Stress is the harbinger of death. It can be loud and attack you head on, or it can slowly creep its way into your psyche like a slithering shadow. Either way, it will wreak havoc on both your mental and physical wellbeing.
As someone who has faced both strains of the stress demon, I can confidently say it is a complex beast to tame — no matter how strong you think you are. Sometimes you don’t even know how tightly wound you are until a small noise sends your entire body shooting up toward the ceiling.
There are medications you can take to help calm the stress vibrating throughout your body, but pills can only do so much. It takes a lot more to quell the fire than just a prescription. I have dealt with serious stress for 10 years and I am just finally starting to understand the things that help (and hurt) me.
In the interest of helping others who have similar problems, I am happy to provide a list of Dos and Don’ts to help you with your stress maintenance. Check out the things I have learned the hard way below.
Toxic Relationships Breed Stress Babies
Stress is a compound wound, meaning it starts small and gets bigger and bigger the older you are. I know, that sucks – but it is true. If you think you are great at “not” dealing with something and ignoring it, your subconscious will eat you up inside slowly over a few years until it boils over on your insides sending you into your first panic attack “out of nowhere”. Things that happen in your childhood do affect you in your adulthood.
If you grew up with parents who were always fighting or hurting each other – this affects you. If you were in an abusive marriage/relationship (mental or physical) – that is still affecting you. If you are friends or have been friends with people who suck the life out of you and aren’t really your friend – that is affecting you.
All of these negative experiences with people close to you (or even people you thought you were to close to) play a part in how our subconscious deals with “bad” things. Over time, these bad experiences start to pressure cook and rumble below the surface like a primed volcano. The more you have, the more it builds. That is why it is important to chop off its head before it latches on whenever you can.
If you are friends with, or have family members who always make you feel miserable, bad about yourself or scared in any way — cut them out of your life before they throw you into septic shock.
It might not be easy, but it will help you decrease the severity of your stress in the long run.
Work Stress Always Feeds Personal Stress
Most of your life will be spent working. That is just the reality. You gotta eat. I have heard so many times from well-meaning individuals who shall not be named, that I must check my personal life at the door when going to work and vice versa when going home. Well. Good luck with that. The saying, “it’s business, it’s not personal,” is rubbish. The people you work with very much affect you personally.
Whether you have a manager that yells at you, an over-emotional and unstable co-worker that scares you because they thought it was cool to bring a gun to the office or you have been ostracized by one or more people for speaking the truth — all of this affects you in a very real way, both mentally and physically. Stress is a very powerful creature. If you are subjected to stressors at work on an almost daily basis, the stress will only grow and become more and more potent, feeding your stress levels to a point that you cannot shut them off when you walk in your front door at home anymore.
While I cannot say “just quit your job,” I can tell you it might be time to start looking for a new job. Prepare for your getaway. No one deserves to be treated badly every day of their lives just because they need to eat. When you job hunt, make sure the people where you interview are just as good as the salary you are offered. If you make a lot of money only to be miserable all the time … it’s just not worth it. It’s never just a job. The workplace is its own ecosystem and you need to make sure you are comfortable in the environment offered to you.
Stress Becomes the Fear Factor
You are probably familiar with the concept of fight or flight – only we aren’t cavemen running from dinosaurs anymore. Now we are constricted, suit-wearing men and women who almost vomit at the thought of making that presentation to the board of directors. Or maybe we feel like the world is sucking up our lifeforce when we contemplate getting out and meeting new people. It’s hard to make new friends after grade school, am I right?
Soon, before you know it, your mind never shuts off. It is constantly weighing everything that may or may not have negative repercussions, and soon turns those hypotheticals into full-blown fears. Like … Leaving the house and getting into an accident. Going to school and getting shot by one of your fellow classmates. Plane crashes. Spider bites. Poison ivy. Ticks! O-M-G what if I get Lyme disease? I might almost die like that person on House. I will never go into the woods again!! … See how that got out of control rather quickly?
There are the many conscious and subconscious thoughts people have every day. And the more we learn about potential hazards or evil in the world, the more we have to rationalize with ourselves that we aren’t afraid and that it won’t happen to us. Otherwise, most of us probably would never leave our house.
Stress and fear go hand-in-hand. Where there is one, there is almost always the other. The key is to learn what scares us, why and confront those fears, thereby reducing the power they have over us.
Always Connected, Always on
First, I love the internet. I am a geek when it comes to new technology. I love playing video games. I always have my phone next to me (mostly). Whether I saddle myself with my laptop, iPad or phone, I am always one swipe away from Googling, Streaming or Gaming. Of course, that does not count work, where I could be at the computer for 8-12 hours in a day’s time.
One thing I have learned over the years is that you can definitely get burnt out on technology. As much as I love it, it also affects me negatively when I do not distance myself from it a little as well.
We will go into this a little more later, but it is good to take a break a few times a day. Get up, walk around, meditate, walk outside (without your phone), lay down and take a 20-minute power nap or just go chat up one of your office mates. Anything but sit your face in front of a digital screen.
Speaking from experience, it is important to rest your mind and your eyes otherwise the non-stop, always on approach will start accumulating, and before you know it it will manifest itself as stress burnout and you might find yourself in bed for days, or physically ill (and still in bed for days).
Caffeine Will Make the Heart Beat Faster
But not in a good way … I know what you are thinking. There is no way you are giving up your morning cuppa jo – and you don’t have to. I am referring to the continuous cups of coffee, the afternoon and evening Starbucks run, the three o’clock Cuban coffee shot and the Monsters consumed on game night.
