Psychology
Monique Padar talks about the Raynaud Syndrome
Do you ever get cold fingers all of a sudden, even in summer ? Do they become white, and then purple? Is it hard for you to get the blood to circulate again?
If the answer is “yes”, this is called Raynaud’s Syndrome
It’s a fancy name for a very annoying phenomenon, which I had suffered from ever since I could remember until I realized what is really was and why it was there.
Here’s a definition of it:
Raynaud’s Syndrome is a disease causing some areas of your body-such as fingers and toes-to feel numb and cold in response to cold temperatures or stress.
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Smaller arteries that supply blood to your skin narrow, limiting blood circulation to affected areas (vasospasm). When the blood finally flows back, it can be painful too.
This is what I was (or rather wasn’t) told I could do about it.
I’d had Raynaud’s for decades. My doctor said he didn’t know what caused it. (I never hear him talk about stress being a cause). I was advised to wear gloves, but often they didn’t change the situation; my fingers remained frozen inside the gloves. When I played golf, I couldn’t feel the club anymore, and had to constantly rub my fingers between shots, hoping they would warm up.
I just thought my life would always be like that, until I saw a testimonial on Youtube one day. Two women were talking about how they used to have the same syndrome, and how they got rid of it thanks to a meditation workshop.
I listened closely, and here’s what they said:
They explained that it was caused by a prolonged stress response, which is the body turning on the “fight or flight” response automatically. In Fight or flight, actually called fight, flight or freeze, the brain reduces blood flow to the extremities, since the blood is needed for the heart and big muscles to fight or run away from a danger. They then explained how they got over it by re-training their brains.
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When I heard this, something shifted in my mind. I realized that all the years I’d been stressed out caused my body to memorize this automatic response, and that now I no longer had to live by those rules because I’d learned to deal with stress and emotions.
This realization took me out of the “wheel” of the automatic program! I had, in fact been noticing big improvements since I’d implemented daily meditation practice and done other subconscious work on myself. But this information made me sure I could eliminate it forever.
That very day, I said to myself: “This is no longer me”. The problem disappeared almost overnight! I occasionally get a bit of a cold finger tips, nowhere near how bad it used to be. When this happens, I immediately think about my thoughts, which are usually to do with worry about the future. I then change my thoughts and tell my blood to flow normally. It gets better in less than a minute, whereas in the past, I could hold my hands under warm water for what seemed like ages without much improvement.
For a few years now, I’ve been helping people to get over pain. If any tissue damage has been repaired, and serious disease ruled out, it is highly likely that most pain (and related issues such as fatigue, digestive problems, etc..) are due to a mind-body phenomenon like the one I ‘ve just described.
Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash
The cycle usually starts in childhood, when some emotion (it doesn’t have to be trauma) causes the brain to get sensitized, and the danger/alarm mechanism is activated. With time, and repetition of this due to overlooked emotions, stress, and fear, the brain gets hard-wired to turn on danger/alarm mechanisms. This is what makes pain & related issues chronic.
The good news is that this can be reversed. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to forget old pathways and memorize new ones to learn new things. Raynaud’s Syndrome, for example, can be unlearned. For this, going to the emotional root cause is essential. Indeed, we cannot heal what we don’t realize or feel. Next, we need to implement daily practices to un-memorize what got us there, and create new connections in the brain which serve us.
If you or a loved one are suffering from Raynaud’s or any other chronic condition, know that it is absolutely reversible!
Here’s the link to get my free guide on what causes (chronic) pain & how to get over it:
About the author:
Monique is an experienced therapist/ coach trained in hypnotherapy and other rapid transformational techniques. (EFT and RTT). She has helped countless people free themselves from pain and re-create the live they want without drugs or outer manipulations.
Having suffered from physical pain for years and overcoming it as well as a lot of related health issues, she wants others to get more “Life out of Life” too.
She holds a Master’s degree in Education obtained during her former career as a lecturer. After doing most of her schooling in Canada, she moved to France and then to Montreux, Switzerland where she now lives with her husband, two adult daughters and two cats. She works locally face to face and internationally via zoom in both English and French.
