If My Plate Could Talk : “12 Places your Body Holds Stress and How It Can Affect You”

Hello, my dear souls. It is so good to be with you today. Big inhale and exhale. We made it to another day. For those of you that are listening live, it's Friday, and welcome to if you play guitar, if this is your first time here, I'm Doctor Charryse Johnson, a licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner, and author. And on Fridays, we talk all things. Life, grief, trauma, and how we're nourishing ourselves in. In the midst of it. Grab your beverage of choice, non alcoholic, preferably, and pull on up into the space.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. It's so great to see everyone. We typically start two ways. One, tell us where you are in the world. It's important. It's exciting. I love it. I love just even thinking in our mind of all the people that are joining from all over the place. And two, I want you to rate your week, but not just rate your week, in terms of productivity, because we often rate our weeks in terms of, have I gotten everything done that I wanted to accomplish? I mean, rate your week.

What's up, Philly? In terms of today, your emotional world. Hello, upstate South Carolina. How are you internally doing? On a scale of one to ten? Yay. I'm glad that you could be here twice this week. Hello, Charleston. So, one being the lowest. Hello, Lake Erie, Pa. Hello, Houston. Hello, Michigan. Whoo. We got a lot of variety today, and ten being the highest. If I would rate my emotional week, I mean, I'm gonna say it's a solid eight. It has been a crazy, busy week, but I have. I've held strong.

What's up, Virginia? In the way I'm navigating it. Little rough spots this morning, but that's because I'm just tired. But it's good things, coffee, and then let's get into it. One of the most damaging things that we can ever do to ourself from any lens, is to lose our sense of self awareness. Hello, northern Minnesota. It is so significant and important for us to not be overwhelmed, but be constantly asking ourselves, way to go, those of you who are giving yourselves nines and tens. And, of course, there's no shame wherever you land.

This is just an opportunity to communicate and voice. Hello, Atlanta. But it's important for us to stay self aware. I want us to shift that self awareness not just onto where we are mentally, but also looking at how we physically may show up and how we may have psychosomatic symptoms that are letting us know that something's wrong. And here's why we can get into the throes of life and doing all the things that we do and push me. I want to do well in this, and I've been running 20 miles a week and I've done all my circuits and I've done all the things, but then you slow down and realize, oh, that hurts a little bit.

Oh, this is a little bit more difficult than it used to be. And it's not about looking for what's wrong. We always want to focus on what's right. But it's important that we understand that our body is always a signal of what is happening in our mind and what is happening in our spirit. So let's talk today. Twelve places that your body holds stress and how that affects you. Before we get to that, I also want to ask our quintessential question that I wanna check in on every week. If your plate could talk, what is it telling you out yourself, if you're comfortable?

This is an invitation to share. What have you noticed about how you are nourishing yourself this week? What are you plating? What have you noticed about the food choices that you are making? We always look at it as a tangible plate, but also, what are you plating in terms of metaphorically? What are you notice about your appetite towards certain things? I think a great example of that is if you notice, yeah, something's been a little different with me this week. I have stayed up later and I've been binge watching a show.

What is that appetite? To stay up beyond what's really ideal for you, telling you about what's on your plate. So if you're comfortable, invitation to share what happens on Cadre stays on Cadre. So it doesn't go anywhere but to us. But it's a great place to go. Wow. I don't even think I noticed that until you ask me along the other line of the spectrum. Also know that a rigid plate, you being obsessive with what you're eating and what you're doing and not being flexible with yourself is also a psychosomatic, potentially psychosomatic warning sign.

So it's helpful. Yeah. What's going on with your sugar? Haven't craved this week unlike the week before. Oh, what did I do different? Was it mindset? Was it hormones? Was it less stress? Being able to put those dots together and also figuring out what helped me this week that I wasn't able to pull into last week, but always doing it through a lens of compassion and awareness, because beating yourself up over what you see is never the goal. Twelve places your body holds stress and affects you. As I go through these twelve places, I want you to do what we call semantically tracked.

I want you to go to that place in your body and really think, okay, what have I noticed over the last week? And kind of give yourself maybe a point for each area that I name, and then by the end you're going to rate yourself out of twelve just to say, oh, I am noticing something there. Because your physical body will often tell you what your mind does not, or your physical body will acknowledge what you refuse to acknowledge in your mind by first. Number one, first place is your lower back. Your lower back stores most of your unexpressed anger.

