Big bad B-words have been causing me stress all week. Solution: get out and go for a run
Ever have one of those weeks where everything seems to go to hell. One bad thing happens and it produces a snowball effect of more bad news and more bad things happening. For me all the ‘bad’ things that have taken place this past week even uncannily started with the letter B. I’m beginning to detest B-words.
Bills. That’s the first thing keeping me awake at night. They come every month—costly and predictable—but manageable if you have a budget, which I don’t. Problem is I don’t even make enough bucks to pay my bills.
But it’s the unexpected bills that really throw me to the wayside and in to debt. That coupled with the fact I like to buy beautiful things. But buying has been bad to me too. Take the car I bought last August. I was working at getting my N license but failed my road test.
Now my car has been parked in the garage and needs a new battery. I’ve got another road test a month away and if I don’t pass it’s bye-bye car. I’m pretty stressed about it but I can’t back out now. I imagine the freedom being able to bomb down the road in my car would bring me and my son.
It’s my fault the battery died. I didn’t start the car for months when people told me to—pretending if I didn’t own a car I wouldn’t have to face the big bucks it was costing me. Sometimes avoidance seems like the best, but not ideal way, to deal with stress.
And then yesterday I got more bad transportation news. My van pool to work is ceasing by the end of the month which means I might be busing everyday. That’s about two to three hours of commuting time to and from work as opposed to 40 minutes in the van pool. This ultimately translates into more time at work and less time to be a mom to my son. The idea of busing just adds to my stress load. I feel like Octomom, except instead of eight babies, I have eight arms juggling eight balls.
Being a single mom is hard for sure and dealing with a constant tsunami of life stresses can definitely be tough to handle on a continual basis. This brings me to the last big bad B-word bugging the crap out of me and causing unnecessary stress—backaches.
“Your body is holding in the stress and that’s why you’re having chronic back pain,” my mom said to me this morning.
Our bodies actually store and hold stress in to the point it takes a toll on our physical health? Absolutely! Apparently it’s called stress overload. Here’s how one website I came across defined stress overload.
“Stress becomes a negative, destructive factor in life when it goes beyond the individual’s ability to adapt to it. When the point of stress overload is reached, instead of the stress being released from the body, it becomes stored as “body stress”. As we differ in our emotional and physical makeup, we have varying degrees of susceptibility to stress overload.”
Stress not released from the body gets locked in our body as tension. Other symptoms of stress overload: tiredness, lacking energy, and enthusiasm for life, headaches, indigestion and backaches.
The cure for this is a procedure called Body Stress Release (BSR). Body stress release is the practice of assisting the body to release stored tension, thereby allowing it to maximize its in-built ability to maintain and heal itself.
Here are a couple of links with more information:
http://www.bodystressrelease.co.uk/media_talkback-magazine.htm
http://www.bodystressrelease.co.za/bsr_whatis.htm
I never really connected my recent bouts of back pain to stress but it makes perfect sense. This weekend when I went out for a 9km run, I didn’t just run…I ran hard and aggressive like a mad woman. It felt so bloody good. Now I think it’s because I had so much tension stored up in my body I needed to have an exercise exorcism to expel it. And in fact, my back pain worsens after long periods of sitting at my desk. When I start moving around it’s not as bad.
It’s why I love running so much. On a long distance run you can clear your mind and leave your worries and problems behind. Stress seems to fly out the window as the miles fly by. Shorter and faster runs are great for burning off pent up anger, aggression and stress overload. And let’s face it, running like a mad woman makes me feel strong and invincible. I easily forget about my nagging aches and pains and life’s stresses.
