The insidiousness of stress... and why I haven't blogged

This blog isn't going to be filled with lots of photos (maybe just a few). Frankly, I just don't have time for that right now. What it is going to be about is stress and how it can have such a devastating effect on us. I thought I was invinsible to stress. I figured that if I could get through what I got through years ago, I was basically a stress-busting machine and nothing could get me. I WAS WRONG!

It started in May. I bought a new house; couldn't sell my old house. Then in July I moved, but 3 days after I moved, I competed in North Americans. So, while I was preparing for a major meet, I was packing and doing all the things required when you buy a house. It wasn't easy. Then that ended, but it was the summer and my kids go a million directions all summer and I end up traveling more than I end up staying home. Plus, I keep working full time, and usually put my hours in over fewer days so I can open up lots of days for travel. And I kept training. I also don't drink much and am not a big partier. But, 3 of the last 4 weekends of the summer I did both. While that was psychologically fun, it was still very stressful physically. Add on that my kids started back into school, my youngest started competitive gymnastics (which I started paying for) and we had to find horse back riding lessons; my eldest got a job, but doesn't have a license so I'm the transportation and she started high school, which made for an intense couple weeks. OH YA!! I was still training. Not just training, but also running my brother's highest volume raw block. And then, we opened a new hospital and I had to move work locations to a place that I wasn't necessarily thrilled about. The body cannot tell the difference between physical and psychological stressors. They all pile on.

Cue: health problems. Rapid, excessive weight gain. Edema in my legs that wouldn't subside. Severe mood swings with little provocation. Shortness of breath. Well, that got me a nice little amount of medical testing (the edema and shortness of breath is what really did it I think). Nothing was wrong with me!! My own GP did note my cortisol was on the "upper end of optimal". Started working with a naturopath. The best conclusion we have is that I just let the little things pile on without ever really dealing with them. This is why I say stress is insidious. It slowly accumulates and we almost don't see it happening. Until it levels us.

I started doing something I never thought I would do - I started intentionally relaxing. Call it meditation or relaxation or whatever you want. The important part was that I started taking intentional time to focus on breathing slower and deeper. I know some stuff about the brain and metronomes, so I actually started doing this every morning to an 80bpm metronome (I've since slowed it to 75 because 80 got to be too fast!).

My life is still stressful. I'm a single mom of 2 girls, both busy. I train and compete and love it. I work full time and do a lot of what I'm passionate about (child trauma work). I travel loads back to Alberta. It just means more and more that to maintain this kind of busy lifestyle I need to be diligent with my own stress management. My weight has started coming down. The edema is pretty much gone. The mood swings are basically nil and I haven't noticed extreme shortness of breath recently. I haven't done my metronome breathing in 4 days though, so I think it's time to use this blog as my reminder that slacking on relaxation is only going to bite me in the... ;)