The Healing Power of Forgiveness - Stress Management and Immune System Health
Stress is all around us. There is hardly anyone who will deny it. There is a lot of talk about the causes of stress and if we were to speak freely we would probably find only a few things in our modern life that do not produce some kind of stress. Therefore stress management and immune system health have so much in common and are so important that we simply…well, can’t stress it enough.
See? Stress is everywhere.
The psychological aspect of our immune system health has been studied for decades now. There are so many words that can describe the modern world. Fast, urban, dynamic, tiresome…the fact is, the modern world we live in is very demanding. It is demanding physically and especially psychologically. Even before we step outside the door we are beginning to stress and do from the moment we wake up.
We as humans are a social group and we all have and need, to some extent, social interaction. That interaction is on the street, in traffic, at work, within the family, at school, etc.
And what often happens during these interactions is the creation of feelings, both positive and negative. We don’t have to be close to someone to be offended or even hurt by someone. And what happens is that we often create and preserve a lingering mix of emotions like anger, hate, disappointment (especially with ourselves), or to put it simply - stress.
Holding a grudge
We all know what a grudge feels like. Having those claws at the back of our neck, constantly putting pressure on us.. that mental tensions that feeds on problems in every our day lives. We often and repeatedly remember situations that are the source of those feelings, and then we go through all those emotions again and again. Those emotions and stress can seriously affect our health and immune system. Once upon a time, when humans were a young race of hunters and gatherers, stress would provoke a fight or flight reaction. That reaction, tied to hormones like adrenalin and cortisol, helped us survive. But today, we are talking about chronic stress. Some sources of stress, can be moved away from, thus eliminating it. If the stress is related to work, there are holidays or even the option to change jobs. But what if we can’t escape from stress? What if stress is being manufactured daily in our own minds?What happens if we are the cause of our stress?
As mentioned earlier, we are social beings. Therefore sometimes we get hurt, or we hurt someone else. Whichever the direction that hurt goes, we are at the receiving end. By holding a grudge against ourselves or some else we actually put ourselves in a stressful situation which can last for days, weeks and sadly even years. During this period our body suffers as well as our mind. The systems that were once saving our lives are now attacking it because they are in overdrive mode. In this mode, as mentioned in www.adrenalfatiguesolution.com, stress affects our immune system in two ways:- creating chronic inflammation
- suppressing immune cells' ability to fight infection
