Stress is an inevitable part of life from birth until death Stress is sneaky. We embrace its excitement when we start a new job, pick up a new hobby, or plan a trip – what we call good stress. But the bad stress that accompanies loss, disappointment, or tragedy weighs us down, ranging from brief periods of sadness to a life of grief and suffering. Regardless of its form, learning to manage stress is a must if we want to thrive. One powerful way to take control is to use “The Power of the Pen” to journal your way from stress to peace.
In the medical world, stress is often called the silent killer, partly because our sick-care system hasn't devised a handy instrument to measure it. Shot callers cling to the unspoken, antiquated ideology that "if you can't measure it, it isn't real," a principle that keeps doctors on their pedestals and leaves patients at their mercy.
A second reason stress is dubbed the silent killer is that we haven't learned to recognize its warning signs and the effective strategies that can be used to make it stand down.
So, how do you tackle this sneaky invisible beast that can debilitate you mentally and physically if left unchecked? You start by paying attention to its most evident signs: your feelings. Just as feelings of joy, happiness, and contentment are easy to recognize during good times, so are the emotions you experience when bad stress shows up uninvited, and you don't need some high-tech instrument to identify them.
Your body has a remarkable way of signaling when stress is creeping in and about to run its course. You feel it in your guts through "gut instincts" or a quivering nervousness in your stomach. You feel your heart pounding in your chest, your pulse racing, and your respirations increasing. You feel your hands begin to tremble and sweat forming on your brow. You feel the headaches. You feel the overwhelm of racing thoughts that lead to restlessness. You feel the fatigue. You feel the anger and irritability bubbling up, causing your blood to boil. You feel the fear. You feel the loneliness. You feel the sadness and the depression setting in.
Recognizing these signals is the first step in managing what’s happening inside your body. The next step is to do something about these maladaptive feelings before they derail you. You have three options:
- You can ignore them and let nature take its course.
- You can acknowledge them, see a doctor, receive a diagnosis along with a few prescriptions, and schedule a follow-up appointment. This option may work for a short while, but here’s the problem: The doctor treated your symptoms, but neither of you addressed the root cause of your diagnosis—stress. Until you tackle the cause, you’ll find yourself trapped in the revolving doors of our sick-care system.
- A third option is acknowledging your feelings, identifying their triggers, and learning to take control. And this is where the “Power of the Pen” steps in and takes over.
I've harnessed the “Power of the Pen” to connect to my inner peace whenever the stressors of everyday living have paid me a visit. Pouring my feelings onto paper helps me pinpoint what triggers my anxiety so that I can avoid or minimize them. Journaling has taught me to let go of fears and bottled-up frustrations before they cause serious and possibly irreversible damage. And it has guided me each time I’ve faced making a critical medical decision.
Navigating a sick-care arena that puts profit over patient well-being can be challenging. I've worked in the flawed system for four decades, and the only change I've noticed is the shot callers keep getting richer, and patients keep getting sicker. As consumers, we owe it to ourselves to prioritize Self-Care practices that minimize the number of times we have to pass through the system's revolving doors and empower ourselves to be our own best advocates whenever we have to seek care.
To begin your stress management Self-Care practice, all you need is the “Power of the Pen,” a journal, and a few minutes each day to lay your burdens down on paper, leave them there, and experience the peace of everyday living!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After serving disparate and marginalized and communities for more than three decades, Myrtle D. Russell recently retired and created the small change Toolkit, a set of transformational tools aimed at reshaping everyday perceptions of what it means to be well. The most powerful tool in the Toolkit is Gratitude Journaling, a transformative practice Myrtle discovered twenty-eight years ago when tragedy knocked her to her knees, leaving her grappling with questions that seemingly had no answers. What began with making a daily gratitude list gradually evolved into Myrtle pouring her pain onto the pages of a journal. With consistent practice, one day, and one small change at a time, she discovered a reservoir of joy and appreciation, ultimately leading her on the most rewarding journey she has ever taken. Now, she affectionately dubs herself the "small change butterfly," a testament to her metamorphosis and the profound impact of merging small change principles with the power of gratitude., Discover more about her small change Toolkit at Myrtle Russell.com
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