My Stress Story: A Personal Journey to Healthy Stress Management

Personal Story Time! 

I had everything that I wanted: a great husband, a loving step-daughter, a baby on the way, a nice house, an interesting and fulfilling job, etc…. but I still didn’t feel entirely happy.  I came to learn later that one of the culprits of my unhappiness was numbing behavior which caused me to become disconnected from myself, my body, and my emotions, to the point I wasn’t able to fully feel positive emotions, like joy. Also, in hindsight, this numbing behavior had negatively impacted my important relationships because I wasn’t able to fully connect with my loved ones while in this state of disconnect with myself.

Some background…

I was STRESSED!  My stress had been stacking up for a couple of years and I thought I had been dealing with it all okay, but, upon reflection, I wasn’t. Over those two years, I had been through a lot. I was anxious about being pregnant again after losing two babies to miscarriages. My job as a Probation & Parole Agent, while I enjoyed it, was stressful and was creating some secondary trauma and irrational fear about the safety of my kids. My step-daughter began to struggle with bullying and anxiety and I wanted so desperately to fix this for her, but couldn’t. And my husband had developed GI issues, for which he was hospitalized twice, and none of the health providers he was seeing were able to diagnose the problem. 

To cope with all of this I did what I had always done (because I hadn’t known any better). I turned to a lot of distraction coping strategies to manage my anxiety, fear, and grief.  If you’ve never heard about “distraction coping,” it’s exactly how it sounds. You engage in activities that allow you to take your mind off of the problem at hand so that you can relax and the negative emotion can pass more quickly. And don’t get me wrong, these strategies aren’t all bad.  There are, in fact, situations where you should use distraction coping strategies. For example, when you’re feeling as though you’re too overwhelmed or too anxious to cope and trying to force yourself to sit with your feelings or problem solve would push you over the edge into crisis territory.  In those instances, it is better to turn to a distraction coping strategy, but only temporarily, until the emotion is more manageable and you’re ready and able to sit with it, process it, and put together an action plan to resolve the situation which caused it.  

To further illustrate when and why distraction coping is appropriate, I’ll share my experience working for a suicide prevention hotline. While doing that work, I often would work with our callers on identifying several distraction coping strategies they can utilize after the call to help themselves feel better, as well as identify some action steps they may be able to take to help them resolve the problem at hand once they are feeling better. Some action steps they could take were things like having a tough conversation with their loved ones to resolve hard feelings or maybe getting connected with a therapist who can help them explore, process and resolve their emotions. We recommended distraction coping strategies during those calls because most of the callers were in crisis and actively trying to resolve their problem or continuing to sit in their emotions would only escalate their crisis and cause them more harm.

Anyway, back to my story… the distraction coping strategies I turned to regularly including eating comfort foods, scrolling tiktok, Pinterest or Facebook for hours on end, and binge watching tv shows.  I engaged in most of these behaviors daily. They became so habitual that I would do them no matter what emotion I was feeling (happy, sad, anxious).  Eventually, they took over my life.  What’s worse is I stopped being present with those around me because I had lost myself in these numbing behaviors. My ability to connect with my husband and kids diminished and my anxiety was getting worse.

My “A-Ha” moment…

My help and enlightenment came in sort of a roundabout way.  At my annual physical my doctor expressed concern about my cholesterol levels. I was a couple of months post-partum at the time and she noted this could have an impact on my numbers due to my weight gain during pregnancy, but, nonetheless, she wanted me to work on bringing these numbers down. Around this same time, I was wondering whether I had a type of eating disorder. You see, I was starting to realize I had a problematic relationship with food. I had struggled for years to make consistent healthy food choices.  I would overeat and I craved sugar often.  I even felt the amount of time I spent thinking about and planning out my meals was alarming. Between meal planning and cooking for my family, watching cooking shows, reading cook books, looking for recipes on Pinterest, and sharing recipes with friends, it seemed as though my life revolved around food. My doctor told me if I was concerned I could meet with a dietician and possibly seek treatment to explore an eating disorder.  I was ready to solve this so I promptly scheduled those appointments.

Throughout therapy and working with a dietician, I learned that I didn’t necessarily have a diagnosable eating disorder but I did have disordered eating.  I learned that labeling foods as “bad” and trying to restrict the “bad foods” just made me crave them even more. I was told if I wanted a cookie to just let myself have the cookie. No guilt. No shame. I learned about radical acceptance and the pitfalls of trying to control your weight by restricting and overexercising. Finally, I learned I had a coping problem…more specifically, I didn’t really know how to cope with my emotions and challenges in a healthy way.

