COUNSELING ORLANDO GOALS
OVERCOMING THE EFFECTS OF STRESS
Counseling Orlando focuses on helping clients with their mental health issues. This can range from how to stop anxiety attacks, to a couple avoiding divorce by seeking marriage counseling, to helping professionals develop a better work-life balance. The issues can also be more deeply rooted, such as post-traumatic stress, to trouble with self-identity or self-advocacy, to helping clients develop healthier self-esteem, body image, or better self-worth. Although the issues therapists work with vary, there is one theme that counselors in Orlando see quite often. That is the negative impact that stress has on mental health, relationships, and overall personal health and wellness.
Individual counselors at Orlando Thrive Therapy see clients who suffer from the effects of tension, stress, anxiety, and depression daily. The toll these issues take on the body is tangible. That is why we collaborate with holistic health professionals who can address these areas and help promote total healing. Holistic practitioners are skilled at helping you find areas within your body that are affected by stress.
COUNSELING ORLANDO
NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF STRESS
Through this process you can become aware of the negative effects of anxiety or stress on your body. The physical responses can be seen through tension headaches, muscle soreness or fatigue, blurred vision, cramping or pain, and many other symptoms. Taking an inventory of your overall health from a holistic wellness perspective can help you avoid expensive and irreversible medical interventions.
There is a multitude of contributing factors that can influence how your body holds tension or muscle pain. The most common reasons are listed below.
COUNSELING ORLANDO
Stress and Anxiety
Counseling Orlando practices see a steady stream of clients that report stress and anxiety as being the main cause of their tension or muscle pain. Stress is a mind and body response to any pressure or demand, and frequent feelings of worry, stress, and anxiety create tension throughout your body. Some of the most common stressors are relationships, caregiving, work, change, and major illness. You want to recognize what areas of your life are stressors for you, and also realize that your perception of an experience will dictate how stressful it is for your mind and body.
COUNSELING ORLANDO
Stress Effects On The Body
When stressed or anxious, your muscles and connective tissues grow tight. Therefore, constant stress means you will have continual muscle tightness. Repeated tightening in your body will inevitably lead you to back and shoulder pain, body aches, and headaches, to name a few. Holistic health specialists such as massage therapists, acupuncturists, nutritional coach's, or energy healers target to get to the root of these physical symptoms for healing. This allows for your individual counseling sessions to target the underlying mental health healing, while your physical symptoms find relief.
Muscle Tension/Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is like muscle tension, and it can be defined by increased muscle tension for a long period of time (i.e. longer than three months). You develop chronic pain in various ways. The most obvious cause is an injury, such as a sprained ankle or pulled muscle. However, chronic pain can also be a result of constant emotional stress.
Fascia Contractions
Fascia is connective tissue in your body that attaches everything together- nerves, blood vessels, organs, tendons, ligaments, muscles, and bones. Fascia is important, not only because it connects the body together, but it also can contract in response to emotional and physical stress. In physical stress, the fascia contracts to heal the body, such as in the case of an injury.
When fascia contracts in response to emotional stress, it causes tension and tightness without the healing effect. Fascia contraction is increased by the sympathetic nervous system (i.e. the stress response of the body). This contraction is decreased by the parasympathetic nervous system (i.e. the relaxation response of the body), creating ease inside the body.
Releasing fascia is one way to directly decrease pain within the body.
COUNSELING ORLANDO
Best Help Strategies for Stress
There are a number of individual counselors that use a holistic approach to therapy. You should use an Orlando counselor that works collaboratively with holistic specialists so that your treatment can be streamlined and most effective. This option is the best to try before you attempt more invasive options, such as medication, or expensive invasive treatments. The best way to start is to consult with a counselor that is able to determine the nature of the symptoms and recommend an individual treatment plan. One of the best techniques is to use some form of body movement or muscle release. These can be found through massage and yoga.
Massage
Massage is one way to work through tension in your body. Deep tissue massage has been shown to relieve stiffness and tension throughout the body efficiently, leaving you feeling relief instantly. Trigger point therapy is a form of massage that targets knots, or muscle tension due to stress, trauma, or chronic overload. This type of alternative therapy can also be done fully-clothed and is highly effective for releasing tension and reducing physical or mental stress.
Yoga
Yin yoga is especially beneficial because of its direct focus on fascia release. In fact, fascia responds especially well to long-held stretches, as it takes time to allow the body to open up and go deeper into the muscles and tissues via stretching.
In Yin yoga, the practitioner will hold a deep stretch for around 3-5 minutes, or more. A class is typically 60-75 minutes in length, allowing you to get into various areas of the body, or to focus around various parts of one area (e.g. the back) for a more direct approach to specific pain. Yoga is a form of self-massage.
When done regularly, yoga and massage can bring more serenity to your life by healing tightness in the body. Not only will you gain the physical benefits of tension release, but the mind will follow suit.
COUNSELING ORLANDO
Email us for more information or schedule a consultation or call 407-592-8997 with an Orlando counseling specialist today to understand how to relieve chronic stress, anxiety, mental fatigue, and depression. Our team of counselors works collaboratively with holistic health specialists at our office to develop the best treatment plan for you to meet your physical and mental health goals.
