Category Archives: stress management

Recognize. Rest. Regulate.

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“When you’re stressed out you think the marriage is bad.”

Hubs had this insight about me years ago and I immediately dismissed it as ridiculous. Thankfully months (years?) later I admitted the accuracy of his assessment and have worked to recognize the phenomenon in real time, so as to self-regulate and avoid immersing in false stories, making myself and others suffer unnecessarily.

So what story do I tell about the emotional roller coaster that was this past week? I had a ‘this marriage sucks’ moment some weeks ago and nipped it; I think I can avoid that hole in the sidewalk more reliably now. Yesterday felt particularly low, and I scrambled to make sense of it–the physician’s diagnostic and therapeutic mind taking over. The rabbit hole beckoned. But as of tonight I can put down the dissection tools. Life calls me to just be in it, whatever it is, without judgment, resistance, or exposition, for now. But I thought I’d document the thought and emotion journey here, for my own records, and also to see if anyone else can relate.

It all started 8 days ago when I realized suddenly that I would drive Daughter to college in six (now five) weeks. In one of those rapid cinematic zoom-in moments of the mind, everything about my life changed in that heartbeat; a new, irrevocable perspective emerged and disrupted everything, even as I had thought myself flowing with life’s predictable evolution rather smoothly. As if called forth by magic, strong and conflicting emotions rose in a whirlwind and began a multidimensional tug of war with my psyche in the ensuing days.

Excitement: Now after twenty-two years of primary parenthood, the last paragraphs of this chapter are only a few pages away–how will Kids and I write them? It’s been long and arduous, fraught and heavy with responsibility and fear of failure, my Book of Parenting. It’s also inarticulably rewarding and edifying–talk about the headwinds that shape us–I could not be happier about how we’ve all turned out. My children have made me a deeper, more thoughtful, more empathetic, smarter, and stronger person that I imagine I would otherwise be. I cannot wait to watch them thrive in adulthood; they are ready and powerful.

Guilt: But what about all of my parenting fuck-ups? When and how will those come back to bite us all in the butt, and hard? Whenever I admire my kids with pride and joy, guilt always lurks somewhere in the bushes nearby. *sigh* Oh well, what’s done is done; all I can do now is continue to learn and apply, and apologize and ask for forgiveness when needed.

Optimism: Dinner with an old college friend mid-week revealed our shared attitude toward artificial intelligence–one of immense potential and serious concern that self-serving and short-term reward and profit-driven impulses will overtake collaborative and holistic ones in its development and applications. We resolved, therefore, to combine our platforms somehow to amplify and advocate for the latter, and to find and rally fellow early adopters of that cause.

Self-loathing: This one is acute. Remember when I wrote how I’m getting okay with being squishy and strong? I did not lie, but as with so many things, my feeling brain does not agree with my thinking brain. As of today, I hate my appearance, especially the shape of my body as I see it in photographs. When I look in the mirror with clothes on, I honestly think I look okay. Not as lean as I’d like and as I once was, but not horrible. Then I look at pictures and absolutely cringe. How fascinating! Even as I feel stable, strong, flexible, agile, and resilient in my body, even as I recognize my remarkably healthy constitution, both physical and psychological, I cannot seem to shake this one severe self-judgment–at least for now.
*deep breath*

So the marriage is fine, my stress mind says. But now I’m not at all good enough myself?
How fascinating again.

Middle age. Menopause. Impending empty nest. Severe geopolitical chaos and uncertainty. Deep and meaningful connections and relationships. Rising liberation and agency in expertise and wisdom. “No longer stupid, not yet infirm.”

I recognize the laden morass of intersecting contexts of my life, its weight and density.
I resolve to rest my mind and spirit, to breathe deeply. I can be with and get through it, to find my most authentic and honest way, one breath at a time.
I can regulate my thoughts, stories, words, actions, reactions, and relationships according to my values and integrity. I can live a life with low risk for severe regrets, if I slow down, be, and do me.
Everything is and will be okay.

Compassionate Consistency

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Chojun Textile & Quilt Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea

Am I walking the talk?

It’s been a week, friends—I shall spare you the details.  Suffice it to say that somewhere along the way I started to ask myself the question above.  As I prepare to kick off a series of wellness presentations based on the idea that we Lead from Any Chair—that how we show up for ourselves and others has power and impact whether we intend it or not—I must check in on my own integrity.  How do I show up?

I jotted notes for an “Impact and Impairment” post a few days ago:

Progression of stress:  What are the first signs, when and what do I notice?  Are they thoughts?  Body sensations?  Moods?  What are the smoke alarms, and can others detect them before I can?  What do I do in response to awareness?  How am I impacted by this stress right now—sleep, workouts, eating?  And how is my function?  Am I getting everything done that needs doing and would I notice impairment soon enough and have the resources to recover?  What does the housefire look and feel like?

Lazy Susan unicycle:  I can’t remember the last time I thought of this image, which I wrote on this blog many years ago.  Sometimes life feels like holding a lazy Susan in each hand, loaded with life things and spinning in opposite directions, while unicycling through traffic wearing a scratchy pant suit.  That it came to me this week felt like a sign that I felt the impact of everything, no question—volume, intensity, risk—all my stress management skills and mantras called forth and tested:
ODOMOBaaT
Goals and trade-offs
Do what you can
Do what works
Commit and Flex

After my last commitment on Friday I could finally breathe and relax.  All I wanted to do was cut and write jar smiles.  It was positively meditative and recharging, for hours while listening to romantasy in the most delicious voices—that was all day and night yesterday—ready to attack today!  Then the WiFi crashed at home (fixed now, thanks Hubs).  No problem, there’s a café down the street, I could cram all internet-requiring tasks into a single time window and crank through.  I’ got this!

