Tag: coping with stress

WIP Wednesday 1/6/21

I have been planning for months to get myself together and start writing and posting here on the blog again in the New Year. I was all set to start tomorrow, but I feel like it would be tone deaf to today’s events to carry on like that mess in the Capitol didn’t happen. I also feel like I have nothing to add to the conversation at large that will be helpful and not just add to the cacophony.

I do feel like I can say no matter who you voted for, violently storming Congress is not the best way to be heard as anything but a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. I think a lot of hypocrisies have been exposed (again) in the powers that be that cannot be unseen and need to be examined. I think the true character of many politicians was on display, and I firmly believe that when people show you who they are, you should believe them. I think our country is resilient, but I know we have a lot of uncomfortable truths to stare down and hard conversations to have. I also know that no matter what happens on the national and international stages, I have the most impact in the communities I’m involved with, and I am to love my neighbor. That command is unconditional and irrevocable. Nations rise and fall, but the love of God and the word of God do not change.

When chaos comes calling, that’s the first thing I cling to: I have eternal hope, and I have a rock to build my life on that is unfazed by riots and party politics and pandemics. When the chaos feels overwhelming, I try to limit my exposure to news of the craziness, and then I try to do something productive. For the last month, that’s been baking bread.

We already tried and failed at the quarantine sourdough starter; no one at my house was eating the sourdough bread, and the same black thumb tendencies that kill most plants that come under my care eventually killed off the starter. But bread baking with yeast turns out to be far simpler than I remember it being, and we all like just plain-old-not-sour bread. (At least no one is complaining and refusing to eat it, so I’m going to carry on assuming everyone likes it as much as I do…)

Baking fresh bread is deeply satisfying on a lot of levels, so I’m not surprised it’s been a go-to comfort activity in the pandemic. Kneading dough is pretty physical, so it’s almost a “heavy work” activity that tends to calm our bodies and minds. Punching dough after the first rise turns out to be one of our favorite family activities – even my husband grinned when it was his turn to punch a bowl of dough. If you’re a tactile person, feeling good sandwich bread dough in your hands is pretty wonderful. I hate slime, and my daughter is obsessed with it, so there’s a metric ton of it gumming up my house, but bread dough feels like a therapeutic thing of beauty (it’s almost good enough to make me forget that slime exists).

Two happy loaves working on their second rise (and I know I’m past due on cleaning my oven, but I took the picture anyway).

There’s also something warm and boosting to your self-efficacy about making kitchen staples like bread – not to mention the heavenly smell of baking bread. When I made French toast with my bread, I was extremely proud that it was a meal made completely from scratch, down to the bread slices. I didn’t brag out loud then, so I’m doing it now.

Over the last month I have tweaked the recipes I started with until I found a reliable, not too crumbly, not too mushy loaf. I’m an okay cook (never expect me to pan fry anything without charring it and/or catching it on fire, and if it’s complicated or involves separating eggs, I’m probably going to fail), but I am a pretty darn good baker. And it turns out, I’m getting pretty darn good at baking bread.

After watching the news today, baking bread tonight was good for my soul. It was a little (literal) slice of normal in the midst of chaos. I got to knead and punch, and I’m currently smelling the wonder of fresh baking bread.

Ready for butter!

When the headlines and life feel overwhelming and terrible, find something good and simple and true to remind you that the chaos isn’t forever, that nothing is too big for God to handle, and that butter on hot bread is one of the greatest treasures in the world. If you’re in need of some bread and butter therapy, come on over, and I’ll bake a you fresh loaf. You can even punch the dough.

WIP Wednesday 9/2/20

I try to show an art or writing related WIP when I share these, but this week, my biggest WIP is me. I try to be transparent about my mental health struggles so that other people may feel safer to share their own problems or at least know they aren’t alone, so this week the WIP is me.

My average morning face

Right now, after months of social distancing, it’s hard not to feel alone. The constant changes in our work and school environments, the stress of dealing with the threat of a mysterious illness, the ever growing cacophony of political posts and angry people on social media… It’s all taking a toll on me, and I know I’m not the only one. The tragic loss of someone I’ve counted as a friend several weeks ago reminded me that I need to take my mental health seriously as the potential life-threatening disease depression can be.

