This week in stress management

Just keep swimming

 I hate waiting. I've spent way too much of my life in waiting rooms. This week is all about waiting and watching to see where things land. I've been getting frustrated with people who post things like *THE LIFE YOU ARE LIVING IS THE RESULT OF THE CHOICES YOU HAVE MADE* blah blah blah, make better choices. So much of what is happening to us now is so completely out of our control that it makes me ill to think about it. 

Let's google how to manage stress... 

According to Psychology today...

If you happen to be someone who finds waiting particularly difficult, then, what can you do? 

Purely from the standpoint of dealing with anxiety, it is useful to help yourself stop ruminating about an outcome and to avoid spending time preparing yourself for the worst. Those behaviours are associated with a high level of anxiety and all its associated costs.

If you find it hard to stop thinking about an outcome, it is helpful to find ways to think about other things. After all, you can’t affect the outcome while you are waiting, so you simply should not spend too much time worrying about it. Instead, think about other things. Focus on other aspects of your life. Exercise, play a musical instrument, go out with friends. Do things that are unrelated to the news you are waiting for.

All that said, when the time for getting the news is very close, it will be hard to avoid thinking about it. At that point, you actually might want to spend at least a little time planning for what you would do if things do not go your way. It can be helpful to have at least the outline of a plan for what will happen if you get bad news—but there is no point in starting that planning process too early.

Here's some advice from Body and soul...

Accept that you’ll worry

“Worrying is part of our survival mechanism,” clinical hypnotherapist Dr Tracie O’Keefe says. “However, we sometimes blow fears out of proportion, so it’s important to put worries back into perspective.” She recommends this visualisation technique: “Picture the worst-case scenario as if you’re watching it on a movie screen, then shrink the picture until it’s tiny. Next focus on the positives in your life and enlarge that image to make it the biggest in your mind, until it’s all you see.” Another tip is to allow for a daily 10-minute “worry window”, when you let your mind wallow. Outside of this, the worries are a problem for “future you” not “present you”.

Time health adds,

Anticipating bad news and trying to find the positive in it—preparing ahead of time for failure, in other words—may not help to ease the anxiety during the waiting period, but can be helpful once the result comes, since it gives people a sense of control over their future.

Ever since I was a child I have been very resistant to relaxation techniques and stress management. Which is not a fun way to be. I just can't stop my brain from running situations. I find it works best if I just let myself think about something. I just wish my liver was normal right now. I could really use a drink. 

I don't want to talk about the cause of the stress too much, for fear of jinxing the week. I'll let you know once the dust has hopefully settled.