I started to wonder how constraints like this could make me more efficient in general, which led me to question my own capacity for discipline.  I estimated it as moderate, and the words ‘good enough’ emerged with force.  How do we define ‘good enough’?  Looking back, I compared my grades in high school to college and med school, and realized that what mattered was not the grades themselves, but whether I thought I was showing up to my full potential, and whether it mattered to me.  Whatever grade I got was ‘good enough’ as long as I had done the work that was worth the costs to me at the time.  In retrospect, I have always had a strong intrinsic sense of the value of my energy and effort.  Except for some parts of residency, I have rarely self-sacrificed or burned out in any pursuit that I can recall. 

I found the lower limit of my half-assedness in college, when my life task balance seesaw hit the ground with a resounding thud.  It was the first quarter of physics—mechanics.  I hate physics.  Hubs and I were just starting to date.  I chose to hang out with him rather than study the week of the second midterm and failed the exam spectacularly.  I got a C for the class; that did not feel good.  I have studied enough and not failed another exam since.

Morning pages.  Exercise.  Blog writing.  Patient care.  Parenting.  “Yes, I am disciplined and also flexible,” I journaled today—in the morning but not formally as Morning Pages.  “Consistency…80/20?  I am consistent enough to get the results I want—mostly…”  I don’t have the body I want (very ambivalent relationship with my body at the moment—more on that another post, perhaps); yet I put forth all the effort I can muster each day in that direction.  “For now, I feel ok with my body the way it is because I know in my thinking brain that I am strong and healthy… And in my feeling brain I still kind of hate how fat I am now compared to before…  But would I rather be that shape and weaker?  Hmmm… I think given the choice, I might actually choose me now.”  That felt good, and I’m glad I took the time to write it out.

“All or something,” says The Betty Rocker

I concur. 

When I look at the long arc of action in the domains that matter—exercise, patient care, relationships, and even nutrition, where healthy habits are still such a struggle—I show up consistently and reliably with my core values, highest goals, and integrity in front.  When things get heavy and stressful I feel it, as we all do.  It’s very uncomfortable and I don’t like it.  I think it’s fair to question my responses, to assess whether I do what I recommend to others in such circumstances, and what I have written every week on this blog for the past decade.

Our culture pressures us to be perfect.  Impossible.  Traffic gets heavy, the suit gets sweaty, and things fly off the lazy Suzan.  Sometimes we must put it all down and reset.  Then we get back on, maybe with lighter loads on smaller roads.  We get to decide.  Slowing down and taking time to look behind, here, and ahead can help ground us in perspective and confidence that we are indeed showing up how we want—compassionately and consistently.

Hold It Loosely

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Thinking a lot about expectations lately.

When we were kids, what did we expect from life? How far ahead did we imagine? By the end of high school, how had it already evolved? And since then, how many speed bumps and hard lefts?

Years ago an older friend expressed wonder and regret at her child’s life path and how it had diverged from her assumptions and expectations. I will be forever grateful for that bit of shared wisdom, as it made me aware of my own unquestioned, default settings. My life would take some pretty sharp turns in the coming years, and I was less blindsided than I would have been without her sharing. Looking back, though I would never wish for these events again, I’m grateful for the experience and lessons gained from them. When life diverges from our plan, we are forced to assess and adapt, often repeatedly. It shakes our assumptions and makes us appreciate when things do go our way; helps us to not take that for granted.

Adversity also trains resilience, as so many adages tell us. While past hardships may make us anxious and avoidant of future encounters with familiar experiences, we also learn that we can not only tolerate them, but manage and prevail. The best outcome is that adversity overcome in one domain gives us confidence for facing struggles in any other realm of life. It can make us more creative, show us the full extent of our resourcefulness.

High school – College – Relationships – Career – Government – Geopolitics – Health – Longevity – Climate – Life – Death

We truly never know what’s around the corner, much less control it.

This uncertainty hangs on my consciousness more as Daughter prepares for high school graduation and college. More of my life feels uncertain in the coming year than it has felt in a couple decades, though I wonder if in reality the empiric level of uncertainty (how is that even measured?) is always the same? Is that true?

Can we ever say that a certain era or circumstance is more certain than any other? Maybe it’s another paradox? Statistically I am unlikely to get stuck by lightning. I expected, reasonably, that my pregnancies and deliveries would be healthy and uncomplicated. At this point in the history of our government, can we objectively say that anything is more or less predictable or certain than at any other time? What intrinsic and extrinsic factors affect our subjective perceptions and experience of un/certainty?

All of that said, and with so many other deep, philosophical questions swimming in my head tonight, I can still settle down and breathe slowly. I keep coming back to attunement and agency. The older I get the better I’m able to notice my own reactions and tendencies, body and mind cues of stress and threat, peace and confidence. I notice dysfunctional patterns more objectively, with less judgment and resistance; I flow more easily with the functional currents, adjusting behaviors more smoothly, with more grace for self and others. It’s incredibly freeing; I know I can handle whatever comes, because the longer I live, the more I have already faced and overcome already.

I allow my expectations and monitor my assumptions. I remain committed to values and goals, as well as to the flexibility required to maintain them when detours appear on the path. I hold it all loosely and with confidence. I know I can commit and flex–funny, I wrote that post as Son prepared to submit college applications. Patterns and reflections recur in life, yes? It feels similar and different. How wonderful, this opportunity to explore once again. I bet it won’t be the last time.