As I have already stated when stressed our body automatically tenses. Our muscles become hard, tight, and the fibres contract. Holding this tension is very tiring; hence, a feeling of fatigue occurs. If the muscular tension has no release, because of the constant stress levels, and not knowing how to relax a muscle it can cause CHRONIC fatigue.
You may have heard of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, this is NOT the same as the fatigue felt, caused and experienced during a stressful situation. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is an illness that is very separate to stress; the fatigue experienced is different to stress fatigue. However, it is worth mentioning that if you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and suffer with stress, you will have both muscular fatigue caused by stress and muscular fatigue caused by CFS. Therefore, you will have increased muscular tension; especially if stress is always present, which sadly is to be expected. Stress management training is often a good experience to have if you have CFS (or any other illness) as the relaxation exercises can ease a lot of discomfort, pain, and improve the quality of sleep.
No matter what the illness, when it is chronic (long term) or even acute (short term), stress will be present. Stress does NOT cause chronic fatigue syndrome, but it can make the illness worse, such as amplifying the muscular tension. This is the same for all chronic illnesses, when stress is present, the illness can become worse. If one thinks about this logically it makes sense, when one is worrying about something, the stress response occurs, one element of which is muscular tension, which causes pain. If one has a chronic illness there will always be some degree of concern, which means the stress response will always be activated. This is why stress management is so important in health matters as the effective use of coping techniques may reduce the effects of stress, AND it may help in providing some relief caused by the illness. For example, CFS clients have said that when they use the passive muscular relaxation exercise, it has reduced some of the pain felt, to a more bearable level.
Just to reiterate, Chronic fatigue syndrome, is an illness in its own right, it is more than fatigue. It covers, mental and physical fatigue, and many other symptoms with fatigue being just one element. If you would like more information about CFS Action for M.E. is a website that deals with CFS and M.E. it provides both general and specific information, with links to other sites.
Returning to muscular tension and relaxation, it is impossible to be both tense and relaxed at the same time. If you did the exercise on the previous page, you will know what a tense muscle feels and looks like and what a relaxed muscles looks and feels like. When the body is relaxed, the muscles will be in a relaxed state. HOWEVER, sometimes you may believe/think you are relaxed when you are not. This is normally because you have become accustomed to the way your body feels that feeling tension is difficult. After a few relaxation exercises, people do begin to agree that they were probably tense all along, but had not noticed it.
What needs to occur for you to reach the stage of knowing how your body feels is for you to learn skills on body awareness. This may sound simple in that you know what your body feels like, but I would suggest that your awareness is not as good as you thought. Body awareness, does not just mean how it feels at this moment, it also means being aware and noticing how your body reacts under certain situations etc. The problem is in allowing your mind to listen to your body, your body tends to give early signs of tension, but if the mind does not know how to listen to that, your body will go through more tension etc until your mind is forced to listen. For example, you may have had low back pain for a long time, and in all probability have ignored it, until your body reacts in a way that ignoring it is impossible; basically the discomfort is caused by over use of an already taught (stretched) muscle. Think of an elastic band, the band will stretch so far and then it will snap. The same goes for your body, it will take so much tension before something has to give.
OK, we have some awareness, the chances are it is external awareness, we know what is occurring outside our body by using our five senses, touch, smell, hear, taste, see. Nevertheless, what is happening inside, internal awareness is needed, this encompasses a number of feelings and sensations, and we can become more aware of internal sensations. Many cultures utilises this awareness and puts great importance on ones ability to be aware and understand what is happening internally. How do we do it, how can we refocus our attention, below is a simple exercise that one can do.
1. Become aware of what is happening outside your body, external awareness, the weather, the smells, movements of people, cars, making things such as drinks, meals, being aware of others eating, talking etc. You can make a list of many activities that are accruing right now as you look around you, who is talking to who, what are people wearing, what the weather is like, the position of furniture, what you are doing, etc.
2. Once you have become aware of what is happening around you, you can now refocus your attention onto your body, such as how you are FEELING, as yourself questions such as:-
1. Are you hungry?
2. Is your stomach rumbling?
3. Do you have any aches, pains?
4. Do you have a headache?
5. Are you hot or cold?
6. Is your shoe tight so that you have foot cramp?
7. Do you have 'period' pain?
8. Any itches?
9. Any tingles?
10. Literally any physical sensations.
This is focusing your attention on how you are feeling. Write all your feelings / awareness down on paper and this will also increase your levels of awareness. Start small, try being more aware for 1 hour a day, and gradually increase the time. It will be come a subconscious act and is not time consuming.
3. You have now become aware of what is happening around you externally. You are also aware of what you are feeling internally - the physical sensations. The next step is to switch between external and internal feelings and sensations. For example, focus on your external awareness, write that down, and then refocus internally and write those feelings down. A simple example; it is hot (external awareness) but my feet are cold (internal awareness), the dress Penny is wearing clashes with her hair (external awareness), my back is hurting (internal awareness), the chair back is in the wrong position (external awareness), I need the toilet (internal awareness).
4. By doing this a number of times daily one can begin to appreciate, how effective you can be at becoming aware of external and internal feelings etc. By writing them down or saying them out aloud gives the awareness validation making it harder to ignore.
There are other ways of becoming aware, e.g. body scans and letting go of your body. Sounds expensive, but there are no machines involved and no hospitals, it is another exercise you can do yourself! Body scans are taking your body part by part, looking for tension. When tension is found, it is exaggerated so you can become more aware of the tension. At the same time attempt to see what has caused the tension - the trigger. When you find a trigger make a note of it on apiece of paper and say it out loud thereby validating the experience. If in the future you find you have neck pain and you think it was from the way you held the phone, you can change the way you hold the phone. This will also confirm or deny your original assessment. Then to take it one step further, if the phone was the cause of the neck pain, you can alter the way you handle the phone each time you use it. Furthermore, you will still be focusing on your internal feelings; thereby being aware of any possible tension occurring.
'Letting go' of your body is very similar, you focus your attention on your body and listen to all the sensations your body is experiencing. As you breathe in you focus on different parts of your body, staying there until you become aware of a feeling that you can describe it e.g. discomfort, then as you breathe out you let go of that feeling of discomfort. This is done repeatedly until each exhale has let go of all bodily discomfort and your body has in effect taken over. By allowing your awareness level to increase, you can start any coping technique as soon as you become aware of the tension etc. Like anything, the earlier it is noticed the easier it is to release, as it has not had the opportunity to intensify.
As an individual you have to learn to listen to your body. There is a need to notice tensed muscles as they happen and do something about it. Sleep cannot return the body to a
relaxed state. With prolonged tensed muscles, other problems occur, e.g. headaches, and sleep disturbances etc. I mentioned earlier a number of stress related symptoms and illnesses. Take another look Common stress related symptoms and ask yourself how many of those symptoms you have and which could be attributed to muscular tension.
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