This summer I already made myself a list of things I knew my counselor would tell me to do, and I’ve been trying to do them daily. Last week, I added a diet element to it that’s shown a lot of potential in the few limited clinical trials that have been done. This week, I sat down and wrote out care plans for daily preventive care, acute symptom care (when I start feeling mental and physical symptoms of stress, depression, or anxiety), and rescue care (when it’s all a bit too much, and I need immediate relief).

After several months of intentionally doing my “preventive protocol,” I can definitely say it’s helping me stay on more equal mental footing. The addition of the diet angle and the mental safety net of having plans written out with behavioral triggers to put them into action has been a huge and quick improvement, enough so that I’m committing to sticking with the diet plan for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes, the WIP is me.

And that’s a good thing. I am a valuable creation of God, and I am worthy of taking care of myself. Depression brain wants to tell us that we have no value, no worth, nothing to offer. That’s just not true.

You are valuable, you are loved, and you are worthy of being your own WIP, too. What do you need to start doing today to grow and feel better?

Feel the Feelings – Mindset Monday

Feel all the feelings and then let them go.

I am a naturally empathetic person.  It’s one of my INFJ personality type superpowers.  Empathy makes me a great listener, a good friend, a compassionate leader, a solid writer, a generous giver…

But it’s also my kryptonite.  I internalize the mood of the space I’m in, the people I’m around, the news I hear and read.  All of it goes straight to my heart.  When I’m not my healthiest spiritually and/or mentally, I have to create buffers between my soul and the ”real world,” or I can’t watch the news without crying over how broken the world is – how the pandemic is affecting the entire world – how heavy the losses are for families affected by the crime and poverty being reported – how divisive and angry our politics are – how even the good news stories are often colored with shades of loss or hardship, even if it’s a story about a loss restored.

It’s all so oppressive that joy, even the deep and abiding joy of living in Christ, is hard to muster.  I tend to retreat, to build so many buffers that I can hide in comfort food and craft projects.  Sometimes I volunteer too much as a way to compensate and keep my brain too busy with stuff to do to be able to focus on how I feel.  It’s a really dumb way to handle all the feels, but it typically happens on such a subconscious level that I don’t realize it until I’ve taken on too much work to handle and there are abandoned crochet projects all over the house (and the house is a wreck).

Photo from Pexels.com

As I grow, I get better at spotting the cycle.  I’m certainly better at recognizing the moments when I’m feeling all the feelings, and even knowing when they’re not mine.

But the letting go part, that’s not my strong suit.

I’m great at planning my way out of mess and thinking I can generate just the right to-do list that will fix all my perceived problems.  Overweight and out of shape?  Yes, but if I follow this diet plan and this exercise regimen EXACTLY, then I’ll be at my goal weight and peak physical conditioning in less than a year.  Behind on my quest to be a “real author?”  Absolutely, but if I write this many minutes per day on each writing project, and I send out this many book proposals in the next two weeks, THEN I’ll be on my way.

It’s all malarkey.  Not that I shouldn’t make plans and set goals, but I am still learning the lesson that I’m setting insane goal paces as a way to avoid some of my feelings.  The irony, of course, is that setting unattainable goal deadlines sets me up to disappoint myself and kick off a whole new wave of uncomfortable disappointed feelings.

I’ve been aiming instead to feel the feeling for a bit, and then I have to move on.  Stress is definitely the hardest for me to let go of, and it’s probably the most indicative of where my faith is in any given moment.  It’s also been the most common feeling of the last few weeks.

I’m not a super strict schedule person, because even when I try to be strict, something blows up and pushes all my meticulous plans aside.  To go from a loose schedule to something new entirely with a child home from school who’s definitely used to a routine has turned my brain onto permanent “AAAAGGGHHHH” mode.  It’s not that I have a lot more to do – it’s the same amount of work, although I’m doing more consistent housekeeping and actually clearing out some clutter – but there’s a lot more emotional and mental and spiritual work to do to keep my empathy superpower from killing me.  The unknown and nebulous menace of dealing with a pandemic is also adding a layer of stress that’s harder to identify.

I know that I feel stress less acutely when I am consistently spending time praying and studying the Bible.  I use a prayer app to keep track of requests, and it also has a meditation and preparation prompt that uses Bible verses and devotional writings to direct your time before you begin praying through requests.  Some days, that’s as far as I can get (and very honestly, some days I don’t make it to an intentional time of prayer, and it’s just scattered bits when I remember something or start to lose my mind).  On my best days, I also spend time reading the Bible and taking notes.  You don’t have to take notes to study the Bible, but it’s very much how my brain processes information, so I hand write notes when I’m really studying.  It’s also good to just read without the expectation that I need to do anything deeper.

