JBD

STRESS - CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, CURES

Causes:

Symptoms:

Cures:

My natural reaction to stress is to talk and argue, bluster and bully, to try and dominate or control the cause, as amply documented on my Myers-Briggs.

This tendency is fine for handling lazy Irish farm hands, or for dealing with fellow Viking warriors, or for surviving invasions in the hills of Monaghan in Medieval times. Not so good for building industrial vending machines in 2008, or for dealing with a loving family.

So I internalize stress and try to keep a happy face (my adaptation to stress) as befits my role at work and as a dad. I also have a very noisy brain, which kicks into high gear when I have lots to think and worry about. This means that no matter how tired I am, or how comfortable the bed, there's always a party going on in the frontal lobes.

This is good for a lot of reasons, mostly because I often have my best insights and solve my worst problems during this nocturnal internal cable shout show. I can usually catch up on Sunday morning, my day off work when I can sleep in late enough for the REM dreams to clean the psychological house.

My nose is my best overall barometer of stress.  My inherited hypertension used to be more volatile and therefore more predictive, but it stabilized 20 years at high normal since I started severely limiting caffeine and hard booze, so even on my worst days it's still OK. But put together a couple of the causes, and my nose goes to total WC Fields mode.

I have no idea how the Chief, who has 10 times as much to worry about, handles these same stressors. God love him, though, he does. He's the coolest customer under pressure I've ever seen.

Posted by: JBD at 03:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 410 words, total size 3 kb.