If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're sad and you know it, spend your husband's money? Emotions have never really been my strong suit. It's easy to hide behind words, which is why you poor suckers actually reading this are on the receiving end of my emotions at times. If you've been following along, in my last post I revealed that my kids had COVID, and it was stressful. I coped with my feelings by cleaning and blasting Alicia Keys on repeat.
Mid pandemic I found myself angry often. Okay, maybe not angry. Frustrated, we'll call it frustration. I instinctively found myself exercising more in those moments of frustration and irritation. I didn't really realize it at the time, but exercising is my coping mechanism for feeling stressed or frustrated. I've always been one to silently cope with my emotions, and not let the stressors of life be seen from the outside. I lost my brother in a very traumatic way when I was 15 years old, and I really believe this shaped my ability to positively cope with life changes.
Stressors can come in so many different forms for so many different people. I think we can all agree that living through a worldwide pandemic for the last 23 months has proven to be stressful in some capacity. Change. Life has changed. Changes are stressful. Check in on your Type A friends. (ALL of my friends - are you okay?!) Jokes aside, the bifurcation of type A versus type B personalities is largely differentiated by the way in which we are affected by stress. As a healthcare provider, I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn ways to healthily cope with emotions.
For example, two days ago I coped with my sadness with some retail therapy. But seriously, I did. Quick back story, on Monday I tested positive for the ol' coronavirus. Which, yet again, ruined a lot of plans, including a visit to see my grandpa, and then a self-care weekend including a massage, and a staycation at the MOA with my best girlfriends from college. I'm sure any other fellow moms can understand how important this weekend was to me, considering I just came off of a solo parenting stint for 5 quarantine days while my husband was living his best life in Cabo. (I'm sure you can sense my "life's not fair" vibe here...) I had been abstaining from frivolous shopping the last month and a half in preparation for this weekend. So, I decided a little retail therapy would be my coping mechanism for this particular stressor. And now, I'm a little less sad because I have a few new cute outfits 😉.
Okay, so maybe retail therapy isn't the healthiest coping mechanism, but hey, YOLO. Other coping mechanisms I have found to be effective for me: exercising, cleaning, meditating. As a physical therapist, I generally treat function and pain. But, did you know, anxiety and stress play a HUGE role in physical pain? Stress and anxiety don't just go away, sometimes we have to work at it. Here is some homework for you:
write down everything stressing you out
Cross out everything OUT of your control
Focus on what you CAN control
I get it, this isn't the answer to controlling all of your stress, but it's a start. And how can we ever get to the finish line without even starting? And for all you type A's, it's a list! What's more exciting than a list?! I use this homework in my PT practice on occasion, because even though I'm JUST a physical therapist, my main goal in my career is to help the whole patient, not just the physical impairment, and we all have stuff going on. Here are some ideas to help the minor inconveniences of stress:
Exercise
Music
Stretch (hands clasped above your head, push up through palm of your hands as if you're trying to push the ceiling away and grow as tall as possible)
Walk
Write! (interesting timing for me...)
4-7-8 breathing (inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, exhale for 8 seconds)
Clean
Vent to friends
Random act of kindness
Take care of yourself! Too much stress can cause more than just little bumps in the road. And if your coping mechanism happens to be retail therapy, I'm always in for a shopping trip :)
You can't fill from an empty cup, mamas!
