Counseling For Stress Management and Coping With Negative Life Events

Adulting is hard. For some of us, it ends up being much harder to manage. Everyone handles stress and certain situations differently, and I can attest to being one of those people who just doesn't handle stress or negative life events very well. My husband has often urged me to seek counseling for a lot of the things I still deal with every day, whether it's significant things from my past, to recent events. 

I know I have reference a lot of the things that have messed me up mentally and emotionally a few times before. Some things I still deal with every single day, because they are things you just cannot forget. Like being raped three times, the deaths of many friends from drugs or suicide, and I'm even still dealing with the possibility that I will be eventually diagnosed with breast cancer as my mother did a few years ago. For a while, because of my inability to handle negative life events and extreme stress, I did turn to drugs. At the time, I didn't have anyone to talk to about what was going on. So I dosed myself with prescription medication that wasn't even mine. I felt that if I numbed my emotions, I wouldn't struggle with them anymore. My husband is actually the one who saved my life, quite literally. I am now 13 years clean, but I still struggle. The difference is that I have found more productive ways to cope with my "issues". 

A lot of family and friends will notice that I change my hair color or length a lot, or rearrange and change rooms in my house. I've done this since I was younger, and the reason for it is that, in my mind, when there is something bad in my life that I cannot change, I focus my energy on the things that I CAN change so that I feel like I have some sort of control again. 

I also write, a lot. Or well, aside from this blog, I use to. I kept journals for 13 years. I no longer keep a journal and have actually thrown away my old ones because rereading through them just brought back all the bad feelings all over again. It was like reliving those moments again, and again, and again. Writing was another thing that helped in the beginning, but in the general scheme of things, they could also be hurtful and hinder my progress of trying to move on. 

Staying active helps reduce stress, but in time I have found that can be unhealthy as well. See, when I would get stressed, I would climb on my elliptical. Sometimes it would be in the morning, sometimes at night, but no matter what time of day it was, I realized that I would be working so hard trying to "forget" things, that I would be hard core working out for 4 or 5 hours straight, only stopping to grab another bottle of water. Sometimes because of it, I would be up until 4 or 5am, going to town on the elliptical. Other times I would just up and leave my kiddos with my husband, go for a walk, and not return for a few hours because I was crying the whole time. So obviously, this also didn't help a whole lot. 

Realistically, it comes down to just getting things off my chest. My husband frequently tells me that I hold to much in and keep way too much to myself. He's right. The only way I'll ever begin to work on overcoming all my fears and managing my stress is to talk to someone. That can be really hard for me, because I never want to feel like I'm bothering those I love. I don't want them to feel bad about the things I tell them. I always feel like there are people out there who have it much worse than me, so my problems are a small blip on a much larger screen. The solution to this is obviously counseling, and honestly, I've finally come to realize that it's truly what works for me. And on days when my anxiety is through the roof or I need someone to talk to immediately, I can speak to a licensed professional online from the comfort of my home. 

I'll be honest, I may look like I have myself together, but most of the time my mind is a disaster. And I learned from experience that holding all that in is more unhealthy than just opening up about it. A little bit of rain over a long period of time is much better than a ton of rain and thunderstorms all at once.