?

Most often you learn how to perceive and react to stress by watching and modeling your parents when you were very young.

If you wonder if this is true, take a look at how your parents responded and reacted to stress and take a good hard look at your reactions.

What you’ll find is that you either react the exact same way or the complete opposite of one or both of your parents.

Here’s an example for you.

Let’s say that your parents reacted to stressful situations by losing control of their emotions and screaming and yelling.

If this is the case, there is a strong possibility that you lose control of your emotions and scream and yell yourself.

If you don’t react in this way you will typically do the exact opposite. Perhaps when you have a stressful situation, you close up emotionally and you simple do not share or express yourself.

The exact opposite right?

Doing the exact opposite is still based on what you learned. But instead of doing exactly as you were taught you do the opposite because your parents actually traumatized you with what they taught you, pushing you to rebel and do the opposite.

The problem with the opposite is that this creates similar problems. If you close up emotionally and do not express yourself, this will also be very stressful to you and often even more stressful.

Yet, you can see that both of these patterns were, and are, learned behaviors.

Stress and Your Subconscious Mind

To understand this deeper let’s first look at the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. First off, the subconscious mind can process anywhere from 2.3 million to 11 million bits per second of information.

Yes, that is million! Amazing, right…

The conscious mind can process approximately 132 bits per second of information. Now that still sounds like quite a bit of information in one second, yet this does not compare to the subconscious.

So what does this mean for you?

It means that approximately .006% of your life is being directed by your conscious mind while a whopping 99.994% of your life is being directed by your subconscious mind.

As example, this is why so many people can walk around all day, consciously saying to themselves that they are going to react differently to stress, yet once it comes up, they are still reacting in the same manner.

Your reaction to stress is just one example. This can, and will, affect every level of your health.

So what drives the subconscious mind?

The subconscious mind thinks in pictures and feelings. Most people are trying to create change in their life with their words only, yet your subconscious mind is not hearing this.

You’ve got to put those words into pictures and feelings.

If you doubt this, create and awareness for how you feel right now and the picture you hold onto with your life and I will bet that this is how your health is showing up for you on so many levels.

Many people do not want to face these thoughts because this is the ultimate level of responsibility for you.

As example, if I am having a health issue, I look at how I have been feeling emotionally and I create an awareness of what pictures I have had about my life recently.

A good friend and mentor of mine Micheal Stevenson once shared with me that these states can be considered hypnotic states. We simply get stuck in a thought pattern based on feelings and pictures that then creates your life.

Good or bad…

As an example, I am the person that learned to do the opposite as a child. I did not like the lose of emotional control and all the screaming and yelling and learned to close up emotionally and not express my feelings.

While you might think that is the better thing to do, it is not. It is all still built on the same energy and still creating so many problems with the perception and reaction to stress in life.

If I hold onto these pictures and feelings, I am most likely going to create deeper stress reactions and challenges for myself, because of the subconscious mind.

So instead of carrying the negative pictures and feelings of that event, I can think of where I do or do not have responsibility.

• Perhaps I could share my viewpoint and this could create a positive impact on the situation?
• Perhaps I can accept the person or situation as they are or it is without any negativity attached to the situation?
• Perhaps I can simply take a few deep breaths and change how this is affecting me?
• Maybe I can reframe the situation to make it more empowering for me and those around me?

Regardless of how I do it, once I take responsibility, I can create new pictures and feelings.

Perhaps gratitude that I realized the role that I play in my stressful situations and what I can do to change this. I can picture myself in the future, perceiving stress differently, reacting to this in an empowering way and allowing myself to feel this future self.

This is what creates the shift needed for lasting change.

So what pictures and feelings are you living in right now?

Are these pictures and feelings empowering or disempowering?

This is an overlooked factor for your health and I have see this consistently with thousands of clients through the years.

Now I am not saying to ignore your functional issues, protocols and programs that you may be following for your health. I am just saying that to reach our ultimate health goals, addressing this subconscious level will be essential for you to create lasting change in you life.

This is a much deeper subject than can be expressed in a short article, so I want to let you know how you can get much deeper, comprehensive information on this subject.

So remember, your subconscious mind is what’s triggering your stress levels and this is most often the most overlooked impact on your health.

If you have any comments or questions regarding this article please post this on our Facebook page or on our Twitter page for us to address personally.