#MicroblogMondays 58: Stress
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I read an interesting way of thinking about stress. The gist is that stress is a response that highlights what is important to you. If it wasn’t important, it would become an annoyance and not a stressor. We stress about things we care about.
Of course, not every stressor is going to be important; sometimes you get mildly stressed over having to wait at a red light. But if you find that you’re frequently highly stressed about your family, for example, you might conclude that having a healthy relationship with them is important to you.
I know a lot of us are dealing with a shit-ton of stress at the cosmic level, which I differentiate from the day-to-day level. And when I considered what I stress about, I realized that, yes, they are all things that are important to me.
Think about your major stressors. Are they things/people that are very important to you? Does thinking this way change the way you see that stress?
And feel free to vent your stress if you wish.
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25 comments
Stress eats up energy and leaves the immune system weak. I would try to identify stress triggers and manage them, before they run their course.
The article says the truth. We do stress about things which are important to us. Somedays I stress about not getting time to blog. On other days, I stress about not being able to maintain a clean house. And then I pull up the covers over the body and go to sleep to get over the stress 😀
At the moment I do not understand my own stress. It seems that since my head doesn’t get it, my shoulder gets it. It hurts with sudden upward movement. I keep telling myself that once I start my new job it will go away by itself. Any day now!
Since getting into fert.treatments I had to identify my stressors. And unfortunately its most of my family since they just don’t understand. So I’ve w/drawn from them almost completely. They’ll get updates from my bog. And I might stress under deadlines from job#1, but in turn it makes me work better.
At the moment I am stressed about going back into a classroom in which I last experienced trauma. It’ll all be OK within hours (I will scare the younger kiddos with my face, though, and cause them stress).
Yup. I stress about the ones I love. The projects I enjoy most.
I wrote my post before I even read yours! Interesting time, and interesting point about how we only stress about things we care about. Good point!
I need to figure out how to better manage my stress. Right now, I’m not doing so well.
My stresses right now are all things very important to me. I actually appreciate the validation from the article.
Managing that stress is very difficult at the moment.
When I think about it, yes, yes, they are. I’m usually worried about dh, or something going wrong with the house. I used to get stressed out by work, which was not as important to me as home — but still, important enough — I needed to work, and I liked to think I did a good job. If I didn’t think I was, or if something was keeping me from doing what I thought I was capable of doing, that would stress me out.
Stress is that silent entrant in the life that initially raises the adrenalin rush and helps perform tasks before it takes over the body completely, to ruin it!
Yes, my stresses are always family oriented. I stress most often about my 87 yr old mother who lives on the other side of the country. There are so many levels of concern it boggles the mind. Some days I can handle it and other days it is paralyzing. I know in my mind that stressing is not helping anything, but I can’t seem to stop. If anyone has any coping strategies, I’d be grateful to hear about them.
Yes this is very true. I discovered that a few months ago what stressed me the most was the conflict between me and my husband regarding my family. It’s all family-related with people that I love. The stress with my husband regarding my family made the other areas of my life miserable. So happy that the conflict is gone so the stress is gone now.
Mel, you’re reading my mind this morning.
Absolutely. The things that cause me stress are things that are either important or are impacting people/things that are important. That said, I know I’m susceptible to other’s stress, wanting to help them alleviate it.
A Lot of stress in my life is because of expectations… ones that I have from myself. .. ones that people at work have… ones that family has. .. take those away and I am fine!!!
International house-hunting (again) is super stressful! But, unlike last time, we plan to be here for a while, so it’s even more important!
Actually yes! We stress out for things that are important to us. I like the take on it 🙂
I do think if you’re stressing about something it’s important to you or represents something important to you. However, I don’t think not stressing about something makes it unimportant.
Interesting. For me, it’s difficult sometimes to identify what is a legitimate stressor verus something my generalized anxiety disorder decided to latch on to. Definite food for thought.
I think my biggest stressors are around issues of family health and harmony. Not because there are unusually tough issues, but because of what I see all around me. My post today is a good example of that.
I am VERY stressed about getting the house ready for my family’s visit in a few days. So much to do and so little time!
So interesting! This may actually help me feel a little more positively about my stress levels. I stress about school, a lot, because I care about what I do for students and hope that it is all intentional and driving them towards success. I guess if I didn’t care as much about it, I would just be lackadaisical, and wing it all the time. I stress about my family, and some of that is because I wish I had a better relationship in some aspects with some people, or I wish I was better understood. I stress about getting our house ready for baby, because… oh yeah that’s one’s pretty obvious. I stressed about getting all the adoption paperwork in and well done for the same reasons. Stress = Caring, I like it! Now to transform that stress into more constructive responses… 🙂
As a young teacher in the ’70’s, I took Madeline Hunter’s class ‘Instructiinal Theory Into Practice’ which was SO influential I could still quote you the ‘ six categories of motivation’, the first of all which was Stress. It wasn’t called stress exactly, it was called, ‘concern’ which may be a better word for it, actually … I was taught to gauge a student’s stress level and raise, or , more often, lower, it to optimise learning. So I guess I thought this ‘guarding’ of stress, and managing it, became part of my way of doing things for myself too. And yes, there ARE times when I need to raise my stress level, like having a Monday deadline for a blog post for example!
Those Principles of Motivation?
Anxiety (Stress) or Concern
Feeling Tone
Knowledge of Results
Success
Interest
Intrinsic/Extrinsic
How’s that for recall? That’ll be because I had to learn them off by heart for a test the following week …
(Actually, one of my daughters reads these comments, and I’m wondering if she’ll notice how I used those principles of motivation in my parenting too …!)
My stress generally has to do with personal safety. So yes, that’s important to me, but I’m not sure it’s important in the way the article is using the word.
I wrote about stress in a roundabout way today and how in addition to kids, stress is seriously interfering with my sleep. But if I take a quick minute to think about the things that cause me daily stress, the things themselves are often an annoyance, but the stress comes from wanting to do a good job for my advisor.
Last night I dreamed that I was standing at the doorway to my boss’s boss’s house, and could see a dinner table set for 10, piled high with rice (literally mountains of it, in precarious-looking cone shapes). I was standing there with my colleague, not sure if I was supposed to be there. Two seats were empty. And everyone was glaring at me. Stress? Check. I know what that one’s about.
Two nights ago I dreamed I was unearthing a subterranean pumpkin patch. It was as if someone put a rock floor about two feet above the actual ground, leaving a large open space for the pumpkins to grown and ripen. The space was full of beautifully ripe pumpkins, but I couldn’t get at them. Also stressful.
Hmmmm…