Feeling a bit worn out or freaked out these days? Yeah, join the club.
You’ve probably heard by now that stress-related diseases and conditions rank among the top contributors to our country’s healthcare expenses. Many sources suggest that up to 85 percent of all doctor’s-office visits are in some way tied to stress. Many chronic diseases have a stress-related component. And today, more than 50 percent of U.S. adults have been diagnosed with at least one chronic disease.
Unfortunately, most people have no idea how many ways stress can decimate their health, or what they can do to stop it. We live in a culture where nobody teaches us this stuff. Which means that most of us have to learn it for ourselves — the hard way.
That was certainly true for me. I’ve written at length about some of my more salient stress lessons: The time my eyelashes fell out; the time I got a stubborn rash on my face; the time I broke my own foot stomping in frustration; the countless times I struggled to sleep, or felt my inner taskmaster turn into a bullying abuser of every biochemical and neurological system it could lay its nasty hands on.
I’ve also written quite a bit about the strategies I’ve used (and still rely on) to reduce, manage, and offset stress. I’ll share some of those with you in just a moment (and I talk about them at much greater length in my new book, The Healthy Deviant). But first, I want to talk about juju.
A Force of Life and Light
“Juju” is not a scientific term. It’s a word (of West African origin) that refers to a special sort of magic — a power believed to be associated with certain objects and conferred upon those who own or touch them.
According to the shamanistic traditions that believe in such things, there’s good juju and bad juju. You definitely want the good kind, which is thought to be protective, energizing, and happiness-bringing. The bad kind, well, it’s bad. So let’s stick with the good kind for now.
In modern-day slang, “juju” has taken on a broader, more secular meaning. It typically refers to a sort of positive, ineffable, magnetic power — an energy, feeling, or vibe that any of us can create, give off, or experience (in some cases without even realizing it). But when it’s not there, or when bad juju is present, we tend to feel drained. We sense that things are off.
Here’s what I’ve noticed about juju, healthwise: A decline in good juju both signals and compounds the decline of resiliency, as well as the onset of body-damaging stress.
When you are stressed out, your juju is one of the first things to go. You feel less positive and energetic. You are less open and receptive, more reactive and critical about everything around you. And the less good juju you have, the more vulnerable you become to stress’s physiological effects.
The Vicious Cycle of Stress and Vulnerability
Feeling stressed out and run down leaves you at the mercy of cravings, temptation, and bad decisions — about what you eat and drink, whether or not you exercise, how much TV you watch, when (or if) you leave work, when you go to bed, and so on.
On the one hand, we’re inclined to think we deserve indulgent and unhealthy things as “rewards” or consolation for what we are enduring (or as an antidote to what we are feeling), even when those things (sugar, fried foods, alcohol, late nights, serial-TV binges) tend to make things much harder on our bodies and minds.
And on the other hand, we may feel that we deserve punishment for somehow not being good enough (because if only we and our lives were perfect, we wouldn’t be having all these challenges, right?).
Carrying this sense of shame can lead us to deny ourselves access to good nutrition, activity, rest, breaks, connection, sleep, sacred space, and self-care of any kind.
Meanwhile, a distracted, reactive, or urgent state of mind can also lead to rushing, carelessness, reduced body consciousness, tunnel vision, and accidents. It’s when you’re most stressed out and moving too fast that you’re also most likely to stub your toe, trip and fall, strain your back, break a glass, slam your finger in a drawer, cut yourself shaving, or pull out into traffic without looking.
Perhaps worst of all, feeling freaked out can lead us to distance ourselves from, snap at, or avoid the very people who might otherwise help us access the perspective, support, and comfort we need to recognize and break out of our stress cycle. We steer clear of precisely the people who might encourage us to pause, who might remind us what really matters, who might empower us to feel better.
As noted, all of these problem dynamics tend to be the cause as well as the result of a reduction in good juju, and thus, instigators of what I call “the vicious cycle of the Unhealthy Default Reality” — an insidious, self-perpetuating cycle in which your juju is continuously depleted.
How to Regenerate Your Juju
So, how can you turn things around? How can you reclaim your healthy juju and get your vitality back on track?
Above all, know that your juju matters — not just to you, but to everybody around you. Because good juju breeds more good juju. And this multi-challenged world of ours can never have too much of that.
More on Healthy Deviance from Pilar Gerasimo
Pilar Gerasimo is a nationally recognized healthy-living expert, podcaster, speaker, and author of the forthcoming book, The Healthy Deviant: A Rule Breaker’s Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World (due out Jan. 7, 2020 from North Atlantic Books). Learn more and pre-order now at HealthyDeviant.com.
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