What a 90’s Cartoon Can Teach Us About Wellness

I picked up an unfortunate habit during 2020. For the most part, I think I handled the turbulent year rather well. Except for this. I started puckering my lips. Just slightly, I didn’t look like a cartoon or something. But the stress that I didn’t even realize I was feeling manifested itself in tensed lips. And since I live alone, no one was around to notice. I didn’t notice. Not until I started noticing I was getting my grandma’s upper lip. 

One morning I looked in the mirror and was horrified. What the actual….? My grandma’s upper lip was on my face. She was a long-time smoker, I was not. It made sense she had those lip lines. It did not make sense for me. How had this happened. I am too young for this…My skincare routine is 1,000,000%. 

And then I caught myself stress responding with tense lips and grinding teeth and was like, “Ohhhhhh, well crap!”. Thankfully, there’s a gel for that and all is now right with the world.

Why am I sharing this with you? What does it have to do with you? Probably a lot. 

First, I’m sure you can relate in some way. Perhaps to the stress of 2020. Perhaps to looking in the mirror and knowing something didn’t appear overnight but feeling like it did. Perhaps to realizing that you’ve been on “go” for so long you never even knew you were stressed out. 

Second, to share how the body keeps the score. This is my tip for the week. 

This weekend I was a vendor at the Well Ray Festival in Del Ray. A guy and gal complimented my skin and I pointed to the products that my business is with and said, “well it works!”. I had also shared that I’m a board-certified health and wellness coach, and used to also coach nutrition and fitness. They asked me, “of all the things you do and have done, though, what has made the biggest difference for your skin.”

I pointed again to the products and said, these. Because you need a lifestyle, yes. But you also need topicals. 

And here’s where we talk about the body, the stress, and the score. 

The Body & The Score

Without you even knowing it, your body is absorbing everything you think and feel. There is ample research showing how the body holds onto trauma. Van Der Kolk is the pioneer in this and wrote a book based on his research called The Body Keeps the Score. 

There is also ample research showing how chronic psychological stress (which the body interprets as trauma) manifests as headaches, body aches, GI problems, even affecting mensuration, and sexual desire in men and women. Stress can affect muscles, joints, heart, lungs, skin, hair, gut, shoulders, jaw, head, and the immune system. I’ve written before about the relationship between mind and skin.

So yes, my grandma lips were a stress response. Not only because of the way stress hormones affect the body as a whole. But my stress was causing me to hold my muscles in a certain way, I was expressing my stress through the expression of puckered lips. This caused expression lines to form. My face did what my mom teased it would as a child, it got stuck like that. My clenched jaw didn’t help.

Lifestyle and Topicals Combine

Did you ever watch Captain Planet? The Planeteers individually had a power. One represented earth, another fire, then wind, water, and heart. They were strong individually, but combined their powers summoned the even more powerful Captain Planet. 

Lifestyle and topical interventions are kind of like that. Each is a Planeteer. It works good enough on its own, but combined creates a powerful force for change. 

Nutrition, stress management, sleep, topical skincare, meditation or breathing, stretching, working out…all of these habits are important. And individually will help you improve your health. They will help your body better manage stress and its physical and mental effects. 

But together, they will make you one radiant and resilient bad ass. 

For example, only 1% of your diet actually gets into your skin. So, yes a healthy diet is important but it’s not the solution to visibly improving your skin. 

You also can’t tell your broccoli to take it’s nutrients and go straight to your “problem areas”.  Nor can you tell the benefits of sleep to “focus on my under eye circles, today please.”.

What to Do

Ok so, your body is holding on to all your baggage giving you grand lips, and maybe some bloating and lower back pain. Awesome. 

And you are now even more aware that wellness is like the longest running US-cartoon of the 90’s. But the thought of having to do all those wellness things makes you stressed because who really has time…right?

Ok, take a breath. The thing is, you DON’T have to do them all at once. 

Pick one. What’s the simplest thing that sounds appealing right now? Is it a nap? Great, go do that. Is it closing your eyes for 5 minutes? Great, go do that. Is it getting a “5-minute face lift” or 10-minute face mask? Great, go do that!

Pick one place to start. Focus on building that into a habit. Once it becomes so routine that it’s no longer an effort, add the next piece. 

For example:

1. Tonight you start with flossing two back teeth and taking two deep breaths. You do this every night for a week. 

2. Next Sunday you add two more teeth, take two deep breaths, and wash your face. You do this every night for a week.

3. The third Sunday you add two more teeth, take two deep breaths, wash your face, and add a moisturizer. You do this every night for a week,

You get the idea. The next thing you know, you will be doing something like this:

Every night before bed I take a walk around the block while practicing deep breathing. Then I go upstairs and floss and brush all my teeth, then wash, tone, and moisturize my skin. I add my eye cream, then slip into bed.

“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.” ~Arthur Ashe

Need some help? I got you. Reach out here.