Category Archives for stress

Stress in Paradise

When I first saw it I was sure I found paradise. I was wrong.

I moved out to farm country a while ago. I love the views of crops that vary each year and mountains in the distance. The peace and serenity here truly felt like paradise to me.

Okay, this is not my ideal dream situation. That would be a mountain lake with evergreens and mountains completing my view.

But the evergreen country view is farther away from town than I want to live right now. So I figured farmland was a pretty good second choice.

On the surface it is. But when I take a truthful look I find something, many things actually, that really disturb me.

When you don’t want to see the truth you can do great job of hiding it from yourself. Well, I did anyway.

It took me many months to realize that my health has declined sharply in the short time since I moved out here. I kept attributing the cause to other reasons that are definitely true. But the real stressors driving my health issues are all stress. And that happened because of the facts of living in the country, farm country, to be specific.

I didn’t think much about mice in the house when I had a cat. He would catch the mice that rarely showed up. At least I think they rarely came into the house. Now that I know they need a space the size of your index finger to get in I am not so sure mice indoors happened since my cat transitioned to the next plane.

When I saw mice running around it freaked me out. I had no idea where they were depositing their droppings. I didn’t know if they were getting into or on my counters or places I kept my food, dishes. etc.

Mice are not clean and I am health fanatic. Hey even if you are not a health nut you don’t want mice in your food area or in your house, for that matter!

While trying to find their hiding place I discovered they had destroyed lots of very important property.  They eat through anything! Unreal!

Some very precious material had been destroyed. Not to mention the horribly awful mess they left in all my things. Yikes. Talk about disgusting.

Do you think all that attention to mice and their habits in my house caused me stress? Understatement. I didn’t even realize I was losing sleep over it. I was afraid of finding dead mice and (which often happened) inside and outside.

But it wasn’t just the mice stressing me out.

I live in the country with farmland neighboring me. The farmer sprays his fields. I have no clue how much of that spray wafts over onto my yard – and my garden.

The other day it hit me that my water supply comes from a well. No way does the spray, the pesticide and herbicide, not get into the ground water and therefore into my water.

Okay. I use special water systems for everything—except washing dishes and watering my garden.  Oh great, chemical water feeding the crops I grow to eat myself.

But that is not all. The sprays work to keep the pests out of the crops. I know because they came over to my house. And many are so small they come right in through the screens.

Until I gave in and hired a pest control company I went to sleep at night and awakened every morning to the site of tiny black dots moving across my ceiling. If I ever opened the window overhead—different black dots filled my pillow—so I guess they got into my hair too. Shutter!

Yuck!
What I finally faced is this location and house is not paradise for me – and it is time for me to leave farm country and restore my peace of mind – and health.

Stress is Staying in an Unhappy Marriage When You’re Over Forty

When you are over forty and find yourself in an unhappy marriage your stress level increases constantly. You know you feel crummy but you may not realize the toll all that deep unhappiness takes on your health and well being.

I know because I stayed in my marriage ten years too long. It is not as though I was just hanging around wishing and hoping for something to change between my husband and me.

I did everything I knew. I worked on myself because I knew the only person I had control over was me. I could not ask or expect him to change.

I also knew if I changed then he had no choice about changing, at the very least, in how he related to me. Realize this is someone who was disturbed by all my changes and one day proudly announced to me that he didn’t like change and doe his best not to make any changes.

Well, during those last ten years of our marriage I not only worked on myself but I also invited him to step out of the box. Nothing I consciously did worked. However the Universe guided me – and him.

One day he was driving my car. Understand I am addicted to learning – everything! That day my Car University lesson was John Gary’s tape (back then we had cassettes players not CDs) Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Very much to my surprise he started making statements that clearly showed he had listened to the recording.

I was shocked – and delighted. I became so hopeful that I managed to get both of us into couples counseling. Unfortunately he saw that program as way to make me wrong and him right.

Back in those days he thought I was responsible for his happiness and he blamed all his unhappiness on me. Not that I did much better in that area. I knew I alone was responsible for my happiness but I still felt I needed outside validation from him (when it came from others it just didn’t matter) that told me how great I was – just because I exist and not because of anything I do.

See the problem? He could not give me what I thought I needed. Nor could I give him what he wanted. Frankly both of us spent those last ten years in sheer misery.

The stress of such unhappiness landed me in the hospital needing surgery to prevent a hemorrhage situation. To my horror I saw a photograph of myself and realized that I had gained 30 pounds. I got fat! Me, a health fanatic!

Stress does that to you—makes all your hormones crazy.

I could explain all the wellbeing issues but really all that matters is when you live in an unhappy situation you slowly kill yourself. Consider this your wake-up call to action.

Act now. The longer you put it off the steeper the climb back to happiness.

Stress: Breaking Free At Forty-Something And Living Life Without Stress

As a forty-something woman, divorced or in an unhappy marriage, you likely feel stress in many areas of your life. You can choose to break free from that stress.

Yes. I am talking about choices here. You may not think you have a choice about how your life goes. If that is how you think then realize you see yourself as and live your life as a victim.

The Universe never makes victims. It makes people who choose to think others hold power over them. Impossible. Your power lies within you.

Nothing outside of you can steal your power. You may fool yourself into thinking they took your power. Again, that would be how you perpetuate your victimhood.

If you find yourself in an unhappy marriage ask yourself why you stay there. You must be getting some benefits to live in unhappiness. But seriously, do the benefits outweigh the price you pay – the deficits in your emotional and physical health and well being?

