Understanding survival stress, my dentist visit in Guatemala and my latest journey through burnout

Today, I want to talk about survival stress and how it can show up in the body. I’m going to use jaw tension and teeth grinding as a specific example as this is the way that survival stress manifests for me and is pretty common among other individuals. I’ll also share about my most recent experience with jaw tension and pain and how I ended up needing an emergency dentist in Guatemala. Lastly, I will share a bit more of my story with stress & burnout and what has been going on for me the past several months. 

So first of all, what is survival stress? Survival stress is your fight, flight, freeze responses that are activated in your autonomic nervous system but aren’t acted upon. So these responses get stuck and held in your system, within your body. For example, it’s the time you never spoke up or the time you held back an emotion or the times you wanted to set a boundary but didn’t. The reasons you are suppressing these actions, words or responses may be for many different reasons. Maybe you didn’t learn how to gain the capacity to do so when you were growing up or it didn’t feel safe to express yourself in the way of your natural impulse so you suppressed it. You may not even know that you have been suppressing emotion until it starts to show up in your physiology—like jaw tension or pain. 

So let’s get into the topic of tension in the jaw & grinding of the teeth. This is super common in humans. Maybe you don’t even realize you’re doing it but when you go to the dentist for a cleaning & check-up they point out to you that you’ve been grinding your teeth. Or maybe you do know it’s happening because you wake up in the morning with muscle pain & strain in your jaw, mouth or neck.

This jaw tension & pain is an excellent example of stored survival stress. For whatever reason, you have been storing trapped fight, flight or freeze responses in your nervous system. What did you want to say today that you didn’t? Where did you hold back tears? Are you holding onto anger that needs to be released in a safe & healthy way?

Tension in the jaw can also be a result of stored dental trauma. Maybe you had a terrible dental experience in the past and you’ve unknowingly been holding onto that stress response. Maybe you had braces as a child or teenager and every time they tightened those braces and you felt intense pain for days but the only way you knew how to deal with this at the time was to shut down and disconnect from the pain because you still had to go to school or attend that track meet. As a result, you could very well be storing survival stress within your nervous system. Maybe you simply had a filling and something in the process or experience of your dentist visit caused a response within your system that was never let out and now it’s causing tension in the jaw. There is a multitude of ways you could be storing dental trauma. 

Another reason you could be experiencing jaw tension is that maybe you are suppressing your energy. Your creativity. Your voice. If you are holding back reactions in your face muscles, say maybe you’re grossed out by something you see but you suppress the expression on your face to be polite. Or you’re not communicating what you feel you want to communicate. Or you think you have to keep a lid on it and keep everything buttoned up nicely so you don’t offend anyone. When we suppress our creative, life force energy it causes an incredible amount of strain and pressure. It takes a ton of energy to hold back what we want to express, the tears that want to be shed. 

Oh man just think of a time when tears starting pricking your eyes and the impulse to cry started to bubble up but you didn’t allow the emotions to be expressed. You pushed all it all down. Can you feel into that feeling that happens in your throat and jaw when you suppress that emotion? I can feel it right now. Damn it takes so much energy and strain to suppress tears doesn’t it. That energy doesn’t just dissipate. It stays with you and if you don’t find a time later that day or even week to release it and allow that stress response to complete, it’s going to get trapped in your body. And then it may show up that night when you’re sleeping and you start subconsciously clenching your jaw or grinding your teeth. This is because typically our body goes into process mode while we are sleeping so it’s literally trying to work through, grind through, all this unprocessed stuff that didn’t get expressed earlier that day, week, month, year…however long. So it’s incredibly important to recognize when you are suppressing emotion, holding back tears, not saying what needs to be said because you don’t want to keep storing this stuff in your body. 

I think so many of us have become pros at disconnecting from emotions, shutting them down and disconnecting from our bodies. This is why I talk so much about learning how to reconnect with our bodies, with our physiology, so we can tune into its natural impulses again. To quote Peter Levine, pain is trapped sensation that just wants to get out.

