Adrenal fatigue and emotional exhaustion

Stress, anxiety and continuously worrying cause our unconscious nervous system to ‘be on alert’ and always responding with various intensities of anxious feelings. This background agitation seems to slowly run us down over the course of six months or so and gradually depletes our Emotional Energy.

This loss of emotional energy manifests itself with the numbing of our emotions, when you go and do something fun – you know it’s fun, but don’t get the old good feelings that you used to. Whilst at the same time bad feelings just seem numb too, the only feelings that emerge are feelings of anxiety.

This dampened emotional state means your natural “gut feelings” become suppressed, meaning that you look to your thoughts to give you direction rather than instinct or unconscious awareness. Usually this means that people tend to think too much and not take enough action.

Adrenaline is one of the many chemicals that are released when we get stressed or anxious and is responsible for many of the physical symptoms of anxiety and stress. It’s natural as part of our fight or flight response – yet these days the things we are fighting or running from are not what we were designed for.

Your body responds to what you hold in mind

Our bodies have difficulties knowing the differences between real life stress and imagined stress from all worried thoughts we may have. A good example where we can experience this happening can be seen if we watch a gripping action film, our body may have have physical reactions as if we were actually experiencing the event. I recently found myself getting really tense and agitated whilst watching an episode of Prison Break – my heart was racing, my body was anxious and tense and all due to watching a film, I wasn’t even there! I was stressing myself without even realising it!

The implications of our physical health being impacted by our thoughts is huge – luckily though, once we know this, we can begin to do something about it.

Symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue

As your unconscious nervous system becomes run down and tired through too much constant worry and excessive release of adrenalin, a range of adrenal fatigue symptoms begin to emerge. The list below covers some of the more common signs of stress fatigue:

• Difficulty getting up in the morning
• Cravings for energy rich foods
• Mild depression
• Mood swings
• Problems remembering things
• Slow foggy thinking
• Immune system issues – catching colds etc
• Decreased libido
• Lack of focus
• Problems concentrating and holding attention
• Lack of energy and muscular discomfort

Treating adrenal fatigue

The treatment for adrenal fatigue has many facets and each play a large role in helping you to think and act in new ways that ensure that you recover, then importantly, don’t fall back into that same trap again in the future.

• Learning to stop the “what if” racing mind
• Placing attention on increased self esteem and self respect
• The use of techniques that interrupt anxiety and stress
• Taking time for relaxation, exercise and healthy eating
• Adopting new beliefs that allow you to respond in new ways to events
• Modifying your lifestyle to remove stressful events
• Making calmness core to your life
• Being patient – it takes 3 – 4 months to become unfatigued

Help to overcome adrenal exhaustion

I can help you to understand what is happening to you, then guide you through the steps that allow your body and mind to act in new ways, therefore, getting different and more productive emotional responses within your life. Give me a call on 01280 823059 and lets talk about what is possible.

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