I have realized that a life without stress is not a life for me.

For better and worse, the past 10 years I have had my share of experience managing stress in a constructive manner.

My key takeaway is: I don’t want to be stress free.

I do, however, want to sleep, remember, focus and smile.

This guide is born from the chaos I like to call home.

It’s a home complete with homeschooling, entrepreneuring, shared paternity, heaps of unfinished projects and a solid chunk of constructive stress.

The stress of dreaming big

I live a life few would want to live … yet one many dream about – at a safe distance 🙂

I am an entrepreneur and our business revenue is the financial foundation of our lives.

Add to that four kids whom we homeschool on a refurbished farm with chickens, geese, cats and dogs, an ambitious kitchen garden (and a cow round the bend) and you get a gist of it.

At times I can’t catch my breath from all the decisions I have to make.

I have had the good fortune, you could say, that the catalyst for my stress was when I decided to live out my dreams. But the stress of realizing big dreams often comes at the price of silent suffering.

Any ‘complaint’ faces an auto response. “If your dreams cause you stress, you should change your dreams”.

Nineteen years ago I mothered my first child. It was a dream come true. But the wave of responsibility that followed overwhelmed me and led to stress induced depression.

Another dream come true was ten years ago, when I quit the safety of a well paid nine to five job to open my own business. Again, decisions poured down. Decisions I didn’t feel apt to make but no one else could.

Then again, five years ago, I felt the symptoms of stress.

I had to reinvent my life in Denmark after spending two years in Asia overseeing production of Europe Magic Wand.

My common stress indicators include:

• Sleep deprivation
  

• Lack of hunger at planned meals, replaced by sugar cravings at all other times of day
  

• Increased effects of my hormonal variation during monthly periods a.k.a. PMS
  

• Difficulty focusing
  

• Forgetfulness
  

• Difficulty focusing
  

• Restlessness and limited patience
  

• Decision paralysis

Add to that: occasional dizziness, lack of sex drive, anxiety attacks, hot flashes.

Advice from the experts: stop being you

Experts have told me again and again that my dreams of a different life were the root cause of my symptoms.

“Institutionalize your kids,” they would say.

“Get a steady nine to five, keep your relationship separate from your work; get some solitaire ‘me-time’,” they would say.

In other words: If you want to avoid stress, live someone else’s life.

I played out the suggested scenario in my thoughts. I could do it, if I had to. The problem wasn’t short term.

But I also knew that IF I succeeded in reducing the stress and getting more energy I would use that energy to get back into it.

I would be homeschooling my kids, working with my husband and enjoying the freedom to plan my working hours as I please in no time.

Back to square one.

I was relieved that I could get rid of my symptoms but devastated at the projected costs.

If I dissolved my life I could relieve my stress – but was that really a solution?

Not to me.

My stress wasn’t induced by a specific trauma; it was an integrated part of my life, the only life I wanted to live.

The consequence of expert advice was a realization that I had to take matters into my own hands.

Accept and adapt

how I integrated my symptoms into my chores

If I couldn’t cure my stress, I had to accept it.

I would integrate my symptoms into my to do list.

When I couldn’t sleep I got up – also in the middle of the night – and folded laundry. Done.

When I was too dizzy or forgetful to finish the task at hand I read an extra chapter aloud to the kids. Done.

And so on.

I was working with the resources available, symptoms or not. Since I had decided that my stress shouldn’t be cured the traditional way I could leave that worry behind.

If my stress couldn’t be fixed I had to accept it as odd size luggage in the life I wanted to call my own. No way around it.

Accepting my stress made me more efficient.

And, as it turns out, worrying was half the stress, or more.

My decision paralysis dissolved. I realized that I got more done when I stopped spending my energy worrying about my condition.

At first it was the minor tasks that evaporated from the to do list but I was just getting started. I had taken control of my life.

Though I still had symptoms of stress I got more done and that started a positive spiral.

I slept better at night, could focus for longer periods at a time and felt less restless.

My symptoms were fading.

Interestingly I hadn’t changed my life in any significant way. Wasn’t working a nine to five, didn’t send my kids to an institution. And no, I dod not carve out ‘me time’ to meditate three times a day either.

It felt as if my stress was a wound that healed itself as soon as I stopped picking at it. The realisation was piecemeal. I couldn’t believe it.

