Jessica Baum, LMHC

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Why You’re Trapped in Cycles of Stress

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Have you recently thought or maybe even said, “I don’t want to be an adult anymore.” Or maybe you’re regularly feeling alone, suffocated, or not enough. Adults all have one thing in common. We are all carrying around the attachment patterns, belief systems, and core wounds from our childhoods. These thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences are the primary source of most of the behaviors and feelings we carry with us every day.

They are also what often keep us trapped in cycles of stress that lead to burn out and survival mode.

Attachment and Stress

How we adapted to stay in connection with our primary caregivers as children is what builds our attachment style (or patterns as I like to say) and belief systems. These adapted behaviors lead to an insecure or secure attachment. If you focused more on their needs to stay connected, you’re likely anxiously attached. If you focused yourself to become independent and self-sufficient from caregivers, you’re likely more avoidant. If you do a little bit of both, you might have a fearful attachment.

Click here to take a quick quiz to find out which attachment style fits you most.

When you live in fear and insecurity it shows up in all areas of your life. Either you can be an over giver and fit into anxious attachment or you can be disconnected from your needs all together and have some avoidant patterns. Either way you are likely being driven from a deep place of fear. This fear keeps you from exiting a stressed or survival state.

Core Wounds and Stress Cycles

When you’re struggling with an underlying fear of abandonment, suffocation, or not feeling enough, you can make an assumption that these bigger fears were started, developed, and calcified from a very early age. Often many of us with deeper wounds will overcompensate in the area of their life that we believe we need to control in order to feel safe, secure, loved, and valued.

Click here to learn more about core wounds.

Sometimes this shows up in working yourself to the bone and staying busy. Something our modern culture and its highlight on “doing more” applauds. To stay in this state, you have to push or shut down parts of yourself to adapt. This can mean you become a little producer of work and cut out the parts of you that are sad, carefree, silly, creative, or fun.

This self abandonment leads so many of us to stay in a constant state of stress, leading to feeling like we are just surviving.

Survival and Burn Out

Your nervous system, attachment patterns, beliefs, adapted strategies (and patterns), and deep wounds are all connected in such a way that, if left unaddressed, they literally start to make the choices in your life. It often feels like you’re just struggling every day to keep your head above the water.

Feeling like this is a sign that you are out of alignment with your true nature and inherent right to be a human being. You shift out of a place of relaxation and move into overdrive and “doing” more of what you think you need to be doing to get a desired outcome.

I know this won’t come as a surprise, but this is a one way ticket to burn out.

The Problem of “Doing More”

You’ll likely only hear positive remarks and praise for always doing more at work and life. Our culture sees it as being successful, and some people just see it as completely normal. The thing most miss is, “doing more” is a way to protect yourself from other feelings and fears. If you’re constantly in this mode, you’re going to burn out.

This constant state of “doing” leads to hypervigilance and stress cycles that your body starts to become used to. This can also lead to many physical symptoms like inflammation and disease.

Being “busy” to either make your partner, boss, or even friends happy, or to prove yourself, will only leave you disappointed when you have zero energy left for yourself. It's a form of self abandonment that happens from an insecure attachment and a total lack of trust in the world and others. It’s telling you that it’s not okay to slow down, ask for help, or allow others to assist you.

You’re likely not even aware that you’re stuck in this stressful state that is trapping you and constantly making you desperate for the weekend so you can numb out in an attempt to “recover.”

How to Know if You’re Trapped in Survival Mode

Force yourself to slow down just for a few moments so you can ask yourself these questions. I know it’s likely not going to be comfortable for you, especially as you stare out your ever-growing to do list. But I assure you, you need this.

  • Where are you putting your energy, and why?

  • Do you feel balanced most of the time or in chaos?

  • What fears are underlying your drive and are they rational?

  • Who do you give your power away to and why?

  • Do you feel depleted most of the time?

  • Is there enough time in your day to rest, play, and create (yes, every day)?

Why It’s Hard to Leave Survival Mode

From the answers you gave, you likely realized that you’re trapped in this cycle of stress and you’re ready to get out of survival mode. But how? Even just slowing down enough to answer those questions likely felt hard, so how can you be expected to slow down even more?

Especially when we live in a culture that promotes and even expects us to keep going, doing, and avoid resting.

But what’s worse is the discomfort that inevitably comes when you slow down. The thoughts start racing, memories bubble to the surface, and the feelings can be unbearable. You can spend your entire life running and avoiding what will come up when you slow down. You will have to address your underlying fears around not being good enough, not doing enough, and needing help. We have to become okay with letting go and being with the fear of disappointing others so that we can have the time to heal.

Unwinding and Slowing Down

It will take time to slow down and unwind. You have been in this place for a long time. It will take time to tend to your nervous system and be with the urges to do more while you honor trying to do less. It will be a process of peeling back all of the layers and the many ways you’ve adapted to protect yourself from the parts of yourself that are harder to sit with.

In my private practice, Be Self-Full, I hear clients regularly share with so much vulnerability that they will do anything to not feel the “void” or not feel alone.

But there is magic in being with these parts and allowing others to help you navigate the uncharted areas of the inner world that you are avoiding. There is freedom in facing your fears (with support) and having the liberation of no longer being driven by so much stress and fear. It can feel deeply nourishing to work through the hard stuff and truly rest.

Are You Ready?

Your life was never meant to be a sprint. There is no end goal or gold star waiting at the end for doing life perfectly. If you’ve read all the way to the bottom, it’s time to slowly get off of the hamster wheel and find the right support.


Do you want to learn how to build healthier boundaries and leave the stress cycle behind?

Grab my online course, Boundaries From Within, to learn how to build boundaries that help you meet your needs.