The Best Medicine

Your heart pounds so hard it hurts. Your breath rasps. Your mouth is dry. Your blood in your ears roars. Your insides feel scorched by the constant rushes of adrenaline. You might complain about the weight on your chest. 

It's either a heart attack or it's stress. In the US with its pathological worship of busyness, it's probably stress. We've built a society that's really, really good at piling it on and one pathetically bad at releasing it. Science tells us all the time that chronic stress causes and exacerbates disease. It really is in our best interests to figure out how to turn down the dial on stress. 

The funny thing is: Stress evolved to be a lifesaver. Trust humans to turn it into a killer. 

Stress isn't supposed to be a bad thing. It's supposed to help, not harm. But to help, stress needs to be a cycle - a cycle that gets completed. At the dawn of humanity, a critter charged you. Stress dumped flight or fight or freeze chemicals into your body. If you were going to survive, you either ran or you fought. Either way, living meant physical exertion. Once you either defeated or outran the critter trying to turn you into a snack-pack, you returned to your tribe, told your story, and celebrated living another day. Defeating stress in the modern world means recreating those steps. Burnout by Emily and Amanda Nagoski lays out the means of doing just that. 

I'm not going to talk about exercise, because yeah, yeah, we all know. No, I want to focus on that last bit: Celebrating.

What happens when you recount some amazing feat to your friends? Wide eyes, appreciative, empathetic, maybe sympathetic noises from your listeners. Amazement, broad smiles, and laughter when your story concludes with triumph. Or at least with you not being made a chalk outline by some saber-toothed something. 

Laughter. You know. That stuff that's supposed to be the best medicine. Because laughter signals your system that stress is over. It's at an end and the alert system can relax. 

When the stress gets to be too much, I break out the cat toys and the catnip. There's nothing like a bunch of drunk cats butt wiggling and pouncing on string (and one another). Brown paper is also a good source of feline comedy.

If laughter feels too far away, affirm life in some fashion. Our ancestors made art. They drew on cave walls, or put up hand prints - something to say 'we're still here', 'we survived another day'. Watching the last of this season's monarch caterpillars change into butterflies does the job for me. Getting to release a brand new butterfly into the world dumps cold water on stress. It's pretty tough to stay keyed up and agitated when an endangered bit of technicolor beauty takes her first flight.

Reading Yoga

 

Reading Yoga

Destress: What’s one thing you do to keep (or reestablish) your equanimity when life is too much?

If there were one thing we could do to destress…well, we’d all be doing it and thriving! So that’s the thing, it takes more than one trick to keep the stress at bay.

Jeffe gave a great run down on how our bodies are hard wired to respond to threatening situations: alligators. The Mayo Clinic has a nice little post if you’re interested. 

For me, I ignored the alligators for far too long and ended up with a chronic disease. Now I have an arsenal of tools to handle stress. No, they’re not perfect because when you throw some bugs into the system I flare up and then the mental struggle gets real. But here’s my top three bring-it-down-a-level tricks:

Yoga

I’ve mentioned before that I had to relearn how to breathe, here, and doing yoga is my daily reminder to reset. I known I’ll get knocked off my pillow again and again, but I’ll keep getting back on.

Reading

According to my Goodreads I’ve read 127 books so far this year, and I know I’ve got two finished ones sitting on my desk that are awaiting reviewing. Why so high this year? Because I read to escape and when I’m lost in another world or the lives of characters I leave my own stress behind. 

Get Outside

I’m incredibly thankful for my husky pup, Ullr. He makes me get outside—especially when I don’t want to. Inevitably, being out in nature is what I needed. It clears my head.  

I haven’t invented anything new, though I did manage to combine all three for my image for the week. And really, what's better than slow, concentrated movements that improve your health while being swept away into a fantastical world?! Well...regular yoga is great too. 

If you are feeling the pressure I hope you give some of our week’s suggestions a try. Trust me, don’t ignore the alligators. 

Is one of my top three a go-to for you? 

my reading yoga book stack—each one is highly recommended!

A Little Stress Relief: Eight Tips

 

Happy Sunday! I hope you all had a great weekend with your family. This weeks's blog topic is Destress: What's One Thing You Do to Keep Or Re-establish Equanimity When Life Is Too Much? 

This is a timely post going into the new year, but I couldn't narrow it down to one thing. My go-to stress reliever since my kids were small has been a steaming hot bath. Most of the time, I just needed to de-frag and be ALONE, and we all know how hard that is with little ones. Twenty years ago, I had three, sometimes four, kiddos vying for my attention. Hot baths with the door locked saved me many times and still does, maybe because it became such a routine part of my life. Nowadays, I add some Epsom salts to my water and light a candle, and that winds me down like nothing else.