The non-solution – my monkey, my responsibility

When I stopped circling my mind around stress, the stress went away!

I had spent hours, days and countless sleepless nights pondering the right tool, the right diet, meditation practice or fitness ritual that could ‘fix me’.

I thought that if not sooner then at least when the kids left the nest I could find the ‘me-time’ necessary to unwind.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how stressful my thoughts of relieving stress were in themselves.

Looking back at the whole ordeal brings a wave of different emotions. But reflecting on the process has made me realize that taking charge was key to my personal change.

I used to spend a lot of time passing on the messy parts of the life I wanted to live to someone else. At one point I even tried making my wellbeing the responsibility of my husband. But it was my mess.

When I realized my situation was my responsibility, that’s when I could start untangling myself.

I used to get scared and worry when I felt stress prowling the corridors. I was convinced I had to do something to avoid being sucked into the vortex of stress leading to depression.

The more I pondered my escape the more ensnared I got.

When can I meditate? How do I get energy to go for that run? How do I make time to sit down and look at the big picture?

By God I felt lost.

I thought I had to solve all the problems to ‘get back home’. No wonder I was stressed.

Today I can still feel the symptoms of stress coming on. But I read them differently. Instead of opening the gates to the mad dogs of worry I acknowledge that chaotic moments are natural results of the life I want to lead.

And that makes me enjoy them: I chose those stressors.

I don’t have to get rid of the thoughts. And I don’t have to ‘solve the problems’.

From that perspective my body’s stress signals are healthy responses to the challenges I put it through.

All I have to do is stop adding a second layer of worry.

I stay operational and remind myself that my symptoms of stress are like sore muscles after working out. Not all pain needs to be eliminated, sometimes restitution is enough.

Take back control of your thoughts

No-one can stop thinking. Don’t even go there. I find all that talk of ‘no mind’ or being ‘thought free’ is causing more stress than it cures.

Think about it (no pun intended). You want to rid yourself of worrisome thoughts. But what can be more worrisome than trying not to think at all? (If you are not convinced try sitting down for five minutes without a thought on your mind. It won’t work especially if you are stressed!).

In my experience getting rid of thoughts in general is futile and besides the point.

Not all thoughts are bad.

You want to get rid of specific thoughts. The ones keeping you up at night, the ones making you doubt yourself, making you indecisive and anxious.

Why I don’t meditate or: the two tiers of stress

The point is not to stop thinking.

Only to think differently about stressful and worrisome thoughts.

Meditation, exercise, orgasms and dieting have a physical effect on cortisol levels when you succeed. They do. But they are adding to your stressful behaviour when you only try to. Or worse still, ought to.

And let’s face it, when stressed you won’t get around to implementing a new habit. At most you will get around to planning how to get around to it. Which is another way of saying you feel guilty about not doing it.

I am convinced that there are two tiers of stress: the first tier ‘immediate stress’ and the second tier ‘meta-stress’.

Immediate stress is the stress we experience from high pressure in work and social relations or – to argue the historical point – bear attacks.

The high pressure periods release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. The hormones sharpen our senses and help us through the crisis.

Stress hormones reduce hunger and the need for sleep, they focus the mind, give us tunnel vision. Brilliant in immediate danger!

But if the condition lasts too long, or you don’t unwind when the ‘dangerous’ situation has passed, the stress splits into an extra layer, a second tier.

It’s simple.

Stress is your body’s response to the anomaly of immediate danger: tunnel vision, fast decisions, reduced empathy. Our daily lives, however, require the opposite approach: taking care of multiple tasks, carefully weighing pros and cons, making long term decisions and connecting emotionally to the people around us.

Bear attacks are easy to decipher and I doubt our ancestors suffered much from second tier stress. No bears, no problem. But when the dangerous situation comes in the form of emails and meetings in an environment brimming with emails and meetings it’s difficult to distinguish form from content.

What fires together, wires together

If your last do or die situation ment sending and receiving a lot of emails and attending meetings your body will remember that.

If you don’t disconnect and get your hormones in balance and your mind straight the regular emails and meetings will appear similar to the dangerous ones jolting you straight  into stress mode.

The problem is that now you are in a different situation, one not requiring tunnel vision and cut throat decisions. But you will treat it as such. The result being that because you are stressed in a non stressful situation you will underperform (or misbehave which is just as bad). And that’s when meta-stressing starts.

