Dealing with stress — poorly – End of the Day for August 6, 2014

I’ve never dealt with dress well, even back to my earliest memories as a child. My mental and physical reactions to stress — especially prolonged stress are off the charts compared to most people. I am sure this is what led to my avoidance of stress if at all possible, as I knew what it would lead to. If you know caffeine makes you jittery, you’ll probably learn to avoid, as you quickly learn the adverse effects on your body or mind. If only it were as easy to avoid stress as it is to turn down a cup of coffee.

The world is filled with unavoidable stress of all types — unless you want to become a complex agoraphobe and never interact with civilization or other people. Heck, even living in the prehistoric past, the stress of feeding yourself and not being eaten, had to be overwhelming. So there is really no escape not matter what type of life you lead.

Someone like myself, who deals poorly with stress, makes it even worse. We pile overreaction on overreaction, senseless worry on senseless worry until the downward spiral becomes inescapable. The original stress is bad enough, but then we add the stress we feel about feeling stressed on top of that.

If I could change anything about myself, it would be a better ability to deal with the stress I face and the stress I create for myself. I think this particular trait would have made my life a lot easier over the years. Instead, it seems to have haunted me, and hampered me, throughout.

We all have some trait we dislike about ourselves and I guess this is one of mine. While I have tried to work on it over the years, it seems to run quite deep in my mind. My response feels autonomous, physical, and in some respects it is. I is difficult to rein in the body using only your mind — or at least it is for me. The unpleasant physical response leads to more stress in my mind which leads to more physical responses and so on and so on and so on.

Dealing with stress, for me, is a constant battle, not just an occasional problem. The smallest action of event can set it off. Even know these reactions are inconvenient and bothersome, I can’t seem to avoid them and this makes me feel out of control and weak. It is difficult to respect yourself when you find something distasteful in how you behave. This can lead to some dramatic crises of confidence when I really need to be moving forward. Thankfully, I can usually find some way of pushing though the issue and still remain productive, even if I find it more difficult than I would like to be.

Previously on End of the Day: