When we talk about stress, we are talking about a silent global pandemic that has many casualties worldwide and yet has not been followed up enough because it is a rising evil that goes unnoticed by the runaway race that life has become.
Stress is an emotion or emotional state that generates physical tension. It can come from any situation or thought that generates negative emotions such as frustration, anger, fear, anxiety. In small doses, stress can be positive, such as when it helps us avoid danger or fulfill our purposes, like that little scare we get in our chest when we feel exposed. However, when stress goes from a one-off emotion to a recurring one, it can damage our health.
In my case, I suffer from different forms of stress. However, I have learned to deal with it after having been subjected to all kinds of psychosomatic illnesses, meriting psychiatric treatment for some time. Today, I can say that I can see the dust coming from afar from the anxiety-ridden horses thrown by different stressors, and I can turn away from being run over.
Organically, the medical studies that were done on me a few years ago showed that my endocrine system is out of control with cortisol which is a hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter in our brain. Situations that we interpret as stressful increase our cortisol levels. "When our cortisol levels are optimal, we feel mentally strong, clear and motivated. If, on the other hand, they are low, we tend to feel confused, apathetic, and fatigued."
But, when it is triggered for any reason or cause, we become unbalanced and enter into a type of tension capable of making any organ sick, as was my case. For this reason, I came to present hypertension for a while, alteration of the blood irrigation activity in the brain, labyrinthitis, gastritis and other conditions that gave way with psychiatric treatment. And all this because I was a perfectionist and controlling person who demanded more of himself than he should.
Life's answer to my ongoing illnesses was to face a reality: There is nothing important enough to take us out of our center of inner light. I was one of the professionals who did not follow or enjoy the extracurricular advances of their children, who were very talented because I could not neglect my obligations at work, because attending events where my children participated meant missing a day of classes. I was one of the teachers who didn't go to a concert or a dance or a song by one of her children because she couldn't leave her forty students.
But, one day I learned that no one is indispensable, that life just goes, like a river, does not return. I learned that life matters because of the loving ties we have with family, friends, and everything around us. I learned that love saves us and that love for ourselves is an inexhaustible source of health transformed into integral well-being. I learned that we are not even remotely perfect and that is good because it is what makes us sensitive, tender, human.
It was the encounter with myself that did the miracle of balancing my psycho-organic and even spiritual system. Stopping the race to work and enjoying work as much as possible helped me. And... the permissions! A discovery of mine, before any doctor, I learned to give myself permission to be who I am, to accept and love myself as I am; I learned that mistakes bear witness to the fact that we are alive and active, I learned to give myself permission to live what I had not lived and longed to live: to camp on a semi-desert beach, to go for a walk without a fixed destination, to cut off the relationships that affected me and to annul my being: I got divorced! And, my life changed, I learned to say no and to do only what my mind and heart approved of.
Approving myself with virtues and defects was a big step, then taking the next steps towards my realization as a creative woman and a more focused professional, cut the cycle of stress. At the time I remarried with my companion of excursions and life with and without sense.
I was promoted to Supervising Teacher and some years later, the stress armed with stones and sticks returned against me to bend my dignity when assuming a string of changes improvised by the Regime of my country that appropriated the educational system and imposed the ideologization as a rule and changes in which I did not believe. Once again, I had to return to the psychiatrist to regain my balance. I resigned from the function and moved to a more relaxed and compensatory job in terms of positive feelings, coordinating the Student Welfare Department in an Arts high school.
In other words, sharing life with art, reduced my stress by exploiting my own creativity, becoming fond of creative writing as a form of expression of my inner world.
What helped me forget the stressful world of stress? Discover the chain of blocks! Steemit and now, Hive! Ah! And I eliminated the clocks that controlled my life. I have no fixed time to go to bed or get up, I walk with my inner clock and the feeling of freedom is fantastic, the fantasy took me in and freed me!
05-04-2020