Chronic Illness Creates Physical Stress
Janie has a chronic illness that causes her to be admitted to the hospital — often the ICU — relatively frequently. Her condition becomes urgent, throwing her electrolyte balance, her pH balance, and her other systems into disarray. Each time she’s admitted, she suffers dreadfully with overwhelming nausea, vomiting…. and her awareness dims. Janie needs resilience to get her through these times.
When this happens, she’s under extreme physical stress.
At the same time, Janie fights depression related to feelings of inadequacy because the hospitalizations that occur so often have interrupted the normal development of her life. Being sick has put her life on pause. She blames herself for not building a career, and considers herself “worthless” because of her lack of success in the business world.
So Janie suffers from physical and emotional stress. Unbelievable stress. And expanding shame.
Work Pressure Creates Mental Stress
Brandon has a severely stressful job. As a manager in a fast-paced, intense environment, he is constantly bombarded with problems that need to be resolved. Things his team members are not in a position to solve themselves. The mental stress of this constant bombardment prevents him from having even a few minutes to recover. Brandon works from 8am to 10pm… and often through the weekend. Sometimes the bombardment continues far into the night.
He has very little time with his family, and wonders how long he can hold up under this prolonged onslaught of demands. The mental strain he experiences threatens to break him.
Janie and Brandon need a heaping dose of resilience. We can think of resilience as the power to quickly bounce back and recover from extreme stress.
Stress can be emotional, mental, or physical. All three types of stress can prune and wear down the synapses, or connections, between brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the amygdala. According to research, the prefrontal cortex has heavy connections to the emotion-linked areas of the brain in people with a lot of resilience.
You NEED those connections.
Resilience Can Diminish if Not Supported
While it’s true that the prefrontal cortex is heavily connected to the emotions in a resilient person, non-stop stressors can still wear down those connections and resilience can wane. When your resilience is high, you have incredible flexibility of thought. But as your resilience diminishes, so does that flexibility. So does the synaptic plasticity that creates it.
There is a plethora of neurotransmitters that play a part in resilience: norepinephrine, neuropeptide Y, galanin, corticotropin releasing hormone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S), dopamine, serotonin, abrineurin (BDNF), and allopregnanolone (ALLO). These neurotransmitters and proteins are an integral part of the networks that help create resilience.
And here’s an important point: not only is your gut involved in your response to stress, but large parts of your brain are involved in your response to stressful stimuli. Are you resilient in your response to the stress you face? Resilient people use higher levels of brain power — as in 3 times the number of genes — than those who have less resilience.
Think about that.
Developing Resilience
And how you develop resilience is influenced by your personality, your temperament, physical fitness, and your social support network. Do you see stress as a challenge or a threat….? It’s unclear how much of a role genetics play in developing resilience, but you can improve your ability to recover from stress by choosing an optimistic solution to problems, by honing a problem-solving outlook, by investing yourself in seeking what’s important to you in life and what brings meaning to it for you, by surrounding yourself with people who support and believe in you.
Pushing Yourself to Stretch Beyond Your Comfort Zone
You can also develop your own confidence by pushing the envelope, and see how much you can accomplish under duress… without disrupting your peace of mind. And you can support and help others with their challenges…which helps them and puts your own life challenges into perspective. And, by the way, this keeps your brain engaged in life, projects, work, and pleasure.
Can Janie or Brandon stretch? Can you?
When Janie’s in the ICU, and barely conscious from her severe condition, she’s not in a position to apply these lessons to improve her resilience. But when she recovers—each time she recovers—it’s a good time to think about her outlook, her problem solving, and her optimism.
And when Brandon’s in the throes of one thing going wrong after another at work, he may not be able to think of anything but the pressures that pound him. But when he’s off, he can work on his outlook, his physical fitness, his purpose, and he can choose to surround himself with people who support him and believe in him.
Sounds good, right?
Except when it doesn’t work.
When the onslaughts of stress are severe, they can wear down those connections between brain cells and reduce the neurotransmitters… and it may be just too overwhelming to build resilience.
You may need help with that.
IV Ketamine Can Restore Resilience
IV ketamine can restore resilience. It can build up the connections between brain cells in the prefrontal cortex. It can give you the benefit of turbo charged BDNF to create dendritic growth and spark those connections. The more connections, or synapses, the more you can reach out and the world can reach in. The better you feel.
Then you have the freedom to build your own inner thought life to support the resilience you’ve gained as a result of treatment. It’s a sort of “leg up” to better living and recovery ability.
Do you have stressors that overwhelm you? Have you tried treatments or medications that haven’t helped?
IV ketamine treatment can set you on higher ground, so you can not only develop resilience but you can maintain it. So you can face difficulty with confidence.
Let’s work together to equip you to thrive — not just cope — with the challenges you face.
You have just one life. Make it a joyful one filled with hope and confidence.
We’re here to help
To the restoration of your best self,