I know that my diet and water intake will also have a huge effect on how I handle stress, though that knowledge doesn’t always translate into the wisdom of action.  Same story with exercise.  That’s on my list to work on this week.

You may wonder why I started with prayer and Bible study as the best stress buster in my toolbox and spent so much space talking about it.  There are two reasons I think it’s the most effective tool.  First, focusing on God in a way that seeks to learn more about his character and channels my prayers towards others shifts my focus entirely away from myself and towards an infinitely larger subject.  My worries fade in comparison, and I lose the weight of my stress in that time of meditation.  Second, meditation is a highly recommended cognitive behavioral therapy tool because it teaches us to calm our thoughts and shift our perspectives and thought patterns.  Prayer and Bible study is my mode of meditation.

Photo from Pexels.com
Managing stress and learning how to let go if it is one huge feeling we can practice the “feel the feelings and then let them go” mantra on that we’re all experiencing to some degree right now.  Sometimes just managing stress makes managing other emotions much easier.  When that’s not enough, how do we let go of other feelings that want to linger, like anger and sadness?  I don’t have a perfect answer, but I have model.

Feel the feeling.  Acknowledge that it’s there and know that whatever the feeling is, it’s okay to experience it and that you are not defined by your emotions.  If you’re in a safe and appropriate setting, vent it.  Cry or shake your fist with rage or write down what you’re feeling.  If you’re not in a space that’s conducive to expressing the feeling, note it, and let yourself come back to it when you can.  Realize that expressing emotion doesn’t mean you have a free pass to act any way you want without consequence, so think before you act.  If an emotion is so strong that you’re not going to behave well, give yourself some time and space.

Once you acknowledge the feeling, examine it.  What exactly was the emotion?  What triggered it?  How did you react?  What foundational beliefs affected your reaction?  Was your reaction appropriate to the situation?  What information would change the intensity level of the emotion you experienced?  How could you react differently if you have the same experience again?

Most of the time, taking a moment to examine the feeling lets us take a step back and look more impartially at the situation, and we find that our emotional reaction is less intense than it was in the heat of the moment.  Downgrading the emotional intensity is a big step in letting go.

If you’ve examined the emotion, and nothing seems to take away the edge, decide if it’s a situation you can change or not.  If you can, make some changes.  If you can’t change the situation, you need to change your thought pattern.  Whenever the lingering negative feeling pops up, actively counter it with a positive thought or action.  For example, with depression, I tend to get cranky when I’m not in healthy condition.  When I realize the anger is creeping up, I try to actively avoid confrontations that I know will end ugly, and I remind myself to breathe slowly and remember that whatever it is, it will be okay.  Find something to redirect in a positive way the negative thought/emotion pattern that works for you.  It takes a lot of practice, and it feels a little silly when you first start, but it’s a game changer.

Photo from Pexels.com

Even with this model and a ton of head knowledge about what I need to put into action to let go of things and feel better, sometimes I suck great wind.  But good mental health is a marathon, not a sprint.  As long as you’re moving forward, or at least not wallowing too long when you fall down, you’re building the endurance you need to be healthy.

Use Your Hands – Three Things Thursday

Use Your Hands – Three Things Thursday

If you have children or work with them, you’ve probably said, “Use your words, not your hands.”  But today, we are throwing caution to the wind and assuming you’re mature enough to use your hands AND your words.

Today, my home state decided the wisest course of action to slow the pandemic spread is to cancel in-person classes at school for the rest of the semester.  My tiny human was a little nuts the first week that school was paused for three weeks.  Now that we know we’ll continue the semester with assignments from home, she was a lot nuts trying to go to bed tonight.

To be honest, so was I.  Everything in our schedule is upside down.  I’m a naturally empathetic person, and I can’t even peek at social media right now where everyone’s dogs and cats and family updates usually perk me up – right now it’s full of people experiencing the same loss I’m experiencing, and I can feel too deeply the lost senior year antics, the teachers missing their students and working like crazy to figure out how to make the next two months happen virtually, the students who miss their teachers and classrooms and friends and routines, all the people out of work, and all the people working through incredibly stressful conditions at essential jobs.  It’s a lot, and it’s hard for everyone right now, no matter what your situation.

