Stress!!!

April is Stress Awareness month.  Who knew?  Not me until recently.  In keeping with the theme of the month, I thought I'd share a bit about my own relationship with stress.

I think I was born anxious.  If not, I developed anxiety early in life.  I know stress and anxiety are not the same thing, but for me anxiety led to stress.  Even as a little girl, I wanted everything to be just so.  I wouldn't quite call it perfectionism, that came later.  But if things were just right in my little world, I became anxious and then stressed.  My coping mechanism at that time was to cry.

As I grew and matured, I learned it wasn't a good idea to go around crying all the time and learned to cry when I was alone.  That is probably when I learned about stress eating.  Being young, and active and having a kid metabolism, it didn't manifest itself until later in life.  Even then, I was able to exercise most of it away.

In college, I chose a high stress major and career - accounting!  Maybe being an accountant isn't as high stress as a brain surgeon, but people can get very stressed when they get bad news about money.  I loved making presentations to the board when times were good.  When they were bad, that was another story indeed, especially when there was a 'kill the messenger' type on the board.  Working for myself from home has alleviated much of that stress.  Still, with my personality type, I found stress in other areas of my life.  

In trying to lose weight and put an end to the emotional eating, I'm looking for other ways to ease stress.  Just a few that work for me are:

• Taking a grown up time out - just walking away from the computer screen if it is work and doing something else for a few minutes.  Since I am at home, I can load/unload the dishwasher or something like that.  When I come back with fresh eyes and a fresh mind, I can sometimes see the solution that I could not before.
• Taking a bath - this one is generally reserved for evenings although I could take a bath in the middle of the day.  I discovered this when my father died and I was an emotional wreck for months!  Sometimes, 65MD would gently suggest that I have a bath when it got so bad.
• Scheduling free time - or more like time away from work to do something else like sew or read.  Right now, it is scheduling time to work on the bedroom project.
• Going outside - this time of year is so refreshing to me. I love the rebirth that spring brings.  I love the more relaxed nature to summer, and I rarely get too hot.  (I don't do this so much in the winter time.)  Feeling the sun on my face for just a few minutes makes those worries melt away.  I just discovered a NY and NJ health insurance company called Oscar that rewards their members for going outside and just taking a walk with their Misfit program. Every members gets a fitness tracker and sets their own step goal. Whenever they meet their steps that day, they earn $1 and receive cash reward each month.  How cool is that?

Has anyone got anything they have discovered that works for them?  Leave a comment.  I'd love to know.