self care

Self care is hard. It's hard to shake the feeling that it's selfish somehow. But I know from learning how to manage my depression that it's vital, and it's one of the only circuit breakers that works when my mood is on the slide (and even then, it doesn't always stop the slide altogether).

My stress load at work has been large lately, and will remain at that level for more than a month. I was supposed to get up today and go to an event at work to take photos, but when I woke up at 6:30 I just couldn't. I thought my role in the day was probably not vital, so sent my apologies and went back to sleep. Briefly surfaced at 1pm, feeling groggy, and thought I probably shouldn't sleep the whole day, so decided to do some massage study. I fell back asleep for another few hours - but after the reading I did I didn't feel bad about it (but not because reading a textbook makes me sleepy, which it does).

The chapter I was reading was about illness, injury, risk factors for disease. The bit on stress said:

Research has shown that as stresses accumulate, especially if the stress is long term, the individual becomes increasingly susceptible to physical illness, mental and emotional problems, and accidental injuries. . .  

. . .the body mobilises different defence mechanisms when threatened by harmful stimuli (actual or perceived). The [general adaptation syndrome] has three stages: (1) alarm, or the fight-or-flight response, which is the body's initial reaction to the perceived stressor; (2) the resistance reaction, in which the secretion of regulating hormones allows the body to continue fighting or to endure a stressor long after the effects of the alarm reaction have dissipated; and (3) exhaustion, which occurs if the stress response continues without relief. 

In generalised stress conditions, the hypothalamus acts on the anterior pituitary gland to cause the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which stimulates the adrenal cortex to secrete glucocorticoid. In addition, the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system is stimulated by the adrenal medulla, resulting in the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine to assist the body in responding to the stressful stimulus. Unfortunately during periods of prolonged stress, glucocorticosteroids (cortisol) may have harmful side effects, including a diminished immune response, altered blood glucose levels, altered protein and fat metabolism, and decreased resistance to stress. 

Sandy Fritz, Mosby's Fundamentals of therapeutic massage, Elsevier, 2013, p 210

tl;dr: Basically, stress produces hormones to help you deal with a situation, but it's only supposed to be useful for short periods, and if you don't seek relief you can end up with health problems. I know all this but I keep forgetting when I'm in the midst of it.

So if you know you're going to be in a long term stress situation, and you can't get out of it, it's important to do all you can to relieve that, whenever you have the opportunity. So I decided that sleeping all day is not a bad thing. I need to go and get a massage for myself.

do not worry

My lovely friend J sent me a message this week, containing an article about stress. I'm not sure what the original source was, but I liked this:

There are many ways to reduce stress. One is knowing that worry is like winking at someone across a pitch-dark room – you’re the only one who knows you’re doing it, and it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Also makes me think of Jesus' words in Matthew:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:25-34

I think all of us need to remember that more often!

managing stress

I went to a Wild St event last Friday, one of the Delightful Nights that they run once a quarter. This one was a little different than usual; rather than being an event with an activity and an evangelistic talk, we had supper together and heard a talk on managing stress from GP Dr Helen Rienits. I was pretty wiped out but had a really good time sitting with my mum and my godmother Freda, and chatting to Sammi while we ate cupcakes and Lindt balls. Lots of things Helen said resonated with many of us, and we all exchanged glances every so often when she would describe symptoms and situations that were so like our own.

One thing that I've been thinking about a lot is the sustained, cumulative effect of stress and living in a permanent state of stress overload. Your stressors can be made up of many things, little and big. Most of us tend to think of stressors as only being big things like problems at work, major illnesses, car accidents, things like that. But you can easily reach the point of stress overload with a lot of little things that add up - even something like constant, loud ambient noise can push you over the edge (like building noise, or traffic noise). Obviously it's unhealthy to live at this level of stress all the time; your body is depleting its stores of endorphins and running on adrenalin and cortisol, and this wears down the immune system and leads to all sorts of other major health issues.

I think about all the things that have happened to me over the last few years, and more recently, and I shouldn't be surprised that I struggle with stress! It manifests itself in my depression and in a kind of paralysis; it's like I just grind to a halt and feel like I'm unable to do anything. My counsellor and I talked about how I had essentially been living in survival mode for years after certain traumas and sadnesses, and you can get used to living like that, but you physically and emotionally cannot sustain it. So I'm at breaking point a lot quicker than most people simply because I'm always living close to it.

Yet even though I know this consciously, and I try to take steps to reduce my stressors, I can find it subconsciously quite hard to cut myself some slack. I'm the sort of person that takes guilt on even when there's none to be had. I pre-empt imagined negative responses to things I have or haven't done, I worry about letting people down, etc, etc. There is a fairly constant stream of negative self-talk that, when pointed out to me, is ludicrous, but is insidious when it's allowed to prattle on, unchecked. This all, of course, just makes managing stress harder.

Helen suggested identifying your stressors and trying to deal with the smaller ones if you can; you may not be able to fix the major stressor, but if you get rid of some of the little ones, you'll be more able to deal with the big one/s. She had lots of other suggestions to help us manage stress, such as doing something creative regularly, getting exercise, gardening, eating healthily, getting 7-8 hours sleep a night. She also suggested some quick fixes in stress overload times, and I liked that one was "laugh, cry or sing as loud and as hard as possible", as all three of those actions release endorphins that help you to calm down. I knew there was a reason that singing at the top of my lungs while driving feels so good!