If you have been feeling a little too much of the worry of the moment (or had a mild panic attack like I did tonight), here are three things you need to know right now:

  1. It’s okay to feel the feelings.  It’s okay to mourn for the loss of your daily routine and to freak out a little bit at all the things that are different right now, including the inexplicable hoarding of toilet paper and ground beef.
  2. Once you feel the feelings, tell them the truth.  Let the crazy thoughts and emotions and anxiety parade by, but don’t get out there and march with them.  Wave as they pass by.  And as they march down the parade route, imagine yourself as the cheesy news anchor announcing the float, telling you bizarre facts like how many coffee beans were used in the construction of the float, and then sending it off with a great one-liner like, “But I know no matter how many coffee beans they used to make that float, it’s still not running the show.”  That’s a silly example, but a real thought exercise might sound like this in your head: “Here comes stress.  Stress likes to show off with flashy things like anger and overstimulation, but stress is going to keep walking right on by.  I’m going to wave goodbye to stress because it needs to finish the parade route, and I can control my actions.”  You aren’t your feelings.  You aren’t your thoughts, though that’s a tempting line of thought, given Descartes’s catchy, “I think, therefore I am,” philosophy.  You are a created child of God, which leads to…
  3. Philippians 4:6-7: “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”
Slow down, breathe for a moment, and get some perspective. I don’t care what this pandemic or anything else going on in your life holds for you, God will hold you together through it. These verses are a blueprint for how to survive.

So I just listed three things that obviously had nothing to do with the introduction.  That was a bonus list.  The three things I started out to write for today is a set of mental health exercises to use if you’re feeling the stress a little too much right now, and they all use your hand as a cue.

First, trace your hand on a piece of paper.  I’ll wait.  No, I’m not kidding.  Any paper will do.  I only had fluorescent green handy (see what I did there…), so that’s what I’m using (as well as subpar phone photography).

When’s the last time you traced your hand?

Our first exercise is just breathing.  Breathe in through your nose while you count to five, hold it for a count of five, and breathe out through your mouth while you count to five.  Use the hand print as a visual to focus your thoughts onto just your breathing.  If you want more meditative visualization, remember that we are God-breathed creations, the Bible is described as God-breathed, and every breath is life.  We are breathing in God’s provision, savoring it for a moment, and then letting go of everything that’s past.  Try this for a few breaths, or a few minutes, until you feel your heart rate settle and the stray thoughts that run in like saboteurs slow down their attacks.

Now, using your hand as a counting reference, list five things that you’re thankful for right now. If you like the physicality of ticking them off with your fingers, go for it. Whenever you feel like anxiety is trying to take over, list five things you’re grateful for or five things that bring you joy. It’s not going to change the circumstances, but it’s going to change your perspective of the circumstances by reminding you of good things in your life.

And the third exercise is one of my favorites (and the reason you need an actual tracing of your hand on paper).  In the space outside your hand, write down all the things you can’t control that are taking up space in your thoughts.  In the space inside your hand, write down things you can control.  What’s the difference in the things in your grasp and the things you can’t hold on to?  If you can’t control the things outside your hand, how much mental energy should you devote to them?

We tend to think of worry as something that just happens to us because our circumstances are big and scary.  But… Worry is a choice.  While we can’t control every thought that pops into our heads, we can control how much we let them run around unchecked.  The second we let all the things we can’t control run the narrative in our thought patterns, worry is running the show.  We used the parade imagery in the first list, and even though it was a parade of negative thinking, there was order and we were telling the floats what to do, right?  Now imagine for a second what that parade would look like without a chaos coordinator.  Think Barney ’97.  Total disaster.

Let’s use Philippians 4:6-7 as our thought process model.  Don’t worry; let the thoughts pass by without letting them run the show.  Pray about everything; that’s certainly something you can control, so if it’s not already in your handprint, maybe you should add it.  Tell God what you need; he already knows, but you still need to express it as a need for him.  Thank God for what you have.  Feel that anxiety turn towards peace.  That’s what putting your life in God’s hands will do.