Now, I grew up in the 90s, a time where we definitely did not talk about healthy versus unhealthy coping. In fact, mental health wasn’t really something anyone talked about at all. It was actually heavily stigmatized.  You just learned to put on a brave face and be fine in public and then cope however you were going to cope in private. 

Let me just say, I love my parents. They always were and continue to be a great support to me.  They worked really hard to give me every advantage they never had. The one thing they weren’t able to do for me though is model healthy coping. It’s not their fault, they weren’t really taught it either. I don’t remember us ever really talking about our vulnerable feelings. I watched them stress eat, work too many hours, over sleep, and busy themselves in front of the tv to cope with their stress. And, naturally, I adapted those exact same strategies to manage my stress as I grew up. 

Therapy helped me to expose and educate me on my numbing behaviors which were robbing me of connecting with my emotions, my body, and myself.  Making the necessary changes to my lifestyle and doing self-reflection helped me to notice the ripple effect those behaviors had on my ability to connect with my family. A new daily routine was instrumental in allowing me to sustain these changes.

Additionally, below is an illustration of healthy vs unhealthy coping.

How I took ACTION!

Here are some specific steps I took to transition from unhealthy to healthy coping:

–        Limiting social media. Social media had become too much of a distraction from my life. And let me tell you, when I first tried to cut back, I was appalled at how many times a day I noticed an urge to grab my phone and open a social media app.  I don’t know about you but I don’t really want to have to be  distracted or entertained at all waking moments of my life… I’d like to feel okay with just being present in whatever it is I’m doing and whomever I’m with.  I’ve actually set timers on my phone to restrict the amount of time I spend on certain social media platforms, to aid me in keeping my usage under control.  

–        Journaling on a regular basis. I try to do it daily but I’m not perfect and I don’t always achieve that goal.  Journaling has been a great outlet for me. It gives me a safe space to express myself. Plus, it helps me to process what I’m feeling and experiencing by myself instead of dumping on family/friends, or just bottling up my emotions.  Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk wrote in his book: The Body Keeps the Score about the healing power of journaling. He discussed how being able to put our emotions and experience into words can actually help us to heal. In addition, neuroscience has proven writing words is more powerful than speaking them, as it helps to support the brain in building new neural pathways more efficiently than simply thinking or speaking our thoughts can. (Neuropathways in our brain are what create our habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions). Therefore, writing affirmations or more positive thinking can help us to more fully embrace those thoughts and manifest them. 

–        Meditating regularly. I’ve known the power of meditation for years since taking a class on it in college but failed to keep up with it in my 20s and most of my 30s. I don’t have the time for marathon meditation sessions in this current season of my life so I aim to do at least one 5 minute meditation per day.  When my brain is going a mile a minute and I just can’t clear it long enough to sit in silence, I turn to a guided meditation where I can focus on the words and following the directions, which helps me to slow my thinking down, rest, and restore me to a grounded state. 

–        Practicing mindfulness. I’ve found mindfulness to be so grounding. It helps me to reduce or eliminate a lot of the “noise” in my day to day that I get wrapped up in.  I think of mindfulness as a series of small, meditative moments throughout my day which help me to shift my focus back onto the present so that I’m fully experiencing whatever it is I’m doing.  This helps me to enjoy the task at hand more. Take eating lunch for example. I have days where I will watch tv or listen to a podcast while I’m eating lunch, but these things are really just a distraction. I’ve noticed when I’m distractedly eating, I (one) don’t enjoy what it is I’m eating because I’m just mindlessly shoveling it into my face, which just leaves me feeling les satiated, and (two) I struggle to tap into my intuition, which only results in me not noticing when I’m getting full and overeating, resulting in indigestion. 

–     Finally, I got serious about self-care. I never really thought much about self-care.  I had thought it was something you did to restore your physical and mental energy once you were feeling burned out but came to learn it is to be done proactively instead of reactively. It is now something I prioritize daily to protect my physical, mental, spiritual and relationship health. I also notice when I’m not prioritizing self care how I begin to feel and how it impacts my loved ones (because I get cranky). 

I help others implement these same strategies, allowing them to restore balance to their lives and improve their connections with themselves and others. If my story resonates with you and you’d like to see how I may be able to help you, let’s connect! Schedule a complimentary 30 minute call to discuss your goals and explore how we may collaborate.