Can We Erase the Memory of Stress?
What is the “Memory” of Stress?
First of all, there’s normal stress…
Being busy.
Getting overwhelmed with responsibility.
Pressures added to you from a boss or a job.
Dealing with people you don’t agree with.
Over-planning your life to fit in all the good things.
These are normal everyday stressors. They have a physiological or biochemical effect on your body— they trigger the release of harmful stress hormones that affect your mental and emotional state, as well as your health.
Over time, if this becomes a pattern, it can even leave an imprint in your body and have a lasting, long term effect on how you see life, make decisions, and even your physical health. You get stuck in the cycle. There’s always more to do. No matter how much you do or who you please, it isn’t satisfying or joyful. By this time, your body chemistry has adjusted to your lifestyle, and while you are not your stress, stress has left its mark or memory imprinted into how your body functions on the daily.
There is a much deeper stress, called trauma.
Trauma isn’t just aggressive physical abuse or an obvious life-altering event. Sometimes trauma is sneaky. ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, range from normal life occurrences like death in the family or having your emotional needs neglected to more obvious events like physical abuse or incarceration or substance abuse of a family member. This kind of trauma is proven to be linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance misuse in adulthood.
The thing about trauma is that it doesn’t just go away. If you’re an adult living with stress and you haven’t worked through adverse childhood experiences, that unresolved trauma may actually be acting like a compass drawing you towards stress because it has become an internal “normal” that you’ve learned to live with. Experts, like Bessel van der Kolk (author of “The Body Keeps Score”), have studied the residual effects of trauma and how our body “remembers” it. It becomes a physical memory in the body that exists in our muscles, our nerves, our stance, and even our breath.
The good thing about stress having a “memory” is that memories are malleable— or changeable.
If you haven’t already, you might want to google ACEs and do a self evaluation to find your score. A lot of people are shocked to know they’re walking around with unhealed trauma. They aren’t waking up with nightmares or breaking out in cold sweats at the memory of said trauma. They’re just living in a mild state of internal chaos that sometimes manifests into stressful and anxious situations so subtly that they don’t ever make the connections. Becoming aware is the first powerful step to changing it.
What can we do about it?
1) Essential oils are a POWERFUL tool that you can use yourself or with a good coach to begin to erase the left over imprint of chronic stress and trauma. Professional psychotherapists and doctors of psychology are giving more and more credibility to using therapeutic grade essential oils on specific points of the body related to acupressure or simply where we feel/experience the residue of this stress, or even diffusing or applying them in general locations. “What fires together, wires together.” If you can catch the stressful thought and replace it with truth while anchoring it to an essential oil that supports the release of that stress, you can wire a new response into your body and change the effects or memory that stress has left. This isn’t all that different from changing muscle memory in your actual muscles. Pinpoint the correction that needs to be made, and exercise the new movement over and over. The body will remember.
A great start…
If you’re not a DIYer and don’t have time to learn some of the basics or go through them with a guide, this set of rollers is the perfect easy start. They’re named for what they help with, or you can just trust your nose and use the one that smells right for the moment.
2) Find a good therapist.
I recommend everyone have a therapist as much as I recommend a good chiropractor or primary care doctor. You’re not going to fall apart if you go talk to a professional about your life… but even if you do, they’re trained to give you tools to handle it and help you put things back together better than before. You’re not going in for a label or a pill that you’ll be stuck with. You’re going to be guided and educated about how to sort through thoughts and emotions with the most powerful tool of all… YOUR MIND. Elisa Allen, is an amazing local therapist in Middle Tennessee. At her private practice, Wildly Curative, she uses essential oils along with other professional therapeutic techniques.
Erase the Memory of Stress:
WORK WITH A GUIDE to teach you strategic ways to apply essential oils for deeper release.
USE A BLEND customized for the particular stressful thoughts and feelings.
DIFFUSE DAILY. It’s a powerful but easy way to support your mind so it doesn’t revert to stressful tendencies.
WORK WITH A PROFESSIONAL to help you work through and release trauma.
How fast can you expect changes?
Almost immediately but definitely within 24 hours. The methods of acupressure work very quickly and are enhanced with high quality essential oils. Developing new patterns takes a little longer, but it’s so much easier when you’re not also fighting with the old thoughts and feelings. Working with a guide makes the process much faster and understandable.
In all of my personal mentorship programs, we use this method. Just take a peek at some of the reviews I’ve gotten recently from participants.
Where can I learn more?
You’re in luck. I’ve been documenting my own journey with this along with my friend Val Petty on our podcast, Metamorphosis. There are over 50 episodes now that walk you through understanding stress and your emotions and using essential oils to process or replace them more effectively.
But if you’d like to start with a simple and effective protocol, CLICK HERE for an easy one you can do over the course of four days. Visit the podcast to follow along with the additional oils suggested. You’ll immediately feel lighter, and if you pay attention to your thoughts at the end of each day, you’ll recognize some patterns, almost as if seeing your life from bird’s eye view, and be able to let them go. *Certified Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils are recommended.
Don’t have essential oils?
I have you covered. Click the button below to see my favorite starting places. Pick the one that fits your budget. **Essential oils that aren’t grown, distilled, and handled carefully can be oxidized, not therapeutically beneficial, or even add toxins to our system. You never have to worry that you’re getting the best quality available. I do my research, and these always come out on top.
Personalized Mentorship
By ordering essential oils and opening a customer account with doTERRA through me, you’ll also receive 50% off my Personalized Mentorship Programs, where you’ll get 8 weeks of guidance and education from me personally on shedding those deeper layers of stress and discovering and allowing strengths and talents you didn’t know you had to flow out of you effortlessly. Life can be challenging, but we don’t have to let it be chronically stressful.
*Nothing on this site is intended to treat, cure, or diagnose any physical or mental health issue. Please talk to your doctor or a licensed professional counselor if you have questions or concerns.