So if you can think of a stress survival habit that you have but you don’t do anything about it until it affects your physiology to the point that you can no longer ignore it (for example the pain gets really bad)…what is something that you could do every day that would address this survival stress? Maybe it’s something you would normally only do when the pain got really bad. A small self care ritual of some kind that you could implement daily that would help rebuild connection with your body. This will allow you to tune in more closely to your natural impulses and likely allow you to feel deeper into your stress responses and actually act on them (again in a safe way) instead of stifling and storing them. I’ll get into a few examples of these towards the end of the article so stay with me. 

So the reason I used jaw pain as an example is because this is a stored stress response that I am very familiar with. It began when I was in university. I would clench my jaw like crazy every single night when I was working on a big project deadline or prepping for an exam. Every time I was super stressed I would clench my jaw and grind my teeth. At first, I didn’t realize I was doing it. My dentist would point it out to me at every visit but I just kind of ignored it…I didn’t think it was a big deal. Eventually though I did start to notice it happening because I would wake up with such a sore jaw in the morning and I would catch myself even clenching my jaw throughout the day if I was stressed. Again, I pretty much ignored it. 

But I continued to clench. I finished University and stepped into the corporate world of even more stressful deadlines and big responsibilities. It got so bad that my dentist insisted on me getting a night guard which ended up being a terrible idea because it was this big clunky thick mouth guard that I would wear while I was sleeping and I would clench down on it so hard that I literally dislocated my jaw. For a couple years I had horrible jaw issues. It clicked all the time and would sometimes pop out. It was awful. I came to realize I needed to get to the root of the issue and scrap the mouth guard. I needed to release and work through the stress I was holding in my body. 

This jaw tension has been a pattern for me. As soon as I catch myself clenching my jaw I’m like uh oh…what am I not seeing? What have I been suppressing? What have I not been saying or allowing myself to feel? 

It’s my physiology speaking to me in a very clear way and I now know how to listen and address what needs to be addressed or at the very least get curious about why this tension is showing up. Obviously I am still human and have more to unpack because the jaw tension still happens.

And the absolute worst care of jaw tension and clenching happened to me just a few months ago. Some of you may know that at the beginning of this year I said goodbye my apartment, put my belongings in a storage unit and booked a one way flight to Mexico. I left all my comforts. My beautiful little home that I had curated. My home that had been a safe haven for me for so many years. I said goodbye to my friends and family. Everything familiar. Everything safe. I left it all and took a huge leap of faith into a totally different life, a life I had been dreaming of for a long time. It sounds amazing doesn’t it? One way flight to Mexico? Yes please! 

And it WAS amazing! The first day I landed I couldn’t believe it was real. I was standing on the beach, the softest, whitest sand underneath my toes. Looking out onto the most stunning, turquoise water. Pelicans flying above my head and the sound of waves softly crashing onto shore. I was literally pinching myself. I couldn’t believe that this was real life. 

But for 6 straight weeks before that moment, I had been in full on survival mode. There was so much that I had to get done in order to make that new life happen and I worked tirelessly for weeks. There were so many times within those 6 weeks that I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it done. Multiple meltdowns, tons of tears. If it wasn’t for the help of my family and friends I actually don’t think I would have done it. I felt so overwhelmed and like I was drowning. Shoutout to my parents for how they showed up for me in this season. I literally couldn’t have done it without them. Thank God for parents eh? If you know mine, you know that they are the absolute best and they literally made my move happen for me. I’m so so grateful to them for all of their help & support. 

I know this sounds a bit dramatic and I agree. It felt dramatic and I’m not one for dramatics. There were times that I felt crazy for feeling as much as I did. There was SO much that I was working through during that time, on top of physically clearing out my apartment, getting rid of stuff, packing stuff, saying goodbyes, and so on. It was intense friends. 