Caffeine is a conduit for stress. The MOST you should consume in a day is that one cup in the morning and maybe one more around three to keep you going until bedtime. Any more than that and you will get your system so charged and hyped up your stress will almost always get the better of you.
I used to be a caffeine junky. I drank it all day and night. It caught up with me in such a big way, I cannot physically drink it more than twice a day without getting ill from the stressors it queues in my digestive system. Probably better to avoid that all together if you can, because believe me, it is very unpleasant once the cycle starts.
Stress Can Be Managed with Drugs
Nope. Stress is annoying that way. Medication can help, but it won’t make it go away completely. Neither will weed. In fact, if you suffer from stress or anxiety, unless you know exactly what strain you are getting, you might want to avoid weed altogether because it can actually make it worse if you use the wrong one.
Even if you were to stall out with major heroin use, it won’t last long. You will just invite yourself into endless whirlwinds of euphoria, extreme pain, paranoia and anxiety. Withdrawal from this can also kill ya. Probably best not to go there.
It doesn’t matter what drug you turn to, it will never cure your anxiety or stress. You have to do it, and cutting corners won’t help you get there any faster. In fact, it will almost always delay your journey to stress reduction.
Change Your Mind, Change Your Life
Yes, the dreaded meditation treatment does work. I say this because I used to hate the idea of meditation. It seemed like a waste of time, and I had no abundance of time to begin with. I tried everything – EVERYTHING – to avoid meditating. For years. And guess what, I wound up doing it anyway.
Many people find it hard to focus, or to empty their minds to meditate. Whenever I used to try to meditate that is when tons of thoughts flooded into my brain. Which made me even more stressed. The problem was, I was trying to meditate like I thought everyone else meditated. Turns out, that is the wrong way to do it.
Everyone is different. Duh. Just because your Master Reiki Healer can meditate for eight hours and only focus on the warm yellow light surrounding them each time they inhale does not mean your brain is conducive to the same formula of mindfulness.
I went through many different types of meditative experiments and failures before I found a way to create my own formula. Rather than try to mimic any one style or “practice”, over the years I learned to take bits and pieces from various schools of thought to make my own meditative elixir. If you have a hard time quieting your mind or de-stressing this might be helpful for you as well.
Sometimes it is all about the ambiance. Your home should, in essence, be your sanctuary. What calms or relaxes you? For me, it took a bit of experimentation to figure that out. I am a big candle person. I tried the “fake” candles. They just don’t do it for me. I like the act of lighting the candle. I like smelling a faint fragrance while the candle burns. I like looking at the flame flickering above the wax. I also love the smell after you blow out the candle.
I do not like candles that smell too strong as they tend to give me a headache. I have a collection of candles ranging from the handmade Jaded candles to the rich Wax Cabin candles, and everything in between. They are both soy-based candles so they last a long time. The scent they put off is not overwhelming, it is just the right level to capture the senses without making them work overtime.
Wax Cabin has a variety of flavors, ranging from simple Sweet Mornings all the way to Pumpkin Horchata (yum!). If these are a bit out of your budget (as they are for me sometimes) you can find comparable candles at places like TJ Maxx, Marshalls and ROSS.
Candles are great, but they just weren’t enough. For me, I needed a bunch of things to get me into the meditation mood. Now, I have created a mini-meditation room. I bought some shoji screens, some meditation pillows, incense, a couple of fake (real looking) trees, orchids, Japanese sculptures, a small bamboo table and a meditation bracelet.
Because I have been in the process of learning Japanese culture, and the language, I went with incents from Japan. I light these up every time I meditate (they are plum blossom flavor). It lets my body know that is what I plan to do. This is a more potent step than just lighting a candle for me because I like lighting candles to relax – not just to meditate. So, the sensory experience had to be something I only did when meditating.
The shoji screens act as a barrier to the outside world. When I go inside, turn off the light and close the screen doors it is as if I have been transported somewhere else. Of course, this is also why the meditation room is decorated with the trees, flowers and art. Naturally, the Bamboo table (very small tray really – think breakfast in bed with tray table legs) holds my candle, incense, orchid, etc. I have this positioned between the two trees. When I light the candle and the incense I start to feel myself winding down. But it takes more than that for me to meditate.
That is where my meditation beads come in. I never leave home without them, but they are especially for medit
ation time in my tranquil home away from home. Because my mind is so congested with thought, I need a little help getting to a place of calm. The meditation beads are very helpful with this. The idea is, you count one bead – breath in, you count the next bead – breath out … rinse and repeat until you make your way around the entire beaded necklace. I say necklace, but I wear mine as a bracelet.
I have also found the mediation beads help when I am away from home and stressed. I just follow the same beaded ritual and it helps calm me down no matter where I am, even if I cannot escape to my meditation room.
Aside from these things I have incorporated into my life’s routine, I also practice QiGong, Reiki, Chakra healing and Yoga. All are great at releasing stress, reducing anxiety and promoting a positive energy.
Over the coming weeks, I will go into more specific methods of stress reduction (QiGong being one method for example). We will jump into the good and the bad of each method, as well as the personality types the varying methods are most likely to go with.
I write like I think—fast, curious, and a little feral. I chase the weird, the witty, and the why-is-this-happening-now. From AI meltdowns to fashion glow-ups, if it makes you raise an eyebrow or rethink your algorithm, I’m probably writing about it. Expect sharp takes, occasional sarcasm, and zero tolerance for boring content.
