A bit on Stress

Stress

Everyone responds to stressful situations differently and part of dealing with stress in knowing how you, personally, respond to it.  

I happen to know that under stressful situations, when others may be unnerved or anxious, I have a tendency to internalize the stress which mean I tend to remain calm and collected (or at least appear that way).  This is generally a good thing, because it maintains order and usually helps to calm others down.

Under continued, ongoing stress, however, the internal pressure builds and I have a tendency to become somewhat impatient and short where I wouldn’t usually.  I have especially noticed this recently in regards to my children who can be demanding, but usually not to the point of being upsetting.  I have noticed that I have had an especially short fuse with them recently, but I think I have been relatively successful in recognizing it when it is occurring and toning down my response before it gets out of hand.  Even though my response is normal, the feelings inside are far from it.  My heart races and my head throbs (although that makes it sound wore than it is).

The impending deployment is steadily becoming more stressful and taking its toll.  It is like adding one pound blocks daily to a board on top of you.  Each individual weight isn’t much, but it adds up, and I now adding up quickly.  Its becoming harder and harder to find an activity or time that I don’t have that feeling inside, the twisting knot in the stomach, the sense that the acids inside are eating away at me.

Tomorrow I come off leave and go back to work.  Will it alleviate some of the stress, possibly magnified by the lack of work?  Or will it simply increase the stress because of the unending reminder about what lies ahead?

It would be easier to just magically appear where we are going, and be done with the deployment itself.  Once there, it will be a steady ongoing pressure, but it will be better than the building up of the pressure.  In the words of a song from the new DM album, “just give me a pain that I’m used to.”