Alright, I now have two lists of three things, and since I have moderate perfectionist tendencies, I feel the need to end on another list of three so we have three three things because two three things will not do.  So… here are three things that bring me extra stress relief:

  1. Bee Badminton. Tis the season for carpenter bees. I hate them making swiss cheese out of my porch, so I whack them with badminton rackets. Bonus fun – now the dogs like to help by catching the ones I hit and eating them. It’s now a team sport.
  2. Potato Pelting. One of my dogs has a barking problem. At night I can stop her by shining a flashlight on her, but, alas, my superpower beam is useless in the day. I usually stash some tennis balls in the kitchen that I can chunk at her to redirect her attention, but, alas, all the balls are in the yard. Today I discovered some tiny potatoes that hid in a dark corner of the kitchen until I forgot about them. They’ve all sprouted and are useless for eating, but they’re the perfect size to chunk at the loudmouth dog – heavy enough to be able to throw accurately for decent distance but light enough not to injure the dog. And I’m composting (badly, I admit, but it’s composting nonetheless, and you won’t convince me otherwise).
  3. Writing. I was tempted to chuck it all, even the potatoes, tonight and distract myself with television and solitaire until I got sleepy. I feel much better now for having done some mental work to settle down and praying for a while. Now that I’ve dumped my brain out on a page, I feel like I’m me again.
I’m extremely talented. You should see me work with knives.

One final hand photo to prove I may write like I have my crap together, but I can’t even trace my hand without getting Sharpie ink all over myself. This is one of at least five similar ink spots. I can barely be trusted with scissors, so I promise if I can make it through life, you can, too.

The Final Countdown

For my fellow hair band aficionados, please cue the Europe soundtrack or begin humming the synthesized keyboard riff. For the more adventurous, you may want to indulge in a little air guitar. Now that you’re humming along, I’ll explain the title. Saturday I begin taking the first round of injections to begin IVF. In less than a week, we start a process that will end in just over a month with either a positive or negative pregnancy test. My doctor and his staff are incredibly good at what they do, so my money’s on a positive result. Meaning that in about two months, we will either be miscarrying again or potentially seeing a heartbeat on ultrasound.

It is somehow less scary to not know every month whether you’ll be pregnant or not. To have dates for everything (begin injection A, discontinue pill B, add injection C, ultrasound, egg retrieval, pregnancy test…) is slightly terrifying. It’s one thing to be able to wonder, “Am I or am I not?” and guess about whether your timing was right. It’s radically different to know that you have gone through a very detailed process that may or may not break your heart. If we somehow don’t get pregnant, I’ll be devastated. If we do get pregnant, I’ll be facing the same two to three weeks of total chaos while we wait to see what happens with hormone levels and ultrasounds. We’ve scheduled the terror. Willingly.

Of course there is an element of excitement: we could be pregnant in a month; we could have twins; we could actually have a baby by Christmas. And there’s a giant fear of the unknown: what if the hormone part of the IVF process makes me crazy (perhaps crazier than normal is more accurate…)? What if it hurts? What if I’m too big a weenie to handle shooting myself every day or being shot every day for the next month? (I have been a bigger weenie for lesser things, after all.) What if it doesn’t work? What if it does work? Am I really strong enough to deal with this?

The short answer is no. No, I am not strong enough to handle the potential fallout if it doesn’t stick or if it doesn’t stick for the whole nine months. I am a total nutball right now. I am crying when the dog steps on my toe; I can’t watch anything on Animal Planet (that still involves actual animals, anyway) for fear of losing it; misplacing my stapler at work could actually result in the building burning down… I can physically feel my stress level rise and fall, and I can measure it by how badly I want to scream at any given moment.

The long answer is I’m fine, and I’ll deal with whatever happens because I have a big God to lean on and rest in. I have a great support system of family and friends, and I am not afraid to use them. I am exercising like a madwoman to keep the physical feelings of stress at bay. In the meantime, I am adding IVF to the list of things I never thought I’d blog about. I am drinking half-caf coffee and religiously taking prenatal vitamins. I am not wearing mascara for the next month, and I will not have fingernails to file until sometime in 2013. I am a walking oxymoron. I believe that God can do anything he wants to in this situation, but my stress implies that I am all too human and have a hard time trusting him without worrying about it.

For those of you praying along at home, here’s the basic rundown: this weekend marks the beginning of the hormone treatments, April 1 is our approximate date for egg retrieval, making somewhere around the 15th or 16th of April our pregnancy test date. As an added bonus/potential land mine, my birthday is actually on Mother’s Day this year, and, based on our previous pregnancies, we’ll either have a miscarriage or a heartbeat by that point.Of course, what I want is to have a baby, but I want more than that to know that whatever happens, we will honor God and glorify him regardless of the circumstance. So, I’m not sure what to tell you to pray, but pray anyway.