But! I have other stress relievers too. Sometimes a hot bath just isn't enough. When I need to reset my mind and return to that comfortable place I call stasis, I know that I need to either reconnect with nature or declutter/organize my house--or both. I live five minutes from every store you could imagine, and a few hundred thousand other people as well, so getting out in nature usually means I have to make a short drive. But I know when it's needed, and let me tell you, I find a trail, a stream, a park, or I go to our little spot of land on the top of a small mountain here in Tennessee and enjoy the fresh air and that lovely view.

Other times, I need to re-organize my home. Chaos in the home = chaos in me. It took me a long time to realize this, but once I did, and once I addressed it (which was hard with kids), man was it life changing. The act of cleaning/de-cluttering/organizing is a way that I re-set back to stasis. 

Other things I do? Exercise, walk, do a little yoga, or meditate. I recently bought the Asana Rebel app, and I'm enjoying integrating a short yoga practice into my morning routine. I also listen to music for stress relief, and of course, I read. Reading can be harder though, because concentration is a necessity, whereas listening to music requires nothing but plugging in. Music stops negative thinking for me and redirects my brain into creative mode. I get a lot of writing inspiration from music, so it's a cure-all if I need to stop thinking about whatever is stressing me, and I usually get my mind back on writing in the process.

Another big tip for stress relief is something I try to do to maintain equanimity, and that's hydration, electrolytes, and rest. I've read a few studies on the topic of stress and hydration/electrolyte imbalance, but my science degree days are long past. I can, however, vouch for the fact that I just feel better when I'm properly hydrated, drinking electrolytes, and getting proper rest. Good hydration alleviated the constant headaches I used to have along with the accompanying brain fog which created more stress because I couldn't focus.

Electrolytes, for me, are needed because I try to eat anti-inflammatory foods as much as possible, but that means a lot of water loss. I have to stay hydrated and keep the electrolytes going, or I feel awful. And rest? It's critical. I used to struggle to sleep past 4:30am, so 5-6 hours a night was my norm. It wasn't enough. When I'm hydrated and exercising, even if only a 20-minute walk once a day, I rest better, and then I feel much more on top of things the following day. Our brains need hydration and good sleep as much as the rest of our body, so if you feel off-kilter, maybe take a day to get some fluids and just sleep.

The important thing is to know what works for you and then to implement those activities when needed, whether it's an emergency stress reliever or a daily activity that helps keeps stress at bay. I'm all about being preventative versus reactive, but it's important to understand what tactics keep you in stasis and what tactics bring you back to stasis once balance has been compromised. 

I hope you have your own list of stress relievers, and if not, I hope this one gives you some ideas. Stress sucks, and it can quickly siphon the enjoyment from our lives. Here's hoping that you have the tools to fight the battle, and that you win.

Beware the Ghost of Holiday Stress

Happy Friday the Thirteenth.

It's two weeks before Christmas and I'm on one coast of the state at a specialty hospital being evaluated for handling the migraines. My father is in another hospital on the other side of the state with his heart rate through the roof and yet another heart procedure in his near future. Welcome to holiday stress.

How are you supposed to survive this nonsense anyway? If you have the ability (and this is definitely a skill) release what you cannot control. Ask for help. Accept that help. Connect with other people. Mix enjoyment into some of the moments of madness. Find a little hole in the wall restaurant that makes that thing you love. Seek out stories. Especially those that connect you to something larger than yourself.  Case in point: In the parking lot of the hotel, a huge brown tabby and white polydactyl cat greets hotel guests with head bonks and purrs. It seems the hotel helps manage a colony of feral and abandoned cats on property. When the last hurricane blew through, the hotel put the colony cats up in one of the hotel rooms to keep them safe. Did that not restore a little faith and lower your stress a tiny bit? (PS: The cat's name is Nala.)

Most of us think in terms of stress being a bad thing. But in the dark of winter when most of us in the northern hemisphere want to retreat from the cold, the gray skies, and from life itself, stress kicks us back into gear. Our blood moves faster. Stress warms us a touch. Chronic unrelieved stress is bad. That’s not the holidays, that's siege. So if your family situation feels like standing up on the barricades, it needs to be addressed. Preferably with a professional. Your well-being and peace of spirit aren't worth days of torture and anguish.

For run of the mill 'too many things on the list and not enough time' kinds of stress, ask for and accept help. Got to change that light bulb way up in the ceiling? Ask for help bringing in the ladder. Or holding the ladder. Don't let the cat talk you into letting her scale all the way to the top. She'll just show off and then bite you when you try to keep her from falling off. Ask me how I know.

Put a silly holiday show on the TV. Or a decorating show. Or a shoot-em up. Whatever is your holiday jam. Rock through that list of yours in the company of people you actively enjoy. If someone is in the kitchen making treats while you finish up the holiday card list, bonus. And don’t forget the power of exercise to keep you from murdering your nearest and dearest. Channel a little holiday spirit with a bracing walk in whichever winter wonderland you occupy.