by Ashleigh Beason Herrington, LCMHCA
This past week my husband and I drove to the beach for a much needed vacation. Before we left we got the oil changed in his car, made sure the tires didn’t have any leaks, and filled the tank with gas. Thankfully, we made it there and back without any trouble at all. The good news is that if we did have car trouble, the dashboard in the car would have told us there was a problem long before we recognized it ourselves.
And while there are so many parallels to how our bodies function and how cars function, we don’t have a dashboard on our forehead that lights up when we’re wrestling with anxiety or depression (that could get interesting). There are, however, indicators that we can pay attention to that help us recognize and manage stress before we do real damage to ourselves.
When you receive bad news, how do you know that you’re sad?
When you’re betrayed by a close friend, how do you know that you’re angry?
When you have a big test coming up, how do you know that you’re anxious?
You feel it in your body.
Maybe your head hurts or you feel tension in your shoulders, neck, or arms. Maybe your chest feels tight or you feel a pit in your stomach. This is our body’s way of communicating to us that something is going on that we need to address.
And on top of personal stress, there are tons of stressors to address from this year alone: the pandemic, quarantining at home alone, cancelling or rescheduling major life events, job losses, financial hardship, the racial injustice in our country, and not to mention it’s an election year. All of these things can cause us to experience overwhelming amounts of stress.
Oftentimes when we are stressed, we choose to ignore the warning signs or suppress them altogether because we either don’t want to feel them or don’t have time to feel them. We don’t do this with our cars (or at least hopefully we don’t) so why would we do this with our bodies, which are much more valuable and precious to God?
Emotions are like going through a tunnel–we have to let ourselves go through them in order to see the light at the end. Unfortunately, most of us get stuck in the tunnel of our own emotions.
Typically, what happens is you come home from a stressful day at work to more stress at home and then go to sleep and do it all over again the next day, but you never actually deal with your stress. We have to move through the tunnel of our emotions to deal with and process them in a healthy way.
We all need a regular rhythm to process the things in life that weigh us down. It could be as simple as setting aside time to journal what your day or week has been like. Maybe it’s time at the gym with your headphones in or going for a walk after work with your spouse or a close friend. It could be drawing or painting something meaningful, seeing a counselor, or even giving yourself space to cry and feel your emotions. The beauty is that although we all need a rhythm for processing stress in a healthy way, it can look different from person to person.
We can’t always control our stressors but we can control how we carry stress. If listening to your body or moving through stress in a healthy way is new to you, it might take time to see progress but acknowledging even the smallest of victories can be impactful. Like the dashboard in a car, your body is speaking to you and will tell you if you’re carrying stress. It’s vital that we learn to listen to what our bodies are communicating to us.
