Holiday Joy, Holiday Stress

December 13, 2008

It takes brutal honesty to see our limitations clearly enough to actually change them. After the article This Month In O December 2008 : Feed Your Right Brain, Holly commented candidly about what she’s learned about coping with stress. I know this self-knowledge didn’t arrive overnight.

If ever there’s a time of year that brings with it as much pressure as pleasure, it is now. Any physical relaxation is offset by mental and emotional tension.

This is part of what Holly said:

“I thought the reason that my mind was always racing was because I was a very busy person and that others were bothering me too much, or blocking me, or not understanding me. I thought I was handling stress because I exercised regularly. I didn’t understand how much mental chaos stress was causing me. …..

I am a true believer in the evils of stress. If I feel it sneaking into my mind/thinking I immediately have to stop what I am doing and clear my mind to get back on track of being mentally present and not stressing.”

Keep Your Worries Apart

Problems make a sucking sound. They’re strongly attracted to other problems. They look for things that aren’t nailed down to draw towards themselves so they can grow and look more important.

A stressed-to-the-limit woman has allowed her worries to connect to each other, like magnetic Lego. All those swirling negative energies recognize each other and and slide together telepathically. Ghosts sodder them into one gigantic molten lump of a problem so you can’t tell where one ends and the next begins.

Like stepping in quicksand, you’re there without realizing it. It happens effortlessly unless you’re careful. Life becomes overwhelming when problems joined forces.

Adrenal exhaustion

Most of us probably understand the link between stress and illness. Stress causes your adrenal glands to produce more cortisol which depletes the immune system, and poof, you’re down.

I had never taken my understanding further than that. In reading this very good article on adrenal health from WomenToWomen, I learned that the physiologic effects are much more widespread and specific.

Achieving calm

Holly found some effective advice in a couple of books. She learned that

“… being calmer allows me to not get as exhausted. I use less energy being crazy and stressing so I guess it only figures I wouldn’t be as tired. If you are going to write a segment on stress consider looking at adrenaline exhaustion. I have learned about it thorough a self-help workbook I use “The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook” by Edmund Bourne.”

Linked to their Amazon pages (the Look Inside text is an active link on the Amazon site only),

I also found that this article by Christianne Northrup, MD has some good suggestions at the end.

We only think we’re alone

Women don’t ask for help easily. We take on too much. We let ourselves become frenzied in our alone-ness. That’s not abundance, or it’s the wrong kind of abundance. That’s addiction. We appear feverish and hysterical. We insist on being our only resource.

Though we worry about our todays and our tomorrows, accept that this is a good moment. It doesn’t need to be more than just that.

Stop pushing so hard. That’s the male way of getting places.

Allow yourself to be lucky. Allow it all to happen by itself. Watch your life get easier.

It’s the new efficiency.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Happiness

Comments

3 Responses to “Holiday Joy, Holiday Stress”

Mary Ann on December 13th, 2008 7:53 am

This is such a timely article! Thank you for sharing this wisdom. *Deep breath*
Jill R. on December 13th, 2008 7:01 pm

Stress management is such an important topic… and it’s great to see that Holly has discovered the toll stress has taken on her, because now she can begin to recover.

This is a very stressful time for many of us with the holidays upon us as well as financial strain. It’s more important than ever for each of us to take inventory of our mental health and inner thoughts and figure out how to manage in healthy ways.

For tips on stress management, visit:

http://www.OurStressfulLives.com

Best Wishes,
Jill R.
James Thomas on December 15th, 2008 10:45 am

On ‘keeping your worries apart’….

I would extend that to relatives and friends as well… when we get together during the holidays, especially, it’s best to keep the worries in the car. Sharing them with others may seem like a good stress reliever, but like you mentioned, worries tend to feed on one another.

We can ‘bear one anothers burdens’ by offering support and love, but sitting around feeding worry with worry will leave us all more stressed in the end.

Excellent post!

-James Thomas
Stress Management Coach
http://www.Christian-Life-Coaching.org