So if you're an individual that you feel like I have had some recent lower back pain that is unexplained to anything else, or you notice that that is an area that's spikes and peaks when you have stress that is often equated to the lower back. Now let me give the disclaimer and say, I am not your chiropractor, I'm not your acupuncturist, I am not your medical team. This is not an all encompassing dynamic. You may sometimes have physical dynamics that are the cause for your lower back pain or even hormonal dynamics.

We're just looking at this through the lens of mind body. And so take it as a piece of information to add to what you know about yourself and what you know about your body. Number two, your gut, you may be experiencing if you're holding a lot of stress, even stress that you're not acknowledging in your gut, you may notice some bloating, some indigestion, some acid reflux, increased or decreased hunger. And as many of you acknowledged, acknowledged, you're going to see a difference in what you create.

Wave. Your gut is a phenomenal indicator into how you're really doing and your ability to navigate all of the things that you are currently carrying. Number three, your torso. When you think torso, I want you to think heart and chest cavity, because your chest and your heart hold hurt. So if you have repressed feelings of hurt and of disappointment, whether those are recent or they've accumulated over time, then you'll find that you may have some unexplained chest pain or tightness. And that is always something that I want you to pay attention to.

Every little nook and cranny of your body is a messenger and telling a story. And I cannot say enough around how important it is for overall well being to make sure that you are staying aware. Yeah, ab workouts don't count. I mean, they do, but not in the same way. Number four, your head. Headaches, brain fog. Really having a difficult time focusing and concentrating. And outside of those of you who might be neurodivergent, outside of your normal struggles, like, you know, the difference between, oh, my neurodivergent mind just can't focus right now.

I need to do something. And you know when you're, like, sitting in that loop of just spinning and nothing is happening. Number five, your respiratory system. I have a client, and she's so funny, because whenever she's stressed, she immediately gets some little upper respiratory something. A cold in the middle of nowhere, a scratchy throat over mucus production can actually be a cause of stress. But when your respiratory system is not imbalanced, you're going to notice that you also feel shallow breathing and shortness of breath.

Whereas when we're in a good, calm place, we're able to breathe deeply. Right. We can test this right now. Take a moment, take a breath in, hold it, and then breathe out. Even with that one breath, if you felt like it was really difficult to take a big, deep breath or it kind of panicked you to take a deep breath, then we know you're holding something in your respiratory system, in your torso where things feel tight and constricted. If you notice, I said take a deep breath, and your shoulders went right.

Then everything is up here and your body isn't in a relaxed state because an actual deep breath, your shoulders don't move, your abdomen extends out, and then when you inhale, it comes up and out through the mouth. So that's something to keep in mind and something that you can practice as well yourself. Number six, your shoulders, when you are overworked, have too many responsibilities. We're often going to see high levels of moderate to intense pain that exist on the sides of the neck and on the shoulders.

I can out myself. I'm not wearing my brace at the moment because it didn't match my outfit. I'm kidding. It's upstairs somewhere. But I got frozen shoulder, which can definitely be, like, hormonal and a part of age. But I also remember when I first went in to get it worked on. Every person that worked on my shoulders was like, girl, what are you carrying? What is going on in your life? And so let me also acknowledge that sometimes we shoulder responsibilities that we asked for. We are shouldering things that we welcome and that we enjoy.

But if it's out of balance for our frame, it can still be too much. So, side question for reflection, something I would love for you to think about as you go throughout the week. What am I shouldering in life right now? Part b of that question, what am I shouldering that I welcome? What am I shouldering that I wish I could release? What am I shouldering in life right now? What am I shouldering that I welcome? And what am I shouldering that I wish that I could release? Because you may also be holding on to dynamics and issues and struggles and that have been thrown your way that you would not have chosen for yourself or that are part of your life.

Responsibility or vocational responsibility and kind of come with the territory, but they still can be heavy. Number seven, your sleep. When you have inconsistencies in your sleep, of course it's going to impact your appetite, it's going to impact your physical activity, because you're going to go through fluctuations around your energy and your output. But the other dynamic is over time. If your sleep is inconsistent, it increases the chances of you having diabetes, hypertension, and mood changes.

