Sunday, May 15, 2011

Oh Man Stress AGAIN

I’ve had this feeling lately of a sliding downhill. At first I thought it was connected to the drinking. I thought I’d been having some moderate success with having *a* drink from time to time, like two drinks a week, but it seemed that I was noticing it in a physical/emotional way. So I stopped that, and got back to my real hangover problem: stress. Now that I am settled more into my job, actual stress and responsibilities are also settling in, and I’m spending a little more time in my head worrying about stuff or hoping to remember to do things. So it’s getting harder lately to maintain the equanimity that I spent 7 months working on. Yep, it’s much simpler to stay calm when you have no stressful data coming in.

I went home from work on Thursday this week at about 10:30am. I felt horrible; I hadn’t felt 100% this week anyway – I had a teeny tiny cold and took some cold meds for two nights. But Thursday was a little special - I had woken up at about 5:40 in the morning with that familiar pounding feeling in my head, and a cold shiver, and nausea – zero alcohol involved, mind you. But I did my tried and true hangover prayer anyway, which is to sit under the hot water in the shower for as long as the hot water lasts, and beg the sky that the vascular constriction or whatever would cure me or at least make me comfortable enough to go back to sleep. Neither of these happened, as they never have, and I ended up waiting it out over a pot of tea and probably some ibuprofen, I can’t really remember. I was still pretty shaky by the time I got to work, and feeling like an emotional time-bomb, and the moment I started lifting boxes all my veins started throbbing blood up to my eyes and temples. It felt like my pulse was trying to knock me out. I tried a short cup of coffee, since caffeine can provide some relief for this feeling by dilating, you know, everything, but it just made me jumpy. And then the nausea came back. So I lined up my ducks at work and said see you later, came straight home in the car somehow (barely remember that either), took off my grubby work stuff and fell asleep until about 1pm. I think I probably had a tiny fever – the chills and nausea and fatigue were pretty in line with that feeling. But anyway this go-home-and-skip-a-day was sort of unusual for me. I think of myself as a pretty tough work-horse. I love the all-over fatigue of physical work. I would do it all the time (and I do, now). So I felt a little defeated by having to go home.

My friend SoapyKittens diagnosed me over the phone with allergies. I sort of thought this was off, since I haven’t been sneezy, and I felt feverish, and my eyes aren’t itchy or anything. But the pollen has been flying around quite a bit and it surely clogs the sinuses and screws up one’s head and sleep in ways besides sneezing and itchiness. I thought about the apples at work, of which I eat many a discarded and bruised reject, and since my cootie-meter has totally lowered its standards I only wash about half my fruit these days – so I’m thinking some kind of pesticide or bacteria thing lodged itself in me and that’s what I get for feeling invincible.

So while there is certainly a lesson to be learned in my bruised-apple-laxity, I don’t think that was it, either. I think it was stress. I think I am really kind of a baby about stress, and that I reached a little bit of a maxed-out point, and had to go home and sleep and lay in the bed for a day.

So now that I have a somewhat manageable life, and don’t work 80 million hours a week, I have a little bit of room to contemplate how to cope with stress. I already do a bunch of yoga, and I think I do enough focused breathing to be getting some stress relief out of it, but maybe not enough? I could stand to meditate more than I do, for sure, that would probably help. I really practiced a bunch of stress-relieving habits on my 7 month vacation from life, like rubbing my feet and sleeping 9 hours a night, so I could draw upon that to up my self-care regimen a bit. And I think I should absolutely knock it off with the caffeine, which will also help (except today, since I already drank a pot of tea, which was delicious and wonderful). And as always, contemplate diet changes. Goddammit I get sick of contemplating diet changes. Life is always better with brown rice and green tea, blah blah blah, but seriously, how insanely do I have to tweak my environmental input to feel physically steady? Feels unfair. It’s like 80 year olds who can only handle plain toast and a gently poached banana because everything else is too upsetting. Is this my new super-sensitive-bunny reality? Sigh. But when I do add a little extra mindfulness to stuff it’s always much simpler than I think, and more rewarding than I anticipate. Bleh. Anyway stress is, like, really serious you guys. So I’m gonna eat some brown rice about it, basically.

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