Repression

This is a quote from Gabor Maté’s When the Body Says No. He goes on to say that repression “disorganizes and confuses our physiological defences so that in some people these defences go awry, becoming the destroyers of health rather than its protectors.”

We all repress or dissociate to some degree but it is when we over rely on this as a style of coping rather that it can become problematic, for both mental and physical health.

That is why it is so important to directly deal with our feelings as often as we can. Otherwise they build up over time and come out in some sort of symptom. And despite having decades of research demonstrating that these symptoms can be physical, we still seem shocked by it.

The mind and body are not separate things, they are intimately intertwined parts of our being. One effects the other, full stop. Especially people with chronic stress, even if we think the chronic stress is good stress or we don’t notice that it affects us.