Responding to Stress

As promised I have pulled from my stack of old devotionals a typed sheet of paper from a program given by Dr. Larry Freeman, CSAC at Parkway Presbyterian Church one Wednesday night in the early 1990’s.

Since I have no desire to type the paper in full, I thought I would respond to his ideas as to how they relate to me and my response to stress. He begins by stating that there is no simple or universally effective solution to the problem of stress management. What works for one person may be totally ineffective for others. But all of his ideas have worked for someone somewhere.

On the subject of becoming knowledgeable about stress, my first really stressful time was meeting the deadline for my book in 2008. Never before had I experienced such stress and not known it. I actually thought I had a handle on things but the closer it got the sicker I got until I was in so much pain I went to the doctor, my dentist, as the pain was in a tooth. For weeks we treated it as stress, then finally we discovered by tooth had abscessed and it was not stress after all. I actually felt relieved. But within those few weeks my family and friends were a huge support giving me the tools I needed to stay on the course and concentrate on completing the book without losing it at the same time.

When I do find myself in a stressful situation I take a systematic approach to solving the problem which is the second technique Dr. Freeman suggests. Years ago I took a six-week workshop on Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) which turned out to be one of the most life-changing workshops I ever attended. Being able to actively listen to another person and then work to solve any problem that might arise without making matters worse not only worked with my children but with others as well.

Dr. Freeman suggests coming to terms with your feelings for example learning to be flexible and adaptive. I can’t imagine two more perfect words to describe a mother – flexible and adaptive. If I didn’t have a good handle on this, then I probably couldn’t have survived raising four children. Acknowledging how I felt and expressing it to my family, however was not always easy. Nobody likes to admit defeat or lack and as a mother, wife, and homemaker, failure was not an option. Needless to say, I bottled it up at times and of course paid the price for that….grinding my teeth at night, for example. (That’s how my dentist was the first to diagnose my stress.)

The fourth technique on the list is to develop effective behavioral skills with the most important thing to remember to do is to learn to say NO. That was a hard concept for me but over the years I found that when I said yes to something I could not or was not prepared to do, it made matters worse. I felt like I failed the person or organization I had said yes to. Today, I’m not afraid to say NO. In fact, I’m not only doing myself a favor but also the person who is asking me.

Developing a lifestyle that will buffer against the effects of stress is the last and to me the most important technique Dr. Freeman listed. For me it is meditating every day. It is stopping and breathing in and out whenever I feel that a stressful moment is approaching and finally I maintain an optimistic attitude about my life. I believe in myself and expect to succeed in all that I do. I celebrate my successes and reward myself with thoughts of how good my life is.

My way, may not be your way but it works for me