In every moment you either grow or you deteriorate. If you feel stress you speed up the deterioration process. I suspect you already know that truth or you would not be reading this article right now.

So what can you do to make the life changes you know you want to make?

First step into your new decision to be free. Of the many middle-aged women I know who went through a divorce, even those who suffered tremendous loss, every single one of them agrees it was the best decision they ever made. Taking that step eventually led to releasing tons of weight off their shoulders.

That freed up energy contributed to their physical and emotional recovery pretty quickly. I am not saying there is no pain in divorce or separation. However I suggest that the pain of ending something that no longer works is far less than the fear of the unhappy marriage ending or the fear and anger of closing the door on what was supposed to be forever love.

I speak from personal and professional experience here. After 31 years of marriage one day I woke up and told myself I could not stand the pain any more. Both my husband and I had been unhappy for at least ten years. We tried counseling. I did many self improvement courses knowing as I changed he would have to change in relation to me.

That morning I told him we needed to get a divorce. We had not really stopped loving each other but we had gone our separate ways and trying to make something work that had ended years ago caused stress for both of us.

We agreed that a divorce would best serve us – both of us. Yes, it did hurt and yes both of us are so much happier for having gone through the pain because we went through it and finished it.

Decide what you want and follow through. It is the lingering and not knowing that builds stress inside you. Stop being emotionally lazy and go through the steps you need to take so you can come out the other end of the path to happiness instead of limbo.

Make sense?

Women In Their 40s In Unhappy Marriages

Many women today find themselves in unhappy marriages. Surprisingly they do not know what to do about it.

Many of these women grew up in a time when the man provided the income and they stayed home to run the house. While running a home requires infinitely many managerial and other specialized skills, most of those women think they have no marketable skills to offer an employer. After all baking cookies or cleaning the bathroom would not be much of a job in a corporate office!

Given that limited self-image they see no way to take care of themselves if they leave the marriage. So they stay in very unhappy situations, feeling stuck with no alternative.

The stress of living with what they see as no hope for a different future takes its toll. Many of them suffer from depression as well as physical maladies.

Yet there is something they can do. Commiserating with other women in the same situation is not the optimal solution.

People with too much time on their hands tend to fall into and stay stuck paying all their attention to themselves. They focus on all that is wrong and missing from their lives.

Here is the catch 22, whatever you focus on expands. So when you constantly remind yourself of how unhappy you are, how lonely and maybe even how useless and unfulfilled you feel, all those sensations become magnified and more intense.

What can you do to stop feeling so awful all the time – other than leave the unhappy situation? Think about it. You spend your time thinking about you and how bad you feel.

Sure, you may be taking care of your spouse and his needs and maybe you are caring for an aging parent. Maybe you help your kids or friend with whatever they need. However, no matter what you do for others, you feel gypped and probably resentful—if you are truthful with yourself.

When is it your time to be the center of your life? When is it your turn to do what you want to do each day?

Doing what you want to for yourself is not selfish. Asking others to do what you want them to do for your benefit alone is selfish.

Taking care of you is paramount. Look at it this way…

What if something happens to you? What if you get seriously hurt or ill and can no longer take care of the world? What happens to everybody else?

What happens is they take care of themselves. So why can’t they take care of themselves now, today?

Stress: Communicate With Yourself to Avoid Stress

You experience stress because you interpret some event as causing you grief, pressure, overwhelm or some form of discomfort and unhappiness. Well, how do you know what you are going through is, in fact, stressful for you?

You tell you what makes you feel ARGH! Nobody else tells you how to feel. You decide when an event happens that you will feel bad, worried, scared, etc.

All those decisions happen automatically. Your alert subconscious mind runs your show repeating past patterns rather then stopping and asking, “Is it in my highest and best interest to act this way in this situation?”

Hmm. What do you suppose would happen if, instead of blindly performing action A when circumstance A presents itself you instead stepped back and took a moment to look for and consider new and different ways to act in that exact same situation?

You would have to talk to yourself to make that happen. So how do you talk to yourself?

Chances are you would carry on a conversation with the Little Voice that resides in your primitive brain where survival is key. That is a hint. That part of you is all about surviving and keeping you safe. It makes sure you do not take risks.

Which all boils down to repeating the same actions you have always done and not trying new things.

Does that make sense – to follow rules and safety measures established for a child to run you as a grown adult? How can that be?

Let’s say you do question your activity and automatic responses. You know that you carry on a conversation with that Little Voice in your head.

As a matter of fact you are listening to that Little Voice right now. It never stops chatting and running you – unless and until you choose stop it. Yes. You do have the power to stop its rants and cancel its opinions.

Right about now that Little Voice is telling to stop reading this article. OR it is agreeing with parts of this information telling you what is wrong with the rest.

Do you hear it? Your habit is to listen to what it says rather than just pay attention and stay present to what is going on in the moment now. That Little Voice runs a constant commentary on everything about your life as you try to experience the actual moment.

The only way to take a real hard look at which behaviors still fit for you and improve your life today is to shut off that Little Voice.

Want to know how to stop that constant commentary? You simply say, “Thank you for sharing.”

The Little Voice will stop – for the time being. It will pick up again later. So you just repeat the words, “Thank you for sharing.”

In the silence you can explore the possibilities that now elude you. Remember that anything is possible when you know that truth.