stress

Stress: Ways Treatments Help Number #1 Issue

sian Blog, Treatments

Stress: The Almost Universal Condition

‘So what’s the thing you see most often?’ …

This is a question I have been asked so many times down my years as an aromatherapist & massage therapist. In the beginning I usually responded with physical issues. ‘Backache’ was my standard answer for the first year or so, then it morphed into ‘neck & head’ as I started to specialize more in the power of occipital release. As the depth & breadth of my experience widened I increasingly met with clients who had physical conditions – most often cancer, but also strokes, diabetes, multiple sclerosis & other autoimmune diseases. It was only a few years ago though, during a treatment when asked the question, that I found myself answering ‘stress’. As I said it had the sudden awareness that this was indeed a remarkably uniform presenting issue. It simply hadn’t occurred to me but I thought back & realized that it was literally on nearly every clients treatment sheet. Even now, with all my blog writing it’s taken me this long to write one about the one subject that virtually every client mentions as an issue. Indeed, the majority of clients I see would say it was their main presenting issue.

Stress – In A Nutshell

The seeming difficulty in summing up stress is that there is more than one definition. Even linking to an internet site can demonstrate this. Type ‘stress’ into Wikipedia & the following appear:

Stress

Stress can refer to a number of different things

In coming to me for treatment a client is likely to be coming to me for one of the following types of stress:

  • Biological stress: usually relating to a physical injury:
    • a broken bone has been the subject of (usually mechanical) stress & this can then cause related muscular issues
    • a torn ligament
    • a strained muscle
    • a sprained ankle
    • conditions such as Adhesive Capsilitis (‘frozen shoulder’)
  • Surgical stress: clients will see me to relieve post-operative complications:
    • muscular & ligament ‘cording’  – caused by the cutting of muscles/ligaments/tendons during surgery such as a mastectomy
    • post-operative inflammation & swelling – massage & aromatherapy can assist to reduce inflammation
    • scarring – massage
    • healing – massage used to improve blood circulation

Stress – In Detail

The thing that most clients are unaware of are the ways in which stress is a physical condition which is completely tied up with the mental, psychological & emotional states. The longer I work the more I truly believe in a holistic approach. If anything I am always surprised that Allopathic Medicine (also known as ‘Western’ or ‘Modern’ medicine – a modern scientific approach to medicine) chooses to look at illness, conditions & injuries as purely physical issues in isolation, although increasingly there is research & recognition that physical issues have a mental & thus emotional & psychological effect – often through hormones.