I watched a training video for recognizing post-traumatic stress disorder in psychopathology yesterday. Part of it was a Vietnam veteran describing his stress cues—he had to monitor and manage his stress level carefully so that he wouldn’t become scary or dangerous to those around him. He said something like “If I find myself scanning the bushes for gooks, or deciding which person in the room I would need to kill first, if it came down to it, I know that I need to lower my stress level.” The man’s story was moving and I cried quietly throughout it, but at that moment I was surprised to find myself a little jealous of him. My thought was “It must be nice to have such obvious stress cues.” It wouldn’t be nice at all, of course, but the sneakiness of my stress cues does make it difficult to manage my stress, which is a big part of my ongoing project to master being kind to myself. I was inspired to come up with a list of stress cues that I could try monitoring, to see if it’s helpful. Here it is so far:
I can feel tension in my solar plexus and between my shoulder blades
I am craving sweets
I am having trouble with focus or motivation
I am grinding my teeth, usually along with a drum beat in my head
I am biting my lip or picking at my skin
I am in the grip of an unpleasant emotion
I am experiencing intrusive thoughts
My writing or typing gets sloppy
I am easily frustrated
I am feeling jumpy
Sitting up straight seems out of the question
April 24, 2009 at 4:59 am
My professor calls her class Psycho”pathology” because she doesn’t believe in mental illness. She thinks that the various things that people consider psychopathology are healthy reactions to fucked up situations. She told me that she’s the only postmodernist on the faculty in the psych department, and she is definitely a hard-core postmodernist, but I’m pretty sure there is at least one other on the faculty. Anyway, I really like her outlook on mental illness, and I like to hear it coming from someone with a successful clinical practice. It sits well with my Christian Science and co-counseling programming.
April 25, 2009 at 6:42 am
That sounds like Pam, all right. I got to hear many of her rants on clinical psychology and interfering insurance companies in Culture and Mental Illness. She managed to turn me off to the idea of becoming a clinical psychologist and maintain my interest in the topic, no small feat!
April 25, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Ballet is great for balance. When I was in ballet when I was a kid, we sometimes had football players join our class, because they were made to by their coach. Also, Ballet requires so much muscle that a lot of the moves are pulled off better by men.
April 25, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Yes, it is!This choreography I’ve been working on I do a bunch of spins in a row and I always got off balance before I was done. After only six ballet classes, I stopped falling.
May 17, 2009 at 7:15 pm
one’s stress cues are never obvious to one’s self, no matter how extreme.
this is a great list!