So one of the quickest ways that you can support the reduction of your stress levels is always going to be how am I doing with my sleep? What's interrupting my sleep, and how do I get that back on track? Recommendations is always seven plus hours to try to get in on a consistent basis. And having one night a week where you sleep until noon the next day doesn't make up for weeks of not sleeping. For those of you that are like, but I sleep in every Saturday, doesn't matter. You actually need it on a consistent basis in order to help reset your circadian rhythm.

Number eight, your jaw having tightness in your jaw. Noticing that you're grinding your teeth, noticing that it's very tight and tense that you're holding pain in your face can also be another dynamic of stressors. This is not necessarily on my list, but since I'm talking about jaw and face, you can also notice that there will be certain areas of your face that can be prone to breakouts when you're stressed because that's coming through your endocrine system, which is trying to balance things. So if I think again, you can look at a face map that talks about stressors, but we often see that individuals who are navigating high stress will have some level of a breakout right here between the eyebrows, which is actually one of the most central and closest places that we can come in contact with the vagus nerve.

Fun fact, but we also see it down the sides of the head as well, and then occasionally and hormonally right here at the edge of the chin. So you'll notice hormonal changes, appetite changes, stress changes, then comes up through the skin and may hit some of those spots. So again, all of those are indicators that there's a recipe in place where, oh, I want to pay attention to my stress and recognize how it can impact me and then look at what I need to do, what you need to do in order to reset. Number nine, pelvic floor.

And this is a big one that often gets overlooked. Male or female pelvic floor is important, especially if you do not want to be senior adult with incontinence. You know, that is a dynamic, most importantly, of having a weak pelvic floor. Our pelvic floor, when it is weak due to stress, means that there's a severed connection with our core muscles. So we also know that individuals who have pelvic floor issues also typically have lower back issues and. And weak abs. So, side note, doesn't matter how old you are, ab work is important.

It is important for your pelvic floor. It is important for your lower back. It is important for that little crop top you want to wear, but it holds a lot of importance for keeping things together. And your core is also your stability factor. It's the difference between being an aging adult that can have shoulders back and a straight spine versus being an aging adult that may be hunched over and have an arched back. So do not neglect core work. Even if you think that you're at your body set point and you're not trying to get a six pack.

It's not about a six pack. It's about keeping everything from the top of your head all the way down to the bottom of your feet in alignment and keeping those things strengthened. Number ten, your hips. Some of you have heard me say this before that often in the world of psychotherapy, counseling psychology, we call the hips the junk of the trunk, because it's where a lot of individuals store pain. So if you are prone to sciatica issues or you notice that if you're a runner and you start to kind of hobble and cadence or hold pain in your hips when you increase activity, one, you may need to do some hip flexors and things that help open up your hip flexors and get more flexibility there.

But the other dynamic is that's often a place that we hold, especially historical trauma and stress that has not resolved over time. Number eleven, your voice and your throat. And I want to look at this from two angles. I know we're focused on the physical but I just want to add this as well. Physically, when you are stressed, you will notice changes to your voice and throat. A sore throat out of nowhere, some raspiness and hoarseness. That's the physical aspect from a mental dynamic. You may find that you lose your voice in the sense of you lose your confidence in speaking up and communicating yourself.

When you're stressed, we often have a tendency to back away and just go, I don't really feel like dealing with it or you're vocalizing too much because you're so stressed. So you might find that you go from one extreme to the other. And then number twelve, your lungs. When you are more stressed than you typically are, or more stressed than you're aware of, you may find that you're a little bit more exhausted and breathless. Why is all of this important? Keeping a good kind of somatic awareness of what's happening to your body is also going to clue you into what's happening.

Your mind, these things also impact your ability to move. So we're constantly talking about the importance of consistent movement. So if you also find, hey, I'm not able to get through my workouts the way that I typically would, what's going on? We could probably track it to your exhaustion and your stress in some way. I want to add a piece that I was talking about last night with a group of people. You may be in a situation where there are things in your life that there is part of you that wants to go doing this.

