I can’t stress this enough

Hunched upon my bed (terrible posture) at 10:41 p.m. in the night, I realized what I want to write about.

 

Stress.

I’d like to think that I’m good at managing stress. But others refuse to agree.

It’s debatable, okay?

Life is an amalgamation of various sources of stress. I can’t explain how, but everything triggers stress in me. Uneven eyebrows? Stress. Bad grades? Stress. Periods? Stress. Missed call from mom? Stress. Dirty laundry? Stress. You see, my life evolves around stress.

Hence everyone around me blames stress as the root of all my problems.

This is indeed a messed up cause and effect relationship and no number of self-help books or Instagram self-care pages can pacify me.

 

What do I do to help myself? Sleep. It’s a really simple but an exceptionally effective way to deal with stress. Not very pragmatic though. Because what do I do if I’m stressed at work? Sleep? Yes. I’ve done that. I dozed off for a few minutes in an office bathroom stall. It worked. Never doing it again.

I watch funny movies, rant to a friend, binge eat, go shopping, walk, exercise and more to beat stress. But over time, I realized that I was seeking a way to escape the problem than face it. So everything I’d tried either became redundant or backfired at some point. We’re young and wild and we make mistakes. Perhaps, a little too many.

ANYWAYS, I would like to believe that I’m learning how to deal with stress. First off, you gotta identify when stress strikes. More often, I mistake anxiety or anger for stress. They’re indeed results of stress but I often dismiss it for some temporary technical issue in my body. What I fail to notice is, when I don’t face the source of my stress, I act out, effectively hurting someone in the process. And this is a cycle. I refuse to acknowledge the issue, brush it off and move on. And obviously, when something stressful transpires again, it snowballs into something more dreadful and my functions come to a halt.

I’m learning to face the problem. I identify the issue and map out the pros and cons. Like, what worked and what didn’t. Consider this as a SWOT analysis. Don’t get me wrong I don’t find solutions immediately. But what I find is clarity of the situation. And I’ve observed that sometimes, the problem solves on its own and at other times, I figure out a solution in a few days time. It’s important to know that not all problems require your interference or active problem solving skills. When you stumble upon a problem and if it fails to resolve even after utilizing every ounce of your capability, all you need to do is, let it be.

Every problem has a solution. Correct. But like I said, problems don’t always require your constant supervision. And you’ll only know that once you pin down whatever’s troubling you. This is no easy feat. It certainly is time consuming and would take several attempts to buck up and face it. But I suppose, that’s how you learn. There’s no rush so you can take one step at a time.

One thought on “I can’t stress this enough

  1. What a brilliant post – I can soooo relate. And you’re right – sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Stressful situations can right themselves!

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