Do You Know what your Stress is Trying to Tell You?




"If it wasn't for his continued bad behaviour, I would've been breathing more easily." K (a friend whose name I won't reveal here) and I sat over glasses of lemonade, giving each other company one unusually warm evening. K's five year old live-in relationship was over and a fight was now underway around who would parent Boomer, their year old Boxer. "We have been fighting incessantly for the last three nights. Wonder when this godawful phase will end. This is turning out to be more complicated than the breakup itself."

Once back home, I kept mulling over the words we had exchanged. I had mostly been quiet, sometimes acknowledging how difficult it must be for K. Knowing T, K's ex-partner, I had a felt-sense he was hell-bent upon giving her a tough time. Because? Oh well, because she had decided to call it quits. Ego tussle. Blame game. Endless misery. They had all of it going against them. 

However, what still didn't sit with me was why K who was otherwise a charming, collected and considerate human being was not able to take a break for herself. The next morning when I woke up, I had a different line of thought. 

K's stress was not rooted in T but in her own. 

How? You ask. It can be explained like this : in a stressful situation, in fight, flight or freeze, if you're constantly basing your responses and reactions in what the other is feeling and/or exhibiting, what you are essentially doing is cutting your own vital life force out. The life force that can offer you a reasonable if not a perfect solution, the vitality that can tell you to take rest, the intuitive pathway that can guide you where you need to go, in the moment. 

K was not able to listen to herself and what she needed. 

And that in no way is abnormal. In a scenario where we are "triggered", we tend to utilise all our creative energy "fighting a war", "proving a point", trying too hard so that the other(s) involved are able to see where we are coming from. However, when you do take some distance from an incident like this, you realise that even you might not be in a position to understand or empathise with where the other(s) are coming from. And in effect, get tied up in crosscurrents of frenetic energy, not being able to hear yourself or another. 

Personally, the expressive arts have allowed me to work through my stress in different ways. 

For one, acknowledging that I am stressed is the first step to relief. 

The next steps can then take the shape of exploration and understanding. 

And here's what they can look like - 

Move - 
How often do we forget that we were born to move? As sedentary lifestyles become more the norm, we forget how the acts of walking, running, playing and dancing actually move our life force around. These acts recharge us, help us let things out and eventually make us move from one state to another. If you're met with stress steadily growing like a fire inside you, stand on your two feet and close your eyes. Breathe and remind yourself that nothing really needs to change. Fact is you are where you are. Before you know, you'll be able to feel the pulse of the stress within. Have some music ready so that you can express through the body what the stress feels like to you. Create shapes, make sounds, play with speeds as you move...the possibilities are endless. 

Write - 
All of us have internal ears, ones that are able to listen without edits. However, over a period of time, as life unfolds around us and forces us to adjust, we might end up losing a good chunk of it. One way I tune into my stress is by taking time out for myself and writing. 

The intention is not to write something interesting or artistic. 

Instead, it is to write whatever is coming to you, in the form it is coming to you. If it is of any comfort, I once began to write (without knowing what exactly I wanted to say about the nervous energy I was experiencing) and it read like this : 

Let the sky part in half, let the ground shake beneath. Let it shiver until the game ends. 

In the face of it, it was just a whole lot of gibberish. But trust me, days later when I sat with that piece written across fifteen minutes, a perspective emerged. It is likely that the same will happen to you. 


Draw - 
It is unfortunate that we are either fed with the belief or absorb it unconsciously that art is not for those who are not genius at it. Nothing perhaps is farther from the truth than this. Art is Life. It is the power of creation and another manifested form of the same energy that helps us breathe. If an unspeakable stress is building up within you, grab hold of some empty paper and some crayons. Give a few quiet minutes to yourself and draw your stress out. If an underlying feeling begins to come out, let that also flow on paper. Give the drawing a name based on how you're feeling or how you'd like to verbalise the drawing if you had a choice. This is a practice you can do time and again. 


It is possible that you find one medium easier than the others. Go with it but also allow yourself to experience the others when you feel less raw or vulnerable. Though I have sequenced the activities in a certain way here, feel free to play around. Stress is a manifestation of a lot of different things - loss, anger, inability to voice opinions, helplessness...The list is a really long one. But remember, in the face of stress, safe expression can give you an outlet like nothing else. 

(Image : A drawing I had once made at a time of stress. I named it "Be There When the Tide Changes")

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Confluence of Self-Awareness and the Expressive Arts

What One Needs to Remember about Therapy

Body-based Writing : What it Does Not Need from You