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Are You Stressed?

The New York Times loves to write articles about stress, and we keep reinforcing their production of articles about stress by reading and responding to their articles about stress.  It’s a nasty cycle.

But I did love this fact from one of their recent “how to manage stress” articles:

The researchers looked at death rates in the study group over nine years. The results are startling. The study found that having a lot of stress in your life was not linked with premature death. But having a lot of stress in your life and believing it was taking a toll on your health increased risk of premature death by 43 percent.

Simplifying this to annoy all the scientists reading this post: as long as you don’t believe stress is negatively impacting your health, it will not negatively impact your health.  Love this and looking in the other direction.  What stress?

*******

The New York Times gave a lot of advice on how to manage stress, but they did not include any of MY ways of managing stress, all of which I believe are superior to eating well and exercising:

Ice

Chew on ice.  It’s as simple as that.  The sound will annoy everyone around you, but you will be filled with laser sharp focus and peace of mind.  I chew upward of 8 to 9 cups of ice per day.  I pour myself water just so I can quickly finish the water and then get to the good stuff: the ice.

You know how not thinking that stress is negatively impacting your health will stop stress from negatively impacting your health?  I believe the same is true for ice.  I believe that chewing on ice makes my teeth stronger.  Therefore, it makes my teeth stronger.  Please do not tell me otherwise.

Take on More

There is an old Yiddish folktale involving goats and chickens and stuffing your house full of new stressors so the original stressors don’t seem as bad, and I think the rabbis were onto something.  When work seems untenable, I take on more work.  Then I look back and think, “I had so much free time before I took on this extra work!”  It doesn’t help me in the moment since I now need to do the extra work, but it’s great for retrospection.

Crying in the Shower

Really, New York TimesAn entire article about managing stress and not one mention of crying in the shower?

Fine… and now some things they left off that actually help:

Write Everything Down

This seems like a no-brainer and yet no one ever puts it in a managing stress article: write everything down.  Half of my stress comes from not knowing which direction to point myself so I can take care of what needs to get done and get back to the ice chewing.  The times when I don’t feel stressed?  When I write everything down that needs to get done, create a manageable to-do list, and then move down the list.

Having it written down means that you don’t have to think.  And speaking of not thinking…

Make Decisions Once

The other half of my stress is constantly needing to make decisions.  I’m not talking about the big, life changing decisions.  I’m talking about things like “what are we eating tonight?”  So I sit down and make a bunch of decisions all at once.  Like I plan all the meals for the week in one sitting.  And then I put the list on the refrigerator and know exactly what we’re going to consume at various points in the day.  No on-the-fly decisions to make, and I never schedule complicated meals on complicated work days.

How do you manage stress?

8 comments

1 Beth { 08.15.17 at 7:24 am }

Writing things down is huge for me. I plan all meals the same way you do, and then that stress is gone. My biggest trick is putting reminders in my phone calendar for everything. Frees up space in my brain because I can happily forget I need to clean litter boxes and unload dishes and fold laundry at nap time once I’ve set my reminder. It’s the little daily things like that that cause me stress because I forget them and they pile up. And I worry about that… vicious cycle but I end it with the electronic reminders.

2 a { 08.15.17 at 8:19 am }

Geez, based on the title, I thought you were going to offer me chocolate and take me to lunch. How disappointing! 😀 😀 😀

Yeah, I don’t deal with stress, and generally respond by having a short fuse and yelling at anyone in my general vicinity. For the most part, I try to arrange my life to be stress-free. I have a job that is not generally stressful, a boss that is avoidable, a routine, a mostly easy kid. The kid and husband are my main sources of stress – thus, the yelling. This week, we’re all intolerable, as my daughter starts a new school today.

When I had my first job out of college, I used to get stress migraines. So I decided to have a stress-free life after that. In the 20+ years since I left that job, I’ve had 1 stress migraine. But as I am driving along, yelling at other drivers, I occasionally think “this sort of behavior is going to kill me one day.” Since that’s the extent of my consideration, it’s good to know it probably won’t.

3 torthuil { 08.15.17 at 9:06 am }

Hahaha. I have been avoiding most kinds of stress for the past 2 months. In a couple of weeks I’m back to work so I won’t be able to go that, dang. My two latest ways of dealing with stress are to lower my expectations, not plan, and swear at everything (not people, just at wherever I’m doing). I don’t know if they are good ones. I can’t chew ice though.

4 Working mom of 2 { 08.15.17 at 9:41 am }

What works-exercise, hot baths, writing stuff down (if its work).

Seriously lots of stress lately with all the hate in the world…above stuff works for personal stress but not so much world stress…

5 Arnebya { 08.15.17 at 12:54 pm }

I am a horrible decision maker. I go back and forth entirely too much to not be stressed. I make myself stressed, I think. And I do tend to pay too much attention to what stress is doing to me. I’ve started having anxiety attacks (I just thought I was going to pass out until the dr said nope) but I’m trying to manage them. Shower crying? Nope. Not unless no one’s home. I’m not a silent crier. And now I can’t remember the last time I cried. Hmm. No ice! Hurts my teeth. My teeth are hurting just thinking about it.

6 JustHeather { 08.16.17 at 6:24 am }

Stress. Sometimes I deal with it and other times I go to sleep. LOL
Your brief Yiddish folktale immediately reminded me of a book my kids love: A Squash and a Squeeze by Julia Donaldson. (She also writes the Gruffalo, which I just learned). (It has a different name in Finnish, so I had to google it.) Anyway, it was cute and made me think.

7 Lori Lavender Luz { 08.16.17 at 8:47 am }

I’m a big fan of the Write Everything Down method. Or, as I call it, the Pour It Out Of My Head method.

Not a fan of ice chewing. Hurts my teeth!

8 Inexplicably Missing { 08.16.17 at 5:10 pm }

A friend has recommended a book several times to me “The Upside of stress: why stress is good for you and how to get good at it”. It explains some of this research about stress that you mentioned… Have to confess I haven’t read it yet though!

(c) 2006 Melissa S. Ford
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