If you’ve spent a couple of years in a job that drains you, or you’re caring for someone who isn’t getting better, or the money never quite meets the standard of living you might hope for, you’ll probably recognise the particular tiredness that comes from something that never actually resolves.
If you think back over a stretch like that, you might notice it didn’t only show up in your thoughts. Your sleep might have gone first, or your digestion, or you might have found yourself catching every bug that went around the office and not being able to shake any of them.
The body doesn’t keep stress in a separate compartment from everything else, so what’s happening emotionally usually shows up physically as well.
This week is WA Mental Health Week, and this year’s theme is about the tools and supports that are within our control. Understanding how this actually works is one of them, because it changes where you’re able to start.
What sustained stress does to the body
When pressure continues for weeks or months rather than a few days, the body stays in a state that was really only designed for short bursts.
Digestion slows down, because it isn’t a priority when the body is braced for something urgent. Sleep becomes lighter and more easily broken. Appetite shifts, sometimes up and sometimes down. The demand for some of the nutrients involved in nervous system function goes up at the same time as absorption may be working against you. Hormonal patterns change, and for some people inflammation rises as well.
How those physical changes affect your mood and energy
Poor sleep makes it harder to regulate emotions, which is one of the more consistent findings in sleep research. Low iron or B12 will affect your concentration and your energy. Unstable blood sugar can produce an afternoon where everything feels worse for reasons that have very little to do with what’s actually happening in your life. Ongoing digestive discomfort is its own quiet source of stress, even when you’ve stopped consciously noticing it.
So the physical effects of stress feed back in as fresh sources of stress, which is part of why it can be so hard to shift.
Why there’s more than one place to start
If your mind and your body are both involved, either one of them is a reasonable place to begin.
Someone who is deeply depleted may not have the capacity to start with the hardest psychological work, and beginning with sleep, iron status or nervous system support can create enough room to do that work a bit later. Someone who has already sorted out every physical input and still feels flat may be circling something that only therapy is going to reach.
For a lot of people the answer involves both, in whichever order is workable at the time.
How our team can help
Having different practitioners in one building means you can start wherever makes sense for you, and change direction if it isn’t working.
Carla Bormolini, registered psychologist, works with anxiety, depression, trauma, grief and loss, and relationship and workplace stress. She is trained across a range of evidence-based therapies including CBT, ACT and EMDR, and which approach suits you will depend a great deal on what you’re working through.
Lucia Ferguson, our Nurse Practitioner, can order pathology where it’s clinically indicated and talk you through what the results actually mean, including iron studies, thyroid function, vitamin D and B12. Lucia can also provide mental health plan referrals, where appropriate.
Eddie Enever is both a naturopath and a psychotherapist, so he works with the emotional and the physical side together, including stress, nervous system regulation and the impact of illness on people and their families.
Sam Botica, naturopath, works with gut health and the gut–brain connection, which is where digestion and mood are most obviously tangled up with each other.
Randa Majrouh, naturopath and acupuncturist, works with hormones, stress and nervous system support.
Dharma McDonald, remedial therapist, works with body awareness and the physical stress patterns that most of us stop noticing we’re holding onto.
Amanda Davies, hypnotherapist and life coach, works with habits, beliefs and the subconscious patterns that can keep everything turning over.
Our practitioners often work together, and alongside your GP.
A few things you can do in the meantime
Start with whatever feels manageable. It doesn’t have to be the thing that seems most important, and if sleep is what you can realistically influence this month, that’s a perfectly good place to begin.
If you’ve had blood tests recently, ask for a copy with the actual numbers on it rather than being told everything came back normal.
It also helps to know what “normal” means on a pathology report. It means your result sits within the range seen across a large population, and those ranges are designed to identify disease. Whether a particular result is ideal for you, given your symptoms and your history, is a separate question, and one to raise rather than set aside.
Hang onto your results, too, rather than letting them disappear into a drawer. One set of numbers tells you where you were on that particular day, whereas three sets over a couple of years tell you which direction you’re heading in, and that’s usually what matters more.
Pay attention to the pattern as well as the symptom. Worse in the afternoons, worse before a period, worse after a bad night’s sleep, all of that tells you something, and it’s worth jotting down before an appointment while you still remember it.
And if you’ve tried something before without much success, that doesn’t mean nothing will help. It may just mean starting somewhere else.
Not sure where to start? Give our reception team a call on 08 9328 9233 and we’ll help you work it out.
If you need support now
- Lifeline — 13 11 14
- Beyond Blue — 1300 22 4636
- 13YARN — 13 92 76
- In an emergency, call 000