Your Story, Your Pressure

Blood pressure is not just a number. It's a conversation between your body and your life. It’s the pressure your heart must generate to move blood through your vessels, and it’s directly linked to your autonomic nervous system, which is always adjusting and responding to what’s happening inside and around you. The autonomic nervous system does this automatically. You don’t have to think about it. It’s always trying to keep you balanced, healthy, and alive. That balance is called homeostasis.

There are two branches of the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic system kicks in when you’re under stress. It helps you run from danger or fight off a threat. It makes your heart beat faster, your muscles tense, and your blood vessels tighten to push more blood to important areas. The parasympathetic system is the opposite. It helps you rest, digest, heal, and recover. You need both, but you need to come out of the sympathetic state once the danger is over.

The thing is, the danger doesn’t even have to be real. Your body responds to your thoughts as if they’re facts. That’s where reason comes in. Reason is the part of you that makes sense of the world. It helps you form beliefs, conclusions, and mental pictures about what’s going on. You use reason to tell a story about your life. If the story you tell is that you’re safe, capable, and worthy, your body can relax. If your story is that you’re unsafe, unworthy, or bound to fail, your body tightens up. It gets ready for a fight that never comes.

When the body stays in this state for too long, tension builds. The blood vessels stay constricted, the heart keeps pumping harder, and over time, this leads to high blood pressure. This isn’t just theory. It's physiology. In a sympathetic state, stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released. These chemicals cause the heart to beat faster and the arteries to narrow, which raises the pressure. If the body doesn’t return to a relaxed state, this becomes the new normal. Over time, the tissues don’t get enough oxygenated blood, and the heart has to work even harder to get it there.

Western medicine often responds to this by prescribing medication or telling people to avoid salt. While that can be necessary to manage the symptoms and prevent immediate harm, it doesn’t change the reason the pressure is high in the first place. The nervous system is doing what it was told to do. It’s responding to a story of danger, a pattern of fear and tension that has become chronic.

Some people may have a genetic tendency toward high blood pressure. That’s true. Even then, genes express themselves based on how we live. Our habits, thoughts, and stress levels can flip those genetic switches on or off. Most of what we do every day comes from how we think and what we believe. If you believe you’re in danger, your body will prepare to survive it.

Think about the media you consume. The news, the ads, the posts. So much of it is fear-based. It shows you a world where there’s not enough, where people are dangerous, and where you’re not safe. If you take that in every day, it becomes the background noise to your nervous system. You start to respond as if those things are happening to you. You don’t even notice the tension anymore because it feels normal.

What if there were no news? No media pulling at your nervous system? What if the world felt different because the story being told was different? What if you looked at your own tension and asked, “Where did this come from? Is this even mine?” Ghandi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” Do you want to see the crap that people are telling you? What inspires you?

This is not to say that bad things don’t happen. Most of the time, if you really check in with yourself, right now, you are safe. You are okay. If your blood pressure is high, it may be because your nervous system has been told the opposite too many times. It’s time to tell it something new.

Reason and memory are a gift. They help us learn and protect ourselves. They can also trap us in a loop of stress if we keep reliving the same stories. You can use your reason to build a different world. A world where you are strong, safe, and connected. You can also use it to just be present.

Here’s something worth thinking about: plants don’t get high sap pressure. Wild animals don’t develop chronic high blood pressure. These beings respond to their environment and live in alignment with natural rhythms. What sets humans apart is our capacity for reason. That same faculty that allows us to reflect, grow, and imagine a better future also allows us to create inner stories that trap us in fear. Our life force responds to what we think is happening, not just to what is actually happening. This is both the challenge and the opportunity. Our health is shaped by how we use our mind.

Sometimes, physical movement helps. Exercise gets the blood moving. It gives your body a way to use the energy that’s been building up. If you go right back to stress and fear afterward, the benefits won’t last. You have to change the pattern.

So what are the solutions?

• Take your medication if you need it. It keeps you safe while you work on the deeper layers.

• Move your body. Walk, swim, stretch, dance. Let the energy move.

• Eat well. Real food, not stuff that stresses your system.

• Rest. Don’t just sleep, but actually rest your mind.

• Stop watching or reading things that leave you feeling tense and fearful.

• Be kind to yourself and the people around you.

• Meditate. Even if it’s just for a minute. Clear the noise and access possibility.

• Do things that pull you into the moment: gardening, drawing, building, singing.

At first, it’s hard. Your old self will try to keep things the same. It’s familiar, even if it’s harmful. Change takes effort. If mess up and fall back into old habits, know that’s part of it. Keep coming back and a new pattern will emerge as the “new normal”. Like working a muscle, at first it’s weak, but with time and repetition, it gets buff.

There’s an incredible story of a man named Viktor Frankl, who found peace and meaning in the middle of a concentration camp which he describes in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. If he could do that, we can certainly learn to shift our perception in day to day life. His story is a reminder that faith and hope are tools too. They can keep us going when we’re stepping into something unfamiliar.

Change is possible. It’s not magic. It’s not quick. It’s a process. Your nervous system will respond to your efforts. You are not broken. You are responding. You can change the story. You can change your life.

References:

• Goldstein DS. Adrenal responses to stress. Cell Mol Neurobiol. 2010;30(8):1433-40.

• McEwen BS. Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. N Engl J Med. 1998;338(3):171-179.

• Esler M. The sympathetic nervous system through the ages: from Thomas Willis to resistant hypertension. Exp Physiol. 2011;96(7):611-622.

• Chrousos GP. Stress and disorders of the stress system. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 2009;5(7):374-381.

• Thayer JF, Lane RD. Claude Bernard and the heart-brain connection: further elaboration of a model of neurovisceral integration. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2009;33(2):81-88.

• Frankl, Viktor E. Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2006.

If you want to go deeper into this or need support shifting your patterns, I’m here to help.