So long story short, a week or two after arriving in Mexico my system crashed. I don’t think I have ever experienced exhaustion like I did during that time. I was stunned. I had gone through burnout before but this was on another level. My body had, maybe for the first time ever, the time, space & safety to actually feel into everything that I had been suppressing for years. I feel like I am pretty connected to my body. I’ve done a lot of work to rebuild connection yet I couldn’t believe how much stuff was coming up for me. And you know what my first thought was? I was frustrated. Frustrated with my body for not allowing me to do all the things I wanted to do. I also felt extreme guilt. Guilt for feeling exhausted. Guilt for not being able to train in the gym the way I wanted to. Guilt for not being able to show up in my business the way I wanted to. Guilt for not being able to go explore this new town I was living in. How crazy is our higher human brain? This body just carried me through years and years of inane stress, allowed me to work it out daily, put it through chosen stressors, and now it was screaming at me because it finally felt safe to rest and I’m frustrated with it? Geez. It’s funny too because I was actually aware of how unreasonable my thoughts were. Of course you’re exhausted body. Thank you body for being so strong and carrying me through this life but can you just keep plugging along please? I don’t feel like resting. Haha so crazy. And if I was my client I would be speaking to them very differently than the way I was speaking to myself. I would be encouraging my client to have so much grace and gratitude for their body and to take the time to rest guilt free. This is why even coaches need coaches and mentors and therapists. And this is why I have all of these things. Thank God. 

Okay so the exhaustion hit, and then the resistance came. And this is when the jaw tension started up again. I was clenching my jaw every night and grinding my teeth like crazy. I would wake up in the morning with such tension in my jaw and then very quickly I started getting incredible tooth pain like I had never had before. It was actually incredible nerve pain. I had been clenching on my jaw so hard that I had actually irritated the nerves in my molars and they had become incredibly inflamed. My gums were red & swollen and I was in so much pain. None of my old regulation practices were helping either. No this was deeper stuff that needed to be addressed in a new way. This was old, suppressed anger that was bubbling up and I was really struggling to navigate it. I had to dig deep to find the root of the anger. I’m not an angry person, where was this coming from? 

This was a super tough season. I was in a foreign country, feeling a bit unsettled, I had just walked away from my life and was trying to start this new one except I was feeling completely depleted and in agonizing pain. Haha what a way to start my time in Mexico and this new nomadic lifestyle. 

As challenging as this experience was, I’m so glad I went through it. I learned so much about myself, about what I had been holding onto that I didn’t even realize I was holding onto and that I needed to equip myself with new tools to work through everything that was coming up. I was also reminded that we cannot do this work alone. Cuz I tried for a couple weeks. I was like nah I got this. Like I literally coach people through this stuff and I thought for a hot sec I could do this part on my own. Nope! I needed to call in my support team to guide me through which was such a game changer for me. Call in your support team guys. We cannot do this stuff on our own.

So I was implementing new techniques, leaning on the support of my community and my mouth started to feel better! It was awesome! I thought I was on the mend and decided I didn’t need to see a dentist that this was just from clenching my jaw and I was good. Perfect. 

About a week later, we flew to Guatemala and day 2 of being in Antigua the pain level was the highest it had ever been. I don’t know why it suddenly got worse but it did. I’m talking, ridiculous pain. It was all I could think about. I knew I had to go see a dentist because I started to worry that I had actually done some serious damage to my tooth or nerve. Maybe I needed dentist intervention. So I did some research, found a local dentist that apparently spoke good English (my Spanish is unfortunately terrible and something I really want to improve) and went the following day. That was an adventure and a story for a different day! Two x-rays and a dentist visit later, it was confirmed that I had been clenching so hard I had irritated the nerve. Luckily I hadn’t cracked any teeth and didn’t need any work done. 

