BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Stress Management What is your stress level today?

Dear Ruby Jane -

You hang in there. Sometimes it's a hormones thing that makes everything worse, and a good night's sleep can help you feel better in the morning. Hopefully that will be the case.

Ruby,

I am very sorry to read what you are going through. I am not very good with words with helping someone but I know perfectly what you are going through and how you are feeling. I hope your husband is understanding of you and your feelings. I also hope for you that one day you will be able to stop taking medication.

Wishing you a great night of sleep and sweet dreams,

Nancy

Thank you Lisa! I know you are right and I do try but it is not easy while living in the same house. Tomorrow I will be alone a few hours with my dad (about 3 hours to Matane and back here...going to try an eye doctor there HOPEFULLY he can make me a pair of glasses for my hypermetropia and that pair of glasses will work on me), I hope it will go smoothly (my mom is going to Rimouski see 2 specialists the next day so she wont come with us).

It was a little higher for me today but nothing serious. First the eye examination was stressful for me and also before we left my grandmom called saying that she was caling an ambulance so my mom instead of staying home to relax before her big day tomorrow she went to my grandmom's house and went to the hospital with her. We stopped at the hospital when we came back and they will keep her a couple of days, she had water in one of her knees. The sad thing is that Wednesday her cat will be euthanised and she won't be able to say her goodbye to her!

Today was a lot better, thanks to your advice Lisa about looking at my Distress Tolerance strategy plan. Only a two Xanax day, pretty good. I put on my smiley face-my game face-my mask of pretense. I made it through today and I'll get up tomorrow and Wednesday and do it all again. Then Thursday, Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday I'll go to my second job. I have to do this because people have not been paying their bills that they owe our business, so things are really tight. I'm trying to collect their debt, sometimes successful, sometimes not. Sometimes I just have to send them to collection or sue them. If they don't pay then people have to call me about our bills we owe them and I pray that we don't get sued or sent to collection. It's 7:30 pm here in Spokane and I just have to go to bed, I'm over tired. Nancy and Lisa, thank you for your care yesterday. It really helped. Nancy, I'm sorry about your grandma's cat.

I am strangely calm today. And that is weird since I have made a decision (not long after getting up) and usually that stresses me out.

Ruby, I am glad that yesterday you were better, I hope today is better than yesterday!

My grandmom came out of the hospital this morning (i was in bed but that was such a commotion that i woke up..my dad answered the phone which is more than rare then he freaked out and freaked out more when my mom said that she had to get ready so she could not go). At least now she will be able to say her goodbye to her cat.

Ruby Jane -

Absolutely many studies show that when your lips make a smiling motion, it triggers all sorts of feel-good hormones. So in a very scientific way "making a smile" absolutely changes your body chemistry. It is free, easy medicine that works.

Take a look at the stress reduction video I just tried, it is very much worth watching.

Nancy -

That is wonderful that you are feeling calm! Maybe that's a good sign that you are building a reservoir of serenity within you, to deal with life's many hurdles!

Family members can definitely be challenging. The more we can find ways to buffer ourselves against their moods, the better.

Thank you Lisa!

Today my stress is higher. I had to go to Amqui with my parents and my grandmom's cat (she could not come...she cant put her left foot at all on the ground so she cant walk) and poor Minette knew what was going to happen to her and to make it worst I could not take her out of the cage to give her a few loving moments before dying because my mom is allergic and worst of all my dad kept laughing and telling jokes about it (most were directed to Minette) and the rare times my mom was talking to her she was telling her to sleep or to be calm then when we were about to arrive my mom suddendly realised what was going to happen and stopped my dad from making another joke and she was crying when we picked her up (she wanted to do it alone).

It's a miracle that I am not completely crazy having lived more than thirtysix years with these people.

Nancy -

It is always so traumatic to lose a family pet, and it's even harder when someone in the group is being less than supportive. I'm not a psychologist so I can't make any real guesses about your father - but it seems from the things you're saying that he likes attention. He seeks attention and he then gets it. Maybe he thinks this is the only way he gets attention, and he gets rewarded by attention when he does it, so he keeps doing it. Sort of like a 2 year old. He does what works. He gets annoyed when something else (like the cat) is getting his attention so he intrudes on it.

People do things that bring them rewards. They don't do things that are useless. So he must be getting some reward out of this.

So if it was me temporarily "stuck" with him, here's what I would try to do.

I would try to find a way each day to give him positive attention. I don't know him to guess at how this could be done, but with my own father I could play a game with him, or sit down to talk with him, or ask him a question in an area he likes to talk about. I could brainstorm ideas with you if you wanted. So that way he IS getting some attention.

Then, when he acted out, I would give him NO attention. Not negative attention, because that is still attention. So no frowning or sighing or eye rolling. I would simply pretend he didn't exist. That is one of the most annoying things possible for most humans. That TED talk I just posted in the stress relief area talks about that. So simply act as if he has turned transparent. Be happy in your own little world.

If you suck all energy out of his bad behaviors - and at the same time provide tangible rewards for good behavior - it might start to make a tiny difference.