Stress Management can be Life-Changing
-The Full Story
I live with 5+ Chronic conditions, Crohn’s, Fibromyalgia & Ehler Danlos Syndrome being some of them. All of which make me more susceptible to stress & predisposed to getting burned out. They are all affected very negatively by stress. So it’s a vicious circle that can sometimes be hard to break. Especially when you haven’t listened to yourself for a while & just steamrolled on to reach the next goal, ignoring all the signs of your body telling you to slow down. Which is what I did for years.
I got my Crohn diagnosis when I was 31 & it wasn’t until I was 44 that I got the other two, & more after that. After a lifetime of telling doctors that something was wrong. So not only didn’t I listen to the signals, the doctors didn’t either, & most importantly I didn’t understand what they were. I mean I did understand that my body was telling me that I was doing too much, or did I… Hum… Sometimes you’re so caught up in everything that happens in life that you don’t actually see what’s right in front of you.
Keeping a job that’s not good for you
I did know that I had a job that made me miserable in so many ways, & that it made me ill, but I stayed on. I stayed on because I told myself I wanted a career as a vice principal & principal. I stayed on because I knew what I had, but not what I would get if I quit the school I was at, & definitely not what I would get if I completely changed profession. I stayed on because even though I was highly underpaid for the degrees & experience I had as a high school teacher, I earned a lot more money than in many other professions.
I stayed on because of the long breaks, because in what other profession do you have that much time off? That is actually paid time off? I mean teachers make up for their vacation time, working longer weeks than many others, but still. My job enabled me to travel the world over & over again. Giving me so many amazing experiences & meeting so many awesome people. But it also meant that I never got any real down time. Because I was constantly on the go. Pushing myself a little bit more, because I knew I could do it.
5 years ago when they, after a year of, testing found ulcers in my entire gastro/intestinal system I completely crashed. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, not that I have any as far as I know, but in a way it was the start of a new, better life for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a hell of a few years, working my way back to feeling like a resemblance of myself again, but hopefully it’s made me a little wiser, & kinder to myself.
How has Stress Management helped me?
Self-Compassion-Learning to be kind towards yourself
You know when you have that AH-moment when something falls into place. I’ve had so many during the past years. Getting my fibromyalgia & EDS diagnoses made so much fall into place. It was transformative, & in many ways the last piece of the puzzle. That’s also when I realized that I hadn’t been very kind to myself.
I’ve known my worth as a person & trusted in my ability to do things for a very long time. Something I had to work on after hating school for 9 years, but that’s another story. I’ve believed in myself & my ability for most of my adult life, except for when I was in a bad relationship, finishing off 10 years of studies to start working & getting my Crohn diagnosis all at once, resulting in my first burn out & depression. But I got out of all of that, was thankfully dumped, regained my confidence in myself & positivity.
I never said things to myself like, “Damn you’re stupid” & my very high standards & perfectionism weren’t due to lack of confidence, but a belief in myself & that I could do better. Realizing that my actions hadn’t mirrored my way of thinking & talking to myself was a hard blow.
Through doing way too much for way too long, ignoring the signs my body gave me, I had literally committed violence against myself, & I had let others do the same in so many ways. Learning the concept of Self-Compassion was life changing for me. It helped me be more understanding of my body, & that I can do all the things I want to, only in a way that works for, not against, my body & me.
Accepting & Letting go
Acceptance is a very loaded word for many. It was for me too. But it’s probably the most important part of recovery, or life really, accepting what is so that we can do whatever we can to change it for the better. I had accepted that I had Crohn’s, but I don’t think it was until I got my other diagnoses that I could fully accept what was. Because it wasn’t until then that I could understand all the different things that were happening in my body, & had been happening for a large part of my life.
I had accepted that I have a limited amount of energy due to Crohn’s, which makes me more susceptible to the negative effects of stress. When I’m stressed & fatigued, my body aches & I’m more sensitive to what I eat among other things. I had accepted that & started doing things to be more kind & work in harmony with my body. But when I understood why my body was in so much pain & acted the way it does, I could fully understand what happens to my body & how to better prevent it from happening & deal with it when it does.
That’s when I had to start letting go of what had been. I had to let go of what I had done to myself. Blaming myself, or others for that matter, for being in the situation I was wasn’t going to help me. I also had to let go of a lot of the things I though that I wanted. The life I thought I wanted to live, the things I thought I wanted to do & possess. I had to reevaluate my life, find new goals & wants. Letting go is a deep sorrow. But once you have let go you can start to build yourself up again a 2.0 version of yourself if you will.
Planning my energy
I don’t know about you, but I very often do things out of habit. Like watching TV. To me it’s been my best way to recharge my batteries for so long. Disappearing into the world of a good series or movie. I’ve loved reading since I was a kid, there’s nothing better than a good book. But while studying languages for 10 years & then teaching them, reading was something I had to do every single day, so when I had time off I didn’t have the energy to read. So TV was a good way to disappear & it took minimal effort on my part. Or so I though, until I got really ill.
When I’m in a bad flare I have very little energy & all my senses are on overdrive, which needless to say is draining. When that happens I need silence. When it was at its worst I had to lay down on my couch, I couldn’t even sit up straight because it took too much energy. I couldn’t even listen to the TV because it was too energy draining. Needless to say life becomes quite boring, but it kind of has to, because your focus needs to be on getting better. If you can be OK with that it makes things a lot easier.
