This past weekend I spent a great deal of time napping, taking it easy and just generally ‘slugging’ around the house in order to rest from a rough time last week dealing with depression.

Monday morning came around and I felt pretty good. I was actually looking forward to work (my boss is off a few days this week, which is always a plus!). I was there about two minutes when I go the message from a co-worker that our receptionist was out. Seems she decided to take advantage of the boss not being there…again. It’s a habit of hers. My first thought when I heard this was ‘GREAT! Now my work load has just doubled.’ I could literally feel my muscles tighten up in my neck, check, stomach and back. Well…so much for that weekend of rest. The first break I could take (lunch) I was in my car and driving-had to get away. Funny, the same way I felt my muscles tighten earlier, when I was driving, I could feel myself unwind. The afternoon was a better after my break.

I’m pretty good at dealing with stress after the fact (breathing, stretching, walking, etc.) but I need to find a way to physically get away from what’s causing the stress-even if it’s just for five minutes. If I can mentally prepare myself for additional stresses, I generally do well. It’s getting blind-sided by the unexpected stress that knocks my on my ass. I don’t know if this is something that will get better as I heal more or if it falls under the heading of ‘Get used to it…this is just how it is now’.

Just needed to vent a little frustration.

Marlene, your cup for stress does improve the more you heal, as you have less negative emotion filling your cup to begin with, however; what you have to realise is that by placing undue stress into your cup, being negative emotion, all and any negative emotion affects that PTSD component, which never goes away. This builds up over the week, likely lets say monday to wednesday all is good, thursday your feeling like crap, friday your getting really tired, grumpy and worn out. You then try and use the weekends as recovery, which is needed for the PTSD component within you to slowly decrease. The problem your going to find here, is that the PTSD component is what takes management in order for you to learn how to decrease that more rapidly, being over a two day period, in which to make you ready for the monday again. If not, you will find over a month or two period you end up needing three or four days off in order to recoup, hence you end up quite ill.

Things get better with time, and the more you learn about how to manage yourself uniquely, the better it becomes over time. Time though is a year, two even.... not just a month or two.

Things get better with time...I need to make that my mantra!

I have become my own personal 'home science experiment' when it comes to trying different ways of dealing with stress. Lots of them are in the trash, some have worked and stick with me.

Funny thing (and good for me) with the mention of time being a year or two...not just months. Even a few months ago, that would damn near have sent me into a tailspin of 'No, no, no...gotta get this finished and done with!'. When I just read this, my first thought was, 'Year or two? I can do that.'

I surprised myself!

Anthony,
the part you wrote about how the week goes; mon-wed ok, then thurs/fri tired and grump, weekend is for totally recovering...that is the way it's been for me for years! By itself, not a big deal maybe...but with everything else - another piece of the puzzle...

thanks.