Spoiler alert: reducing stress isn’t the answer

I wrote in my monthly newsletter that went out earlier this week (If you missed it, you can sign up for my newsletters here) about grief being like cast iron. Layered, complex, each addition building upon the last.

These last few weeks have felt like they were sucking me under, and for good reason. The end of February and beginning of March holds so many storied anniversaries for me. Diagnosis dates and deaths, stories my body held and nurtured and then let go of. And it amazes me every year how the body literally changes shape in order to hold our stories. I heard psychologist Ailey Jolie talk recently about how our bodies don’t keep the score, they hold the shape, and that resonated deeply as someone who both deeply believes in somatic work and teaches shapes and movement on the yoga mat.

I’ve been engaging in different movement practices this year as part of my resolution, and I’ve noticed the shape of my body change in response. And as things begin to change shape and take form, I’ve noticed more space open up in my mind for things I haven’t yet faced head on in this way.

I was reading a paper earlier this morning about cortisol. And something about phrasing in this particular article made me pause (this all connects, I promise!)

Cortisol plays a role in the breakdown of glycogen into glucose.

Pause.

For years I’ve been treating my body like my own science experiment. I have conclusions, and from my lived experience am finding evidence to prove or deny these claims. I do not claim these things are true across the board, but I’ve been gathering the evidence in my own life and watching how these different things map onto my own body. One of these things is the effect glycogen storage disease, or long term low grade chronic starvation, on hormones and the ripple effect this would have. It seems obvious, and yet for 20+ years no one thought to look at how the inability to turn glycogen into glucose might affect things like the ability to sleep, stress hormones, personality, the nervous system.

I’ll spare you my white paper in progress but the article I was reading this morning about cortisol went into detail about how long term high cortisol not only creates chronic stress in the body but cascades into fat and muscle storage, gut issues, sleep disturbances, the inability to navigate emotions such as anger or fear and so much more. This author compared it to running on a backup generator when the primary energy system is in failure: it works but it definitely won’t give you the best power, and over time it, too, is destined to fail.

What I’ve learned in my time of using myself as my own experiment is that my body became really really good at compensating. And now that we’re no longer in that compensation survival pattern, my body has created space for everything we once suppressed to make its way to the surface. The fear, the anger, the awareness that living in chronic survival mode created deep nervous system dysfunction (hello dysautonomia).

Is that my body keeping the score? Maybe. But it’s also my body holding the shape of survival. The shape we learned how to hold because at the time it was the only thing keeping us alive.

We live in an era where biohacking trends have come online and anyone can do a quick google search and find countless articles on how to reduce cortisol. The question I’m asking goes deeper. It’s not how can we get rid of cortisol (we actually need cortisol!) but what happened for us to exist in a constant high cortisol state? What is the story behind why we took this shape?

When we see what we think is wrong, and charge straight ahead to fix it, all we’ve done is successfully create more fight energy in the body (this is something I work through with all of my 1:1 clients when it comes to chronic illness and our response to it).

What if the answer to high cortisol, or any other protective shape we’ve taken, isn’t elimination but to get curious about why it makes sense? What if the goal isn’t to get rid of it, but to embrace it?

What changes then?

In these late winter/early spring days, when the tendency of my body is to take this shape of protection, I’ve been gently prodding myself with the question of what is the story here? Why does this make sense?

Part of opening into new shapes is feeling the resistance, and the desire to curl back in where you felt comfortable, and in feeling for the edges of that comfort zone can I slowly grow them not in a way that creates more fight energy but in a way that mobilizes healthy activation?