The Micro-trauma of Rushing

Deanna Minich
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

I’ve been thinking a lot about my immune system over the past months, especially when I had an autoimmune flare in November that lasted until February.

I was like, but how can that happen? I do everything “right”.

Healthy, whole food — check
Quality supplements and knowing what to take and for what — check
Physical activity — well, a light check there, but it hasn’t really changed too much over the past years
Stress — nothing too major, but wait a minute, maybe there is something there.

It has come more and more into my awareness how I have been connected to the consistent micro-trauma of rushing.

Since I was young, I feel like I’ve tried to plan as best I can because I didn’t like to rush. It would stress me out.
And now, as an adult, I feel like I’ve created a pattern of rushing through my life. It’s been subconsciously woven in.

Rushing to make the movie on time
Rushing to get to the ferry
Rushing to the airport
Rushing to meet deadlines
Rushing to try to fit multiple things in simultaneously
Rushing to make appointments

So. Much. Rushing.

And I don’t think I saw outside of myself to see what was happening for me.
And when I started reading books on trauma, I realized that each time I was rushing, I was subjecting myself to hurt, to pain, to abnormal body adrenaline. It was making an epigenetic groove within me and the micro-stresses were becoming magnified each time.

I could feel it in the flutter of my heart.
I could sense it in the turn of my gut.
I could see it in the tumult of my thinking.

I was on a low-level overdrive, trying to smash it all in.
And just because I wasn’t going through a major stress, I hadn’t considered the piling up of all the seemingly “minor” stresses.

For a long time, I’ve been staring at stress in the eye.
Feeling like I figured him out.
But I realized there is a blind spot.

I thought it was about doing less.
But it’s not just that.
Because we could cut down our workload,
yet still feel the effects of rushing.

It’s about the manner in which we do things.
The release of oneself from the energy of the rush.
Because while the rush may feel exhilarating,
it eventually wears off and
tips to the other side
to become exhaustion.

Letting go of the rush.
Letting go of the hurry.
Letting go of my grip on adrenaline.
Letting go of tiny traumas to my body.

Deanna Minich

DR. DEANNA MINICH is a health educator, researcher, & author with more than twenty years of experience in nutrition, mind-body health, and functional medicine.

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