Caring for this, having this responsibility is a burden. And we often shy away from calling something a burden because we think that's bad. Number one, it is not bad to consider something a burden. It's your truth. And you have the right to use whatever words and language that you want to, to create truth for yourself. Number two, I want you to consider burden differently. I want you to think about burden as something that is deeply buried within you. A worry, a concern, whether it's in your face all the time or whether it's a concern that you have that's coming, whether it's something that you're working to avoid.

There are things that burden us because they're deeply heavy and they're with us no matter what, even in the moments that we're not recognizing them. It is important for you to acknowledge where you are deeply carrying burdens, because you think about it. If you have deep burdens inside that you're not acknowledging, and you're shouldering the weight of the world and the weight of other people and not acknowledging that is a recipe for a crushed system that is not going to move through life the way that you want it.

Two, the key is when you're able to acknowledge what you're shouldering and the burdens that are there and how they're showing up on the things that you're doing, what are you putting on your plate, how they're showing up and the way that you feed yourself is to go, what can I do to balance this narrative? What can I do to release some of the things that are on my shoulder? How can I take what's burdening me and move it up to the surface and address it, and focus on it and communicate it and accept it?

Often things that are deeply burdening us are also things that we're trying to fix, that aren't ours to fix, and that we also need to accept and then move into a completely different course of action because we can't change it. This is a thought may not be for everybody and doesn't completely have anything to do with what I am saying, but you cannot change anyone. So the burdens that you have that are towards other people and what you wish was different in them, I encourage you to release. Yes, the body keeps the score is a phenomenal book.

Read it slowly. It's super heavy, but a phenomenal book about how our bodies hold trauma and pain. But again, back to the point. You cannot change people. And so holding the burden of responsibility for what someone is not is a burden that you were not intended to carry or to shoulder. At least if you're going to have deep burdens and shoulder something, let it be more centered around the things that you can actually change. And that is only you. I will say it again, you cannot change anyone. So as you always take time on Fridays, or if you choose to, to take inventory of what's on your plate, I also want you to go, what's on my plate that doesn't belong on my plate, what's on my plate that I've put on there because somebody else doesn't have a plate, and I allow them to throw things on my way, or I go, okay, well, if they won't do that, then I will reach onto their plate and I'll take care of it.

You cannot take care of the world. You cannot take care of the world. Somebody needs to hear that. You cannot take care of the world. That will crush you. That is too much to shoulder. That will grieve you, that will overwhelm you. So if you found yourself in a cycle of, oh, that's kind of my pattern. I take care of everybody, take care of everybody, take care of myself a little bit on the side, then I crash and burn. Then I, you know, get upset because nobody's doing anything in my life because they're all expecting you to do it and then you do that on repeat.

That is a dynamic, okay? So use this as a way to continue to rate yourself. Every week is going to be different, but it's a really easy snapshot to go. How's my lower back, how's my gut, how's my torso, my head, respiratory system, shoulders, sleep, jaw, pelvic floor, hips, voice and throat and lungs. I've also found that individuals who are really not into, like, therapy, psychology philosophy will do this as a rating. So if you have a partner, spouse or children that you want to invite into this process, go like, hey, I learned this new skill that semantically tracks what's happening in your body, which also might give some indication to how you're feeling in your mind.

You know, let's go through each of these areas and let's rate ourselves. I'm going to tell you my number out of twelve, you tell me yours. We don't need to do anything about that number. You're not trying to solve their life, but you are giving them a tool to go, oh, I never thought about paying it attention. And wow, I got a six. If you have a five or above, you've got some work to do, right? Anywhere below a five, decent, good. We would expect that. But if you are six, seven, 8910 1112, then we want you to really take some inventory around what you want to address every so often.

And I need to do a much better job. I try to share with you another provider that I have been listening to that I have found helpful to me. So provider of the week spotlight is Anila on June 19 at 330. She does a short live called leading with love that I thought was great. If you are also looking to get to know other providers on the platform, I encourage you to hop over to her live and check it out. But until then, have a phenomenal, phenomenal weekend. Take care of yourself. And again, you cannot change anyone.

You cannot save the entire world. You just need to focus on yourself and then help others out of your overflow. All right, we'll talk soon. Have a good one.