Section II: I'm Afraid to Say

Terrorhood

I find myself reacting in a way that I believe keeps me safe, from a childhood that's not over yet. It's over.

We heal in relationship with ourselves and with others. To talk, to express myself...
Nature's way to relieve the internal pressures (stress cycles) that build up each day.
A way to keep me clear and clutter free.

One of the most important functions of living is to express myself. Expressing myself is how I clean stress out of my system. Stress is caused by internal pressures that build up each day in the natural course of exposing myself to my environment.

Stress is natural and takes on many forms but all these forms have a common pattern.

The Background

All stress has a cycle. The cycle of stress is moving from a peaceful state to an uncomfortable state and back to a peaceful state (figure 1). An uncomfortable state is not a negative state; it is only a state which is other than peaceful.

Stress may be divided into two categories, "bio-stressors" and "emotional stressors." Bio-stressors are biological forces which act on the body. Some examples of bio-stressors are listed below.

Examples of Bio-stressors

• Gas - gas build up in the stomach and/or intestines
• Urine - urine build up in the bladder
• Feces - feces build up in the bowel
• Dust build up in the nose
• Flem in the throat
• Hot climatic conditions, heat
• Physical pain
• An itch
• Viruses, colds, diseases
• Nausea in the stomach
• Inactivity

Each bio-stressor moves a person from a peaceful state to an uncomfortable state and, depending upon the course of action chosen, back to a peaceful state again. Emotional-stressors are emotional forces which act on the body. Some examples of emotional-stressors are listed below.

Examples of Emotional Stressors

• Joy
• Grief
• Terror
• Shame
• Embarrassment
• Frustration
• Anger
• Inadequacy
• Jealousy (specifically the fear of being abandoned)
• Envy (specifically the fear of being inadequate or "not good enough")
• Extreme boredom
• Helplessness
• Resentment (anger and/or hurt hidden or repressed)
• Finding something humorous
• Needs for relieving loneliness
• Needs for sexual gratification
• Hurt
• Fear (nervousness, anxious, hypervigilance)
• Denial and repression (keeping something secrete from myself, or from someone else as a way to control myself)

Emotional-stressors move a person from a peaceful state to an uncomfortable state and, depending upon the course of action chosen, back to a peaceful state again.

The uncomfortable state is referred to as the "stress response." The stress response is made up of the internal pressures and/ or anxieties that the body feels a need to expel during the course of living each day. The stress response is natures' cue for a person to move into a course of action. The goal of this action is to move the body from an uncomfortable state back to a peaceful state.

Some stress cycles are easier to move through than others. Consider the bio-stressor "Dust in the nose," and the cycle that accompanies it (figure 2).

From the peaceful state, the body moves to an uncomfortable state as the bio-stressor dust in the nose acts on the body. This is the natural stress response to dust in the nose. The stress response is the body's cue to move into action. The goal of the action is to resolve the stress cycle back the peaceful state. In this case, the action of sneezing could resolve the cycle back to the peaceful state (figure 3).

The action taken to resolve the cycle is called the "Expulsion." In this example, the expulsion is a sneeze.

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