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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
That is the plain version of a relationship usually summed up as stress making you ill, which is too blunt to be much use. Running high and running low both have costs, and the costs are different. Knowing which way your own pattern tends to run tells you more than the general warning does, and it takes the moralising out of it.
'He gave you hearing, sight, and minds' (Quran 32:9). Body and mind are named in a single breath, which is roughly what this physiology says as well.
السجدة
ثُمَّ سَوَّىٰهُ وَنَفَخَ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِهِۦۖ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرَ وَٱلۡأَفۡـِٔدَةَۚ قَلِيلࣰ ا مَّا تَشۡكُرُونَ
Then He moulded him; He breathed from His Spirit into him; He gave you hearing, sight, and minds. How seldom you are grateful
Qur’an 32:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta analysis of acute laboratory stressors found that how a person appraises a situation, and which specific emotion they feel, predicts both their cortisol and their immune response. The two systems really do move together, and interpretation is part of the picture rather than a bystander. These were short laboratory inductions, so applying it to years of chronic stress is an extension rather than a finding.
Denson TF, Spanovic M, Miller N. (2009). Cognitive appraisals and emotions predict cortisol and immune responses: a meta-analysis of acute laboratory social stressors and emotion inductions.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The hormone that mobilises you also holds the immune system down, so what your body is doing depends on which way it is currently leaning.
Before you close your eyes for anything calming, spend a minute looking round the room. Let your eyes land wherever they want to.
A child who does not feel safe cannot filter the room. The pencil scratch, the scraping chair, the fan and the rustle of a coat all arrive at the same volume as the teacher.
A useful picture: the parts of your brain are sections of an orchestra. In dysregulation they are playing different tunes at different speeds. The aim is timing, not repair.