5 to Fall-Let’s talk about stress baby, let’s talk about you and me, let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that stress me, let’s aboooout stress, let’s talk about stress!

Okay, so we won’t really talk about all the things that stress me, but let’s talk about stress in relation to this week’s topic…family. If you were born, you are guaranteed to have some sort of stress due to people at some point in time. Those same people that had you, probably suffered stress before you came along, and after you were born. It is ridiculous to think there would, could, or should never be stress when you are a live human.

While human stress is a given, family stress is a given too. We want to please our parents or guardians, we want to defy them, we want to challenge what they lay out as normal and acceptable, and we damn sure want to be heard and seen when we do it. Ah, but what we really want to be taught? Mutual respect, unconditional love, acceptance of ourselves and others.

When there is an absence of mutual respect, love and acceptance, it sets everyone up for a ton of stress, discord, disdain, and absence. A ton of stress. TON. And when we encounter that stress due to a lack of the afore mentioned things, we can either walk away and go silent, or we can stay, endure, decrease our happiness become pawns of others, suffer endlessly and unreasonably, become abusive, or we may even cause constant strife for others as a way to release those feelings ourselves. Sounds pretty dumb to me.

So, what should we do when family causes us such emotional distress or long term stress? We can try to address it for clarification, comprehension and change, we can endure it knowing that it may never change, or we can chart our own course, after all, no one owns us, and we do not fulfill another’s identity. If you are not indebted to a family member for real, you are free to move on or move about YOUR business.

How do we combat this stress, whether we stay and grow, endure or go? Talking to a qualified professional is a great start, they can help you with coping mechanisms, for all scenarios! Exercise is a great way to relieve the tension, get those endorphins going for release on a cellular level. Rest is a good thing, stress is exhausting! Proper hydration and nutrition plays a part, in the fact that it keeps us nourished and healthy, stress does a hell of a number on your immune system. And one that I personally like and need, creation. When we create, it provides joy, release, and the importance of completion.

Family stress so often leaves us feeling unfulfilled, incomplete, sad/upset, unloved. If people would only strive to work through things, to meet others where they need to be met and not where one demands it, people would probably have a lot less problems and fall out. Again, mutual respect, unconditional love, and acceptance. Radical concepts, difficult tasks, unrealistic expectations…not at all, just hard for those that have no clue.

Drop me a line, let me know if you have gotten anything from this past week’s talks. I know I sure have. I was managing my stress well, after working so hard to overcome where it had gotten me, and now I am experiencing physical set backs because of it. Time to cut some more things from life!