You think you know how you spend your energy, because you know what you’re doing during a day, right? Well once you start writing everything you do down, & how you feel, then you can start seeing things you didn’t realize. Like when I realized that watching my bellowed TV actually took energy that I instead could put on reading a page in a book, or have a friend over for tea. It also meant that I could start planning my energy in a way I had never done before.
The first time I got burned out, I isolated myself a lot. This time I decided that I wasn’t going to do that. I wanted to see my friends & family, I just had to plan for it. Going out to a cafe would take too much energy so they came to my place, brought their own food, because cooking takes energy. What I did was plan for the energy loss by not doing anything strenuous the days before & after I met my friends. I had to plan long periods of rest. But it worked! Little by little I could do more & more without being completely wiped out every time.
Something that’s very hard for people to understand is that energy is energy. It doen’t matter if what you are doing is something that you enjoy doing or not, it still takes energy. Doing things you like might give you energy & more importantly it might give you a sense of connection & fulfillment which is extremely important, but it still takes from your already low energy reserve.
Sleep Management
Sleep is another thing that affects your energy massively. Being able to give yourself the best possible conditions to get a good night’s sleep might be the deciding factor for how you handle what happens during the day, your pain level, fatigue, conflicts etc. Taking a close look at what I did during the day & what I did the hours leading up to going to bed helped me make better choices before bed.
My conditions affect my sleep a lot when I’m in a flare, so I can do everything right & still toss & turn all night. But giving myself the best possible conditions & being ok with not sleeping, seeing it as me getting rest & recharging my batteries whether or not I was actually asleep helped a lot. When you have a hard time falling asleep or wake up many times during the night, it’s so easy to get stressed. You think of all the things you have to do tomorrow, how low your energy will be & how much your pain will be bothering you, which of course doesn’t help you fall asleep.
Looking in from the outside-
Standing outside of a problem, not going into it emotionally
For years I had a really bad temper. I got so angry & it consumed me. Most of the time it didn’t affect others, except for my family that is. I could be very snippy & not always nice. Well maybe my sarcastic remarks to my students wasn’t just my sense of humor…So maybe it did affect others more than I thought at the time. I had so much anger in me because of work, people being idiots etc that it added onto my energy drainage as well as my pain level. It was exhausting & not a fun way to feel.
I mean there’s nothing I love more than laughing, but very few things made me laugh. I did have one class that I taught for 3 years & I will be forever grateful to them & how much they made me laugh. Just seeing them in th corridors made my day. The anger was of course not just anger, it was just a manifestation of an array of emotions that I wasn’t quite in contact with because I was so exhausted. Being exhausted all the time is anything but fun, & it’s very hard for people to understand just how profoundly it affects your whole being.
I had a few AH-moments as to how much energy I spent on getting angry & upset, not only about things that happened to me, but to others too. I completely took over their emotions & became furious on their behalf. Not only did I “have” the emotions, my every fiber felt them. So much negative energy that constantly drained me for no good reason.
As I said I had a few AH-moments, it happened a few times when I was talking to loved ones. I realized that I wasn’t just listening & empathizing, I was absolutely furious on their behalf because of what had been done to them, but also what they hadn’t done about it. That’s when I realized I needed to take responsibility for my own emotions & let others take responsibility for theirs.
I can listen & empathize, feel bad for them, but I don’t have to activate every fiber in my body to do that. Learning that skill made me a lot calmer & it saved a lot of my energy. Plus it massively reduced the negative energy in my body, resulting in me relaxing & being in less pain. Everything is connected… Nothing is isolated.
Being clear about my Limits & Learning to Say No
I thought that I was very clear about what worked & didn’t work for me. But I think that it wasn’t until I had learned all the things above that I could really start setting boundaries. For me the biggest problem wasn’t saying no to others, it was saying no to myself. I could always do more to get a better result. Take on more projects at work, take another trip, a creative writing course at the university & do my Yin yoga teacher training, all at once. When I think about how I lived my life before, I wonder how I made it for so long. My body is absolutely amazing!
My tenacity, stubbornness, high standards & thirst to constantly learn & see new things, finally got the best of me. So learning to limit myself was hard, because there was so much I wanted to know, do & see. It also meant that I started being clearer with other people & in a way that was more fair to them. Instead of holding in my reaction until exploding when someone did something,
I could take a breath & think about how I wanted to act, instead of reacting to what happened. Which meant that people around me weren’t attacked, & things didn’t turn into conflicts because they were dealt with right away. Or after some consideration on how to handle it.
Today I can explain to people how what they do affects me & see the reason why they do them. I can also be OK with them repeating the behavior that I don’t like because I can feel like I have done what I can to help them understand my perspective, but their actions are their responsibility, not mine.
Having someone to guide you along the way
The different realizations I’ve made that I talk about here & in my other posts, are things I’ve learned & realized while taking different courses & reading a lot of books on stress management, pain rehab, yoga, workout, mindfulness, self-compassion, CBT, ACT, nutrition etc.
There are so many things that can help you, the problem, as I see it, is that this knowledge is often taught in isolation. Very rarely is the focus Holistic, on the entire human being. The journey is yours to be made, & Stress Management can be Life-Changing, but it’s so much easier if you have someone that guides & supports you on the way. Because the journey to discover yourself is anything but easy to make.