Self-Care : Stress Management

 Continuing our section on Self Care is Stress Management.

No one is surprised to hear that stress can be bad for you. The kind of chronic stress that many people with mental illness and trauma live with is especially hard on the body. Symptoms can include pains, insomnia, sleepiness, low energy, being unfocused, nightmares, changes in appetite, increased alcohol or drug usage, emotional withdraw and more. It can have long lasting effects on your cardiovascular and mental health.

The most common advice you will see about managing stress are the same things we included in the post on Self Care: Maintaining Physical Health. Occasionally you will see suggestions for therapy or medication tossed in along with lots of recommendation to meditate. Those are excellent ways to support your overall health.

There are some additional healthy techniques and strategies you can use to manage stress in your day to day life.

• Set Realistic and Maintainable Boundaries
• Learn to say "no"
• Set aside time for yourself to decompress
• Learn to walk away 
• Seriously- GO FOR A WALK. It helps.
• Minimize your to-do list
• Its okay to have a "Good Day" list and a "Bare Minimum" list
• Consider how many of your to-dos are necessary, wanted, or just an obligation or expectation from someone else
• Take a break if you need it
• Build a reliable support network AND use it
• Being able to have honest compassionate conversations with those around you will give you the freedom to ask for support or for space depending on what you need
• Give yourself multiple ways to ask for support if you need them
• Talk out complicated feelings with a trusted friend
• Avoid unnecessary stressors 
• Don't get into emotional charged topics if you don't have the energy for it
• Delegate work if you need to
• Rationalize
• Your emotions are valid and your feelings are very real but sometimes they are not rational, take a moment to breath through it
• Don't try to control what is uncontrollable 
• Be Silly
• Will a dance party fix a fight with your boss? Probably not but the movement and some silliness might help you breath
• Sometimes all you can do is laugh, so embrace those moments as best you can
• Breathing and Stretching
• Stress can make you tense which is only going to make you sore later- be nice to future you and stretch. 
• Unwind
• Take time to disconnect from work and people. Give yourself a few minutes to just BE
• Consider setting a rule in your house that when someone walks in the door they get 10 minutes before being asked to do anything for anyone

There are also some unhealthy coping mechanisms that can create long term issues such as self medicating with alcohol or drugs, excessive sleeping, various forms of escapism, and unhealthy relationships with food or sex.

You can read more about healthy stress management here: Managing Stress (CDC)*

Stress management has been one of the biggest forms of self-care I partake in because the build up of stress brings out the worst in me. It makes me less than I am capable of - less kind, less compassionate, less whimsical, less myself. It takes a toll on my work, my family, my relationships.

Part of me is always thinking... but you've endured worse. You have survived worse. This should be nothing. 

Its not nothing though. We are not meant to live a life of constant unrelenting stress and because of trauma my whole nervous system goes into hyperdrive. I don't want to live like I did when everything was bad. I want to be able to enjoy the good in my life and I desperately envy those who live without the anxiety and spiraling.

But HOW do I manage stress?

It depends on the stressor. 

Work Stress - I ask my boss for help and I give myself grace to be less productive for an hour, an afternoon, or a day. I take PTO if I need to. If I am angry, I walk around the building a few times. If I am anxious about something irrational I take a few minutes to talk to my work bestie until the anxiety eases up.

Relationship Stress - I talk to my spouse. We have built a healthy marriage with strong communication and I rely on that foundation. I won't say the conversations are always pleasant or easy but I do typically feel better after a talk, and maybe a good cry with cuddles. We work to remember its us against the problem and that we are a team. He is my partner.

*This is similar to how I handle friendship issues. I try to only cultivate friendships where I can have serious conversations and address issues directly. It is not always successful and I am not perfect at it. I have come to accept that some friendships are not meant to be forever.

Family Stress - I reach out to those that can relate. I have built strong meaningful adult relationships with the women in my family so that I can reach out to my mom or my grandma or my aunt depending on the particular drama of the moment. I will discuss major issues with my husband. If I am really expecting something crazy, I may schedule a therapy appointment.

In-Law Stress - This is a particular subtype of family stress. I talk to my husband about how he wants to handle the situation and then I step back to let him handle his family directly if necessary. Occasionally a therapy appointment is helpful if I am really dwelling on something.

Mental Illness - Sometimes I just have to accept that I can't stop the physiological symptoms of my mental illness and I just try to breath through the worst of it. There are times where I just sit and rationalize and others where I just keep repeating "It isn't real." because that is all I can do. I also allow myself to take some time off work when necessary and sometimes I run away from everything for an afternoon or evening. If rage is the issue, sometimes I use free writing to get it all out. Exhaustion is always better than misery.

Physical Illness- Again, sometimes you cannot stop your body from doing what it is going to do. I have worked on giving myself the permission to take the time off to rest and to not be ashamed of what is out of my control. I breath through pain and try to meditate. Sometimes it works and sometimes swearing helps more. 

At the end of the day, sometimes there is no good solution so I either cry my face off or go for a walk/run. 

-D.M.

* I have included a link to the CDC's website in this post because at the time of writing it is still functional. The current changes happening in the USA may result in this no longer working, at which point we will begin looking for alternate sources to reference.