Brisk walk might work, although it's too hot out for me to enjoy the weather.
I know what you mean, the heat just adds to my stress. Meditation in a dark quiet cool room might be the answer. But, around here, much of the time, nobody will leave you alone long enough to get into a nice meditative state.
I've never been good at meditation. I suppose if I had a week to spend, I could move everything out of my room, strip the wallpaper, and paint it a color I found soothing. (Say, very high-saturation dark dark blue.) That would also reduce the tendency for other people to come and talk to me, huh.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I've never been good at meditation. I suppose if I had a week to spend, I could move everything out of my room, strip the wallpaper, and paint it a color I found soothing. (Say, very high-saturation dark dark blue.) That would also reduce the tendency for other people to come and talk to me, huh.
That color would be very soothing to me. So, if I were living in your household, I'd probably try to steal the room.
I've never been good at meditation. I suppose if I had a week to spend, I could move everything out of my room, strip the wallpaper, and paint it a color I found soothing. (Say, very high-saturation dark dark blue.) That would also reduce the tendency for other people to come and talk to me, huh.
That color would be very soothing to me. So, if I were living in your household, I'd probably try to steal the room.
When I was a kid, I got my parents to let me paint my room. I went with dark blue high-saturation walls and ceiling, and not quite as dark red high-saturation trim.
No one but me could stand it. I loved it.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I've never been good at meditation. I suppose if I had a week to spend, I could move everything out of my room, strip the wallpaper, and paint it a color I found soothing. (Say, very high-saturation dark dark blue.) That would also reduce the tendency for other people to come and talk to me, huh.
That color would be very soothing to me. So, if I were living in your household, I'd probably try to steal the room.
When I was a kid, I got my parents to let me paint my room. I went with dark blue high-saturation walls and ceiling, and not quite as dark red high-saturation trim.
No one but me could stand it. I loved it.
I love deep dark colors and jewel tones. Black happens to be my favorite color. I would be perfectly content in a black room with deep red highlights. I think that would send most people running for the hills.
Bright, loud colors literally hurt my eyes and ratchet up my tension level. Pastels are just icky to me and have negative effects on my mood.
But get me around rich darks, jewel tones and deep summer forest colors and....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I painted my basement midnight shift sleeping room a dark purple. It was so dark in the room, even a pinhole in the shades would light the room up so much I couldn't sleep.
That said, the idea of redecorating or remodeling just adds to my stress too.
I don't like the idea of doing the work, I love the idea of the result.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Eat some watermelon or peaches or your favorite fruit, and read some encyclopedia entries. You have to spend time to unwind if you need to focus eventually, so do something relaxing, and yet something that won't draw your attention back to the stress. lie down for 15 minutes with a cool damp washcloth over your eyes.
Don't stress about needing something special to destress yourself. And yes, it's too warm to walk outside, so become flexible, and find a number of stress relieving activities to use. Some folk need exercise, some folk just find concentrating on relaxing is helpful.
I use breathing exercises, yoga (the "sponge" position), and the distracted reading bit myself.
Well, one thing I didn't anticipate; I think I uncovered an underlying problem that has been plaguing my work, and that of most of my coworkers, for months. And found what is probably a very simple (think two lines of typing) resolution.
So now I am happily letting a computer churn away, and I will go to my meetings tomorrow and then do stuff other than work, because I'm about 6 hours over today, but I feel pretty good about the belief that I may actually have FIXED one of the major things that has been erratically keeping me from getting stuff done for some time now.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Exercise, if it's hot I swim (or muck about) if it's not too hot I walk.
Early morning walks are good because it's cool enough and the early morning light is a natural mood lifter. Plus all the nocturnal animals are all sleepy looking and cute.
__________________
Ishmaeline of Domesticity drinker of smurf tears
Last edited by Qingdai; 07-24-2008 at 06:36 AM.
Reason: aannnd I never noticed page two. Glad things are better.
My first q was - calm down from what? - but you explained it as formless stress, too much workload. And even though you've fixed a root cause (yay!) could it be stress that might come back?
It could be well worthwhile findings ways of calming down while you're not feeling too bad.
All the recommendations of exercise, turning to nature, pets, music, lolcats, etc are good. But if you're like me you have stressed times where the idea of exercise is ridiculous - who's got time for that? - and nature and music and stuff are repugnant. None of them are quick and easy, guaranteed solutions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs
I've never been good at meditation.
Might be worth learning, or more usefully, experimenting. I did a Transcendental Meditation course waaaaay back, and it not only didn't work for me, but those guys are clearly cultists. But something obviously sank in, and combined with ideas of detachment (probably from Buddhist readings), it eventually came together. So ... I calm down by meditating, most importantly by detaching myself from the stressors, the people, the whatever ... often just detaching myself (how I feel) from myself (what I feel).
Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs
Too much workload, which I could maybe deal with (I'm pretty good at just workload), but the real killer is that everything I've tried to do in the last month or so has SOMEHOW gone horribly wrong. I usually eventually recover, but it's a pain.
On a separate note, that sounds a bit like a "cognitive distortion" as described in cognitive behavioural therapy. CBT has some value - it's not perfect and as with all treatments, proponents promise too much, but it's got some good things in it. I found The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns useful - if you can get past the sickening title and the sickeningly smiley author photo on the cover.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs
I think I just want to spend a day or two doing things where I don't get balked unexpectedly. Being interrupted or stopped by unrelated things is very stressful to me.
JoeP, I think you're probably right about the cognitive distortion. That said, I also think I had a run of spectacularly bad luck on a number of unrelated fronts.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
So there's this handout hanging on my wall, obtained during a "Managing Stress" meeting held here at The Kumpnee. It's titled, A Ten Second Stress Reliever.
If anyone tries this, please let me know whether it helps. I could never get past step 1 because it made me cry and feel worse.
The breathing exercises I mentioned on page 1 are good because you can do it quickly and almost anywhere. And it brings your heart rate down and gets the body working properly. It doesn't take meditation, although that is something to learn to do because it is calming and is a stress reliever, its not something you can do while working. It is not good for you body to be stressed, so anything you can do to relieve yourself from it is good for you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dingfod
Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs
Brisk walk might work, although it's too hot out for me to enjoy the weather.
I know what you mean, the heat just adds to my stress. Meditation in a dark quiet cool room might be the answer. But, around here, much of the time, nobody will leave you alone long enough to get into a nice meditative state.
The bathroom. People tend to leave you alone in there.
Re: How do you calm down?
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