Stress

Greetings Everyone,

I hope you are all well today. It has been a while since I did my last blog. Unfortunately, I have a lot going on. Life happens. Today, I want to talk about something that is very important to me that affects a lot of people. Today’s topic is stress. Stress affects people differently. I can tell you for certainty that I am a person who is always dealing with a lot of stress. Stress comes in various forms and there are a lot of stressors. How a person deals with stress makes all of the difference in the world.

As I stated previously in my blogs, I have experienced a lot of things in my life. As a result, I am usually stressed out. For example, I am currently working two jobs. My primary job is the one where I have worked full time for the last nine years. I work with the general public serving them. My background is in Social Work and I am working in a similar capacity. I recently purchased my first car – a 2017 Hyuadai Accent hatchback model. Due to the wages I receive in my full time job not being enough to pay for the car, car insurance or even student loans, I had to obtain a second job to supplement it. For the part time job, I reverted back to a major retailer that I worked for in the past. It is not the most ideal situation, but I am grateful for both opportunities. I have worked in the latter, part time position for approximately one month. Both jobs are extremely stressful in terms of dealing with poor leadership, hostile customers and a broken system which needs to be remedied.

Don’t get me wrong, I have worked in some capacity since the age of 13. I work extremely hard at anything I do. In doing so, I had to take a long, hard look at myself and make some adjustments in order for me to serve in both roles. I know that I am a work in progress and I have a long way to go. I am human and like everyone else, I have my good and bad days. There are various issues within any job. Every job has its good and bad points. The best advice that I can offer everyone is to know your self as the things that you will and won’t accept from a job. Even with this understanding, it is best to know that sometimes you will have a situation in your life where you will have to accept more than you would like to in order to keep a job. Keep in mind that people have varying personalities, issues, traumas and battles that people are not always privy to or aware of. This is not to diminish anyone’s feelings, opinions or perception. I am just a realist who believes in examining life’s aspects from various angles. I also view the world differently than most. I am a unique person in general, and I am often misunderstood as a result. That is a factor which caused me stress in the past. As I am growing and loving me, I feel less stress.

I am someone who is more passive than I should be. As a result, I have accepted a lot of ill treatment from others to keep an argument down. Now that I am older, I can honestly say that this has been detrimental and a disservice to me. A lesson that I learned is that you teach people how to treat you, which explains some of my stresses and why I experienced some of the things that I did. I do not recommend this for anyone. The results of this acceptance has made people not want to change their behaviors and mannerisms towards me when I am learning how to stand and speak up for myself. Now that I am more vocal about my feelings and experiences, I do not experience some of the same things that I did. However, due to the fact that people have become so accustomed to mistreating me, people are not always willing to change. This resulted in the loss of some relationships, which also triggered some stress.

One prime example is the breakdown of my marriage. In terms of this relationship, I ended up dating someone I distantly knew during my high school years. We started dating when I were 19 years old. We were married by the time I were 26 years old. We separated when I were 31 years old. Things I accepted at 19, I could not accept at 31. He did not seem to understand or care about my feelings. The arguments we had became more frequent, which increased my stress levels. In fact, my health was adversely impacted by the stress of my marriage. I almost passed away due to illness after developing heart problems. Negative stress can lead to other health problems. If they are not managed, a person can die based on the health problems. I am happy to say that my health has greatly improved after the break up.

All of the extra working that I am doing has increased my stress levels because I am sleeping even less. Please understand, my sleeping patterns were not very good before the second job, as I experienced extreme insomnia for years. When my stress is extremely high, the sleeping pattern is worse. Increased stress and a lack of sleep can compromise a person’s immune system. On a personal level, everything that is spread throughout my jobs, I usually catch. I have digestive problems. Additionally, I am a first time driver, which I am still adjusting to. Driving in itself breeds a different level of stressors. Dealing with being watchful for the people around you is a challenge in itself. Not to mention the added car expenses, such as gas and maintenance. I am happy to have a car, but getting use to driving around and navigating to various destinations along with being cognizant of times has been an adjustment for me. I am trying to improve my driving skills on a daily basis. I am still learning how to properly park and pay attention to space and perception.

All of these factors has caused a great deal of stress. It is decreasing daily. One example of the decrease in stress is because I play music from the Sirius XM satellite radio. Music is my favorite thing in the world. Music has a calming effect on me, which helps to decrease my stress levels. It is important for everyone to find the things in their lives to decrease their stress levels. Another thing that decreases my stress levels is cooking. I have cooked since the age of 7 and it is my biggest talent. It is my dream to meet Gordon Ramsay. I have been a huge fan of his for years. I am also happiest around children. I love babies and I am looking forward to the day when I become a mother. It is unlikely I will ever have children biologically due to my preexisting conditions. We will see with the increases and improvements in modern technology. Developing strategies to decrease stress is guaranteed to aid in improving a person’s health and overall well being. Everyone should have an outlet. This is something that I need to personally work on.

We as people have enough things going on in our lives, and we are all stressed to some capacity. I try hard to treat everyone the way I would like to be treated because I believe heavily in the notion that we never know what people are dealing with. I don’t like to cause problems for people or stress people out. This is not always realistic. Maybe I have more empathy than most, resulting in me caring too much. This may add to my stress as well.

In my opinion, the most stress comes from employment. Many people are overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. Jobs do not usually care about a person’s plight as they are focused on productivity. This is a huge issue for me. Some jobs will pile up massive amounts of work on a person that is meant for multiple people. This leads to burn out. People spend the majority of their time at work. This means people are often away from families and struggling to pay bills. If a person is like me, they try extremely hard to uphold deadlines and maintain accuracy. This is not good. I have witnessed too many people that I have worked with over the years die. Recently, a coworker at my full time job died shortly after complaining of chest pains. The job stressed her out and I am sure she had a lot of obstacles that she was experiencing in her personal life. I feel jobs should be more understanding of what people might be dealing with.

I have been a migraine sufferer since I were 12 years old. The reasons why are unknown. When I have a migraine attack, they can be very debilitating. Years of worry and stress has led to stomach problems. In recent years, I have been finding ways to better cope with my stress. I am a huge advocate of mental health therapy. I briefly studied to be a therapist. Due to issues stemming from my past, I knew that I would not have been the most effective therapist. It is always good to know your limitations too, which can decrease some of your stress. Based on me being the truest definition of an empath, I absorb people’s emotions and issues, making them my own, which adds to my stress. It is okay to admit when you need to change the path you wanted to choose for yourself. I have been in mental health therapy off and on for years. I have been going consistently for about a year now. I am not ashamed to admit it. I needed help learning how to cope and decrease my stress after my divorce. I needed to heal other wounds from my childhood. I also needed to learn how to better deal with working. I have had different therapists who all have different styles and ideologies about life. For the most part, therapy has been helpful. There are some instances when you can leave therapy more frustrated than when you went in. I had a recent situation like this, but I will continue my treatment. Know and understand when you need other resources in dealing with your stress.

It is my hope that jobs will care more about people and less about output. It is also a good idea to work at a job you love. Jobs, please take heed and work to improve the stressors that people face based on their roles at your companies. Also, ensure people are paid a decent wage in accordance with their position and state/federally allowed levels. No one will be able to decrease all of their stress. However, make sure every stressor is manageable. I hope this opens the discussion for stress and how we as people can improve overall. Peace and blessings everyone. Best wishes. Have a great week. ~~ Rayne Elise.