Underperforming simple tasks and straining social relations sets off a series of second tier stress spirals of worry, regret, guilt and shame entangling the already stressed body in self feeding stress loops.

That’s about the time you’ll start losing sleep and experiencing a whole range of other symptoms.

It is also about the time when your typical blog post tells you to sit down and meditate. Or start exercising. Or structure your life by building elaborate task management systems.

It all sounds like great ideas to a stressed mind panting for quick solutions, so you’ll give it a go.

And you will fail.

And you will feel bad, and feed your stress monster with more shame, more guilt and fear of failure, making it stronger by the hour.

It will put strain on your relationship. You might find yourself thinking “if only s/he would lighten up, give me some space, be more understanding, help out a little!”

Or, if you are single, feed the stress-solution-dream that you could meet someone, fall in love. Love makes everything easier, right? Well, there’s a reason fairytales end with the first kiss and a ‘happily ever after’.

It’s a trap.

Relationships are stressful, at times. Life is stressful, at times.

Don’t stress about getting rid of stress

If you try to relieve stress by blaming others or adding new elements to your life the reverse will happen.

‘External solutions’ will shift your focus from the real problem: your stressed mind.

It came to me in a flash, a light bulb moment, in the car back from a session of ‘expert advice’ on how I should ditch my dreams.

My dreams are not the problem!

My worrying about getting rid of stress is stressing the shit out of me!

“I don’t need meditation!” I burst at the rearview mirror.

I still don’t need meditation or more discipline or advanced schedules.

That would be setting myself up for failure. I need the opposite.

I need simple moments of focus. I need tasks that are complicated enough to merit my attention but so simple that they don’t need cognitive power. And those moments are abundant when you look around.

Here’s a list of my de-stressing activities:

The orgasm point might surprise some but it really shouldn’t. Ancient praxis and recent scientific tests indicate that our bodies have an anti-panic button.

Yes, orgasms are scientifically proven stress killers! They relieve stress on (at least) two accounts.

First off, every orgasm releases the hormone oxytocin (a.k.a. the cuddle hormone) and oxytocin actively lowers the level of cortisol in your body.

Secondly, orgasms require a focus on the ‘task at hand’ and usually result in a moment of bliss.

Unfortunately one of the effects of stress is a drop in libido: how can you think about sex when you are running or hiding from bears (or emails)?? That’s actually part of the story of why I started Europe Magic Wand.

If you want tips on how to ease into a healthy orgasm routine I made this quick guide.

There are also other small steps you can take to ease the stress of your mind.

Simple modifications can have big impact

‘Experts’ recommended a quiet walk in the woods without distractions. But to me a walk in the woods alone meant reinforcing the murmurs of worry by the echo of solitude. Not a good idea.

Instead I would bring the kids.

When I bring the kids I don’t have time to worry about anything other than the immediate risks and giggles.

The urgency of the situation creates a shift in perspective. In that fissure I win a distance from my worries and can identify them as ‘other than me’. I can observe them when they appear, observe and diverge. Not enter into them.

When you are less stressed you make better decisions

Breaking the circle of second tier stress provides space for taking a look at the primary stressors in your life. Sometimes they are real and should be dealt with.

Moronic bosses exist. Unhealthy workloads are real, so are poisonous relationships.

My point is not that you are to blame for the malaise of the world.

My point is that you can’t be sure which is which until you gain perspective.

In my case the problem was not work, not my decision to homeschool, and definitely not my partner.

But I was in too deep to realize that my efforts to fix stress was counterproductive.

So I encourage you to find those cracks in thought that allow reflexion. Register those second tier stressors dressed up as solutions and ask yourself if they are making things better or worse.

Spot the bear

So, stress it not the problem.

Stress might be an indicator that you are taking chances, fighting battles even following your dreams!

The problems begin when you don’t disconnect the bear from the forest so to speak. Then but a small flux of shadows sets off panic.

Actually, I have a task for you.

Send me examples of the stressful stress management systems you or others try to set up for you. They hide in plain sight.

I still find them trying to worm their way into my everyday life. I hear them through ‘friends’ on social media, self proclaimed gurus and trained psychologists alike.

The trick is: If you can send them, you can see them – and that is the first step to letting them go.