When We Micro-Stress to the Max
Photo by Mourad Saadi on Unsplash
I’ve been listening to a couple of podcasts recently about stress and for a long time, I thought I dealt with stress pretty well. I always thought I had a go with the flow sort of attitude towards life and that not much bothered me or got me too wound up.
Sigh. I’ve been lying to myself for a long time.
I am not immune…at all. I just realized there’s a term for what I experience daily—they’re called micro-stressors.
This means that stress comes at me in small doses during the day, which makes I’ve interpreted as normal life. For example, micro-stressors to me are: a child forgets their homework on the kitchen counter, my husband and I bicker about bills, the launch deadline for my 6-week wellness program is looming, my unread emails are obnoxious and I need to get into the doctor for a follow-up visit.
On their own, they aren’t huge stressors but add them all together and they create a shitshow inside my body. One way would be digestive health. My gut gets compromised because the stress decreases digestive enzyme production —> I don’t digest my food right —> I develop food intolerances —> I don’t absorb nutrients —> I feel like shit, yada, yada, yada.
And this is just one area of impact. Type 2 Diabetes, chronic high blood pressure, suppresses our immune system and so much more.
All this time I thought I’m not a stressed-out person but I realize now is that I “stack up” my stress until I reach a threshold that causes me to lose my shit at the end of the day, usually over something stupid.
For the last damn time (not the last time, not by a long shot ) put your dirty dishes in the dishwasher! I'm not a fricking maid!
The kids look at me like I’ve grown another head and exit my presence as fast as possible. Good times.
Maybe you recognize this in your own life. What do we often do when we hit our threshold? We pour a glass of wine, escape into Netflix, we reach for foods to console us, we online shop, or bitch to anyone willing to listen. Not exactly dealing with it, now are we?
So what now? We all know the first step to solving any problem is recognizing we have a problem. Consider me woke.
The podcast I have been listening to was with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee who has a new book called The Stress Solution (just ordered mine!) that can give us some concrete ideas but in the meantime, you can find some helpful tools from this article. I do my best to take deep breaths, read, journal, and meditate when my stress hits the fan but I need to make sure I do this on a regular basis. Micro stress is still stress and I’m not as go with the flow as I’d like to believe.
Whether stress comes at us like a tidal wave or as small ripples all day long, how we deal with it (and we must deal with it) will always impact our health, either in a positive or negative way. And THAT… is no lie.
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