Wendy K. Laidlaw

which in turn impacts hormonal output and the internal stress response.

If a body is affected so much by the environment that it lives in a chemical soup of stress hormones, think adrenaline and cortisol, then before long those feelings that should be felt for a short period of time and then rebalanced back into a relaxed parasympathetic system don't happen.

The body and the brain have to adapt for survival.

My own household growing up was marred with great upset and distress.

From my youngest memories, I recall waking up thinking, well, if mum was in a bad mood yesterday, then I hope she's in a good mood today.

That innocent child's view of wishful thinking with no concept of other matters or what else was going on in the home, only that I was always stressed and tense and trying to keep my parents happy.

So for a small infant to experience its home environment as continually stressful with tension, the body then never fully is able to relax and allow the feel good hormones.

Think of the abbreviation called DOSE, D-O-S-E, which is for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins.

They never get to enter the body in a way to allow it to relax.

Even as the child gets older and may fleetingly experience these rare sensations of niceness and enjoyable hormones in their body, the mere experience of a new sensation may actually cause fright and fear and confusion, resulting in repelling and dismissing any nice events, people or things because they're so alien.

If your environment has taught you to be on guard and alert in a home life that should have been safe and loving, then it makes sense that this is the background operating system that is set up deep down in your subconscious and in your nervous system, much like the background software in an Apple computer or an Apple Mac.

You can't see this operating system and you may strongly try to affect change in your approach to your life and your body and the people around you,

but you find yourself keep defaulting back to old patterns.

And this is why increasing awareness is key because it's not your fault.

What you're trying to do is affect change consciously when these old patterns are deeply embedded into your subconscious.

By journaling every morning to get to the point that slowly and surely you recognize patterns, this will help to affect change and affect your body.

patterns of behaviour, notice patterns of emotion, notice patterns of relationships.

Awareness increases the level of consciousness about whether the work that you're in, the family that you came from, the partner that you're with and the friends that are around you are indeed a tonic to your body or a toxin.

Some early indications that your environment

people, places and things are toxic to you emotionally is if you feel overwhelmed regularly.