One thing I will note here, I had been reading or maybe listening to something on a podcast—I wish I could remember the source but they were talking about welcoming pain like a friend. Thanking it for revealing itself to me and I leaning into the pain. Ask the pain why it’s there. If the pain could talk, what would it say? I specifically remember doing this the day I walked into town to visit the dentist. Instead of resisting the pain like I had been doing for weeks, I said welcome friend. Thank you for revealing yourself to me. Thank you for showing me what I haven’t been seeing. I felt the pain instead of resisting the pain. I breathed into it, acknowledged it and thanked it. And you know what happened? I’d say within about 15 minutes the pain had subsided tremendously. It just wanted to be acknowledged, processed & tended to and it slowly started to be released. 

So this in combination with the dentist confirming that I didn’t have any major damage, significantly contributed to me being able to work through and release this pain. I was no longer stressed that I was going to have to have an emergency dental procedure and the pain mostly went away after that day. There was still residual inflammation in the gums, some swelling and sensitivity but for the most part it was gone. 

That said, there have been significantly stressful moments since Antigua and I will notice myself clenching and I’m like ah okay I didn’t address this to the level that I needed to. Sorry body, let’s work through and release this. Or I’ll get curious, ooo what am I holding onto that I didn’t realize I was holding onto? I’m so grateful to my body for letting me know when stuff is stuck. That the tension does pop up and reveal itself. Because it’s not necessarily something new that I’m working through. It’s more likely something that I didn’t make the time or space to feel into when the thing occurred. Whether that be a trauma or something I suppressed so I could push forward and it got stuck in my body. I want to get it out. 

I also want to say that these things can still pop up even when we have high level regulation in our symptoms. We can be so hard on ourselves but I encourage you to not hold judgement or shame if you’re experiencing this. We all have this stuff stored in our bodies so if it’s coming up I would invite you to practice gratitude.

Working through all of this over the past few months has been expansive on so many different levels. I’ve come to understand myself on a deeper level. I’ve come to understand that I needed to onboard new tools to work through everything that was coming up for me. It also made me a better coach as I armed myself with more experience and additional resources to help support my clients. It’s pretty cool that through my lived experience I am able to support others on their own journeys. I love this work and am so passionate about sharing what I’ve learned. 

I wanted to share my experience because I think so many of us can be dealing with our physiology not working the way we want it to in our minds. But it’s really our physiology that is letting us know what we need. Our higher brains can often have a lot of resistance to this. This is when the frustration comes up like I shared earlier. And I get it. It can be extremely frustrating. You made plans! You have goals you want to hit. But when your physiology reveals something, you need to listen to this wisdom. Honour this wisdom. It’s showing you something that you need to pay attention to. Your body carried you through seasons of survival but now it’s time to tend to it. I also want to point out that, in my experience, when these symptoms show up in your physiology, it’s often a sign that your body feels safe to bring your awareness to what needs to be worked through. 

So I’ll ask the question that I posed earlier again. What is something that you could do every day that can help rebuild connection to your body? That can be a small step towards tending to an area that needs attention? Maybe it’s slow, gentle movement. Maybe it’s 5 minutes orienting to your environment. Maybe it’s a full body scan before you go to sleep so you can check in to see if there are any areas that you may be holding tension. Find whatever works for you or maybe try a few different exercises and see what feels good. 

If you have pain, maybe the first step is to just simply acknowledging the pain and thank it for revealing itself. 

These are tough things to talk about but I think on some level most of us have stored stressed in our bodies so I really want to shine a light on this. It’s important to talk about and to normalize. It’s also okay if you feel frustrated with your physiology. There’s no need for shame or guilt around that. I completely understand that feeling and relate to it so much. Feel into the frustration but then I also want to encourage you to show so much gratitude to your body for everything that it does for you every single day. Our bodies are constantly healing. Constantly fighting for us. Every single moment of every single day for our entire lives until we take our last breath. No matter what we do. No matter how much stress we put them through. No matter how much bullshit we eat haha. Our bodies always show up. So the least we can do is start showing up for them eh? 

K xo