Member-only story
How Do You Manage Chronic Stress in Your Busy Life?
Important question, because let’s face it — if you don’t learn how to do it, the stress will end up managing you.
But first, a disclaimer: I am not a health-care professional — and I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who are — so keep that in mind as you read my story. My thoughts and suggestions are based on personal experience in dealing with stress, research I’ve done to manage it better, and conversations with others who have experienced it in their lives.
Dealing with chronic, long-term stress takes its toll on both your physical and mental health. Everybody feels it differently. Stress can show up in many different ways. Experiencing fear and overwhelm. Having a lack of appetite. Shallow breathing. Excessive sweating. Not being able to sleep regular hours or having insomnia. Avoiding large groups of people outdoors. Feeling a sense of doom and negativity that follows you around like a dark cloud.
Although the stress we experience is our own, many of these manifestations of stress are learned behaviors. Perhaps we grew up with a parent or grandparent who had anxiety, or we’ve seen family and friends not managing their stress effectively. In other words, we’ve learned how to deal with it by observing others around us. The positive side to this learned behavior is that if we’ve learned it…
