BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Stress Management What are your Stress Triggers?

Having spent most of my life working in helter-skelter environments (hotels & restaurants), I still switch between tasks pretty rapidly and easily. So I'm not sure what you mean by "decompression time". I mean, what exactly happens during that time in order for you to move to the next task?

I do think you have the right to say to anyone "Can we do that at such & such time." That's how I dealt with spur-of-the-moment interruptions of a non-urgent manner when I worked with others. Otherwise, I'd get pulled off tasks I needed to complete and it would throw me off track. I did leave time in my day for those things--they were bound to happen, so I would actually only plan out five or six hours of work a day. And, there were times it didn't happen--unexpected client visits, fires & floods, impromptu meetings with bosses, needing to fix someone else's screw ups, address an employee situation, etc.

lack of sleep and when people ignore me

Jilly - I definitely understand when you are focused on item 1 and are giving it your attention and mental powers, and then someone tries to randomly drag you out to an entirely different thing. Bob does that to me a few times each day. I'm deep into coding something for the site, and juggling 8 variable names in my head, and he'll pop in the door and start talking about random things.

I used to get frustrated, which didn't help, because now he was being discouraged from talking nicely to me, and I was getting grumpy over something that was meant to be nice.

So now what I do is accept, when I hear him coming, that I am "donating" 20 minutes of my time to my love for Bob. Even if he just talks for a minute it can easily take me 20 minutes to get back into where I was, what I was doing, all of that. And I accept that. Being part of a happy relationship is worth a 20 minute donation to me. So when I hear him coming, I "pull out my tendrils" from the deep attention I'm giving to the item. I shake it all loose. I stop worrying - completely - about the thing I was working on. And I prepare myself for simply spending some interactive time with him.

That means when he comes in that I am receptive, happy, and pay attention to him. Which makes him happy, and means the rest of the day with him goes smoothly. And it encourages him to be nice to me.

Then, when he goes, yes, I now have to take some time to regain my place and start again. But I accept that as part of the bargain.

It's sort of like this. Imagine someone came in while you were reading a book and picked it out of your hands and dropped it on the floor, so you lost your place. You could be VERY frustrating that you were reading something interesting and now you had no place where you were.

But if you accepted that when person X came in it would be a fun adventure to talk with them, and that later on you'd have a fresh opportunity to settle yourself in with your book, re-read a few pages and re-immerse yourself, it seems like a reasonable trade-off.

Now, that all being said, if you don't even have footsteps warning you, I would ask for a system where they give you a "one minute warning!" alert before they start coming at you. So you can pull yourself loose. I do that with Bob when we're both on the couch and both into our laptops. That way he can shake himself loose of what he's doing and listen.

Lack of sleep is huge for all of us!! I'll start a thread on that!

Okay, i like that a great deal. I can start to think of it that way with dan. I love him, I want to encourage him to be happy and nice with me, and that is far more important in the long run than whatever project I am working on.

It might take me some time, but i think i can work on shaking out my tendrils and see my time as a donation. :-)

I tend to hyperfocus. I think it's part of my high functioning autism issues. So to decompress I need to pull my mind completely out of something, let it go, and then have a mental break from 'living' whatever I was doing.



How, specifically, do you do this? Do you have times built into your planner that say, "unplanned time" ? If so, that seems very wise and organized.



I do try to say this. My issue is more with not allowing myself to become irritated in the first moment I am pulled out of something I am focused on. :-)

Right I completely understand Jilly's irritation. I used to feel the same way. If I am really deep into a coding project and making progress it was just SO annoying to have it all crash to a halt so Bob could talk for 30 seconds about what I wanted for dinner. But really - he was going to make me dinner! He was being friendly! He wanted to chat about what I would want to eat! So from his point of view, for me to snap and growl when he is coming in to talk and be nice is sort of silly. And I do understand that.

So it required a mindset change for me. Yes, it's 20 minutes of "wasted" (redundant) time as I then remember what I was working on, remember what variables I was changing, where they were going, and so on. But it's not life-or-death, it's doable, and it's time I'm willing to donate to the "relationship being happy" cause.

And it really does make a fairly huge difference if I am happy and upbeat when he wants to talk with me, vs being surly or even distracted and neutral. The tone of how you answer someone who comes to you with a question makes a HUGE impact on future interactions.

Okay, i like that a great deal. I can start to think of it that way with dan. I love him, I want to encourage him to be happy and nice with me, and that is far more important in the long run than whatever project I am working on.

It might take me some time, but i think i can work on shaking out my tendrils and see my time as a donation. :-)

Yup it does take a while. Be gentle with yourself if it takes a number of tries to figure it out. It's an ongoing process!

Sometimes this works, and sometimes i fail. :-) I guess new habits are hard to make. I will be patient with myself.