The Nature of Stress
It seems to me that stress, by its very nature, is always the straw that broke the camel's back. Life is happening and we are processing it, reacting to it, preparing for it, etc. and everything is as it should be. Then something happens to throw off our equilibrium, and voila!, we feel tense, overwhelmed, and irritable (at least that is how I feel when I'm stressed out). Often the people around us are confused by this switch. Life is still happening the way it happens every day, but suddenly our ability to deal with it is off. And what caused this switch is not always perceptable.
I have found myself incredibly stressed out this week. I think I am generally pretty good at avoiding stress on a day to day basis. However, that is because I am terrible at dealing with stress. Real stress makes me want to curl up into a little ball. I get stubborn and antisocial. Emotionally I fall apart. I'm either hysterical or withdrawn. And once I let stress in, it clings to me, avoiding all attempts it irradicate it.
I think stress crept in because we drove to LI the last two weeks. Both visits were lovely and both were birthday related (thus somewhat necessary), but not having any real days off totally blows my sense of equilibrium. I have found that I really need unstructured time at home. This doesn't always mean time doing nothing--I can spend both days off totally busy and that's ok, just as long as I don't *have* to be busy. And during the week I need time when there are no people that I don't live with and a tiny bit of time when there is no one at all.
Fortunately there is chocolate.
I have found myself incredibly stressed out this week. I think I am generally pretty good at avoiding stress on a day to day basis. However, that is because I am terrible at dealing with stress. Real stress makes me want to curl up into a little ball. I get stubborn and antisocial. Emotionally I fall apart. I'm either hysterical or withdrawn. And once I let stress in, it clings to me, avoiding all attempts it irradicate it.
I think stress crept in because we drove to LI the last two weeks. Both visits were lovely and both were birthday related (thus somewhat necessary), but not having any real days off totally blows my sense of equilibrium. I have found that I really need unstructured time at home. This doesn't always mean time doing nothing--I can spend both days off totally busy and that's ok, just as long as I don't *have* to be busy. And during the week I need time when there are no people that I don't live with and a tiny bit of time when there is no one at all.
Fortunately there is chocolate.