A systems view of biological health

Section 4: Application and Practical exercises

12.1 : How distress (and sensitisation) accumulates

Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 : also see my full Copyright statement.

How distress accumulates

The lack of cultural "instruction" for properly managing the body-mind means that many people tend to focus in on distress - whether that is emotional pain/distress or physical pain, or sensory pain (such as tinnitus) or mental anguish.

I am NOT suggesting that these be ignored or that it is a generically bad thing to feel them. However, the way that our nervous system evolved requires that distress is also ameliorated with "something else" such that it does not lead to overwhelm.

Overwhelm occurs when some part of us - be that cognitive or non-conscious - "decides" that this distress has gone beyond a threshold of reaosnable tolerance, is not going away, and some longer-term adaptation must be put in place to deal with it. Or to phrase it slightly differently, longer-term adaptation to any kind of distress is a tacit recognition that the currently available resources that might bring it to an end are inadequate/insufficient - i.e. have been overwhelmed. Overwhel aaptations are "chronic" adaptations, use up energy and resources, and necessarily create a certain degree of fragmentation that in turn reduces your total resilience, adaptive capacity and metabolic efficiency.

Once overwhelm sets in, then your organism remains chronically adapted until the body-mind receives information that the event is over - which is different from (and in addition to) your cognitive "knowing" that it has finished.

The end result of all that is that distress - if focussed on - leads to more distress which eventually, sooner or later - even if you do not realise the fact - turns into chronic adaptive overwhelm. This accumulation of distress leading to chronic is in all but name a kind of PTSD.

The downward spiral of overwhelm and distress is often referred to as catastrophising - a spectacularly unhelpful way to think of it, given that the usual suggested remedy is to "pull oneself together", "man-up" and "stop thinking about it". None of which are helpful suggestions, because by the time the situation is obvious all these solutions are too late and ineffective because of the nature of the problem.

All kinds of mental-emotional states can get caught up in this feedback loop, including grief, anxiety, depression, anger, and particularly the less empowered emotions of overwhelm, helplessness and distress itself.

Also see : Specific Applications: 4. Central sensitisation