Why do I have such a hard time sleeping? Why am I making silly mistakes managing my life? (spending too much, drinking too much, eating too many donuts, watching too much television) I am, as many seem now to be, denying the stress I am feeling and wondering why we are screwing up. What doesn’t help is that all around, my world still looks ok. Portland is burned out, partly, in the downtown area, in a few blocks… but Leamington is not on fire. Most of us still have a job, most of us have enough to eat, a safe place to live, most of us don’t have Covid, most of us live, if not far away, at least a bit of distance from the bloody United States. There is a temptation to disbelieve we are feeling stress. “Why should I be feeling stress, nothing is that far out of the ordinary, I can still go to Wal-mart and Costco.”
Because our local, pie – wedge of the world seems to be a nice, rich cherry it is easy to devalue nervousness. It is easy to blame the stiff pillow for the difficulty in falling asleep. “It couldn’t be stress, gotta be something else wrong.” “I couldn’t be stressed, this is a piece of cake compared to life under Pharaoh.” The kind of stress we are living is a real thing. The unquiet, the tense feeling should not be dismissed. No, our lIfe is not ‘the way it was during the war’ or ‘the depression’ or at any other time in history. It is a unique time. The stress I am feeling, denying is unique. It is still stress. I/we am/are under pressure. It’s a bit of foolishness to compare pressures, evaluate stress levels and find any one greater than another. That just complicates us. To compare the past to the present isn’t useful. So many other factors were/are involved in each situation. Yeah, it was worse under Pharaoh… Who are we to complain? Are we a bunch of priveleged bums or are we completely worthy folks who had a good thing going that was trashed in so many ways? Yeah.
The ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ or ‘cheerio-stiff upper lip’ attitude can be so destructive because it is a judgement call. Keeping a stiff upper lip still allows the bottom one to tremble unimpeded, though. I think denial might be the most serious of negative thinking patterns. How can we climb out of a pit if we can’t accept there is a ladder necessary? How can you deal with stress if you don’t choose to see it? Denial of your emotions devalues and causes you to question your being. It wastes your time and redirects the anguish, rotting the rungs off your confidence ladder. Without a ladder, ya can’t climb out! It is a vicious pit we deniers are in. “I can’t be feeling real stress. Grandma wouldn’t have complained about this state of affairs.” “It would be petty of me to be feeling uncomfortable and to want something better.”
Is my/our worry such an inconsequential thing? Nah. I don’t think so. It is real, it is serious enough. Left alone to grow, it pops up in the most interesting ways. The woman shouting about having to wear a mask in the store? Stress. The pedestrian who steps out boldly into the street? Stress. The driver who imagines himself running over said pedestrian? The driver who sits writing about the said running over of said pedestrian, gleefully? Stress. Thing is: There isn’t time in living to feel stress and not deal with it. The denied urge to buy an ice cream because you are stressed and need some immediate comfort escalates to the pedestrian’s imagined detriment. There isn’t time to waste dismissing our discomfort as unworthy somehow and judging ourselves for minor slip-ups that let pressure escape. Yeah. I am feeling stress. If I have a donut with my tea and then another one just because? Can’t I allow that? Which is better: If I smile satisfactorily at the thought of crushing a rude pedestrian under all four tires and perhaps reversing to ensure the kill? or If I just go have the donut or ice cream, sit at the marina and waste the day chilling the h out? seems an easy choice.
Robert On The Air 