Stress

I debated about whether I should write a post about stress or not. I went back and forth about whether it was something I needed to heal as a trauma or if it was just a casual thing that I often find myself in, like anyone can. Though, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I tend to get myself into situations of chronic, unwanted stress, and therein lays the problem.

I am a strong proponent of the ideas of positive and negative stress with the following definitions:

Positive Stress

• stressors that are side-effects of doing things you enjoy or are passionate about. Often acute or makes you happy in the long-term so you are to willingly take it on without complaint or chronic impact on the body
• “I want to…”
• Ex. to dive into a stressful problem at work that, while it increases your heart rate and boils your blood, is a short-term stress that has many positive outcomes from the conclusion

Negative Stress

• stressors from things you don’t enjoy, or are derived from a perceived necessity to participate in the stressful task. Often chronic and causes you great unhappiness in the long term, likely causing physical or mental harm over time
• “I have to…”
• Ex. to have a job that you hate in order to pay the bills that works you more than you are worth, imposing a negative thought pattern or attitude.

They’re not perfect definitions, but they get the idea across. Positive leaves you generally happy, negative leaves you generally unhappy.

Now, I have dabbled with both, and often. As someone who loves to take on things by jumping in with both feet to learn and grow despite what others’ advice is on the situation, I land in stressful situations constantly. It ranges from projects that cause me great stress because I was overly ambitious, to saying ‘yes’ to things I realize I shouldn’t have said yes to. Each of these scenarios leads to stress, but only one of them doesn’t usually impact me negatively in the long term.

High levels of perceived stress have been shown to correlate with more rapid aging, decreased immune function, greater inflammatory processes, less sleep, and poorer health behaviours.

-Brene Brown, Atlas of the Heart

Over the last couple years, I have been learning how to remove the negative stressors from my life because I have experienced many of those issues listed above. I have gotten sick, I have experienced insomnia, stress eating, bodily inflammation and weight gain. There are more factors in each of those, yes, however stress has contributed to each of them. I have stressed so much to get work done before a holiday that I have spent the entire holiday sick and unable to enjoy the break. I have worked three jobs at a time to pay rent while having no time to exercise, eat properly or rest well. It manifests in different ways, but its all under the same umbrella of negative stress.

Of course, positive stress can morph into negative stress if not handled well over time, but we will stick to the clear line, if for no other reason than it will indicate when positive stress becomes negative.

Anyways, my necessity to decrease stress really came to a peak when I was working at a full-time job I didn’t enjoy, for a very low salary considering all I did, causing me to take on two additional jobs to supplement my income to pay debts and live. Now, my solution was to take on short-term positive stress to level up my skillset and switch careers. That increased the salary, however I was still working the other jobs. The real lesson has been to extract myself from that stressful mindset of needing to do so much to live, and now learn to let go of the jobs or aspects of my life that are stressing me out because I no longer need them.

It is a huge mindset change to go from “I have to do this to survive” to “I am okay now, I can do less and still be okay”. I am by no means perfect at it yet, because I have rebounded once again into working 3 jobs – actually 4 just not all at once – so this is where the healing comes in!

Since I am in a position that requires me to work those jobs at the moment due to commitment, it has become a stress-management exercise daily, for me to monitor my energy and not over extend myself.

This looks like:

• not forcing myself to work to exhaustion
• making time for exercise
• making time to walk the dog
• giving myself time in the evenings before bed of no social media or screen-time with just me (often I read a leisure book)
• ensuring that I eat better (this can be ordering in healthy options if I can’t cook or ordering the meal subscription boxes to have easy but healthy recipes to try)
• allowing myself a full night’s sleep to function optimally during the day
• having a day of no work at all, even the side jobs
• meditation/mindfulness practice

There are more and I don’t always get away with all of those in a day – heck some weeks I barely get them all in throughout 7 days – but I have a goal for each of them that I have been working to maintain so I am not heading for burnout or chronic stress. Ultimately I would be doing less things, but for now, it is easier to prioritize my needs before all else, and it makes the rest manageable.

In the end, stress happens, and honestly I wish it didn’t because the few times I have not had a ton going on in the last year, I have felt so much better. However, learning to say ‘no’ is a big one for me, so I will continue working on it. What matters most is that I am saying ‘yes’ to me instead of ‘yes’ to everyone except me, and its making a world of difference in my stress management.

Do you find yourself stressed often? Would you say its positive or negative stress?

I would love to hear your stories! Please feel free to comment below and let me know your techniques or about struggles you face in your own stress management.

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