Happy New Year!
Que all of the memes, signs, quotes and posts about how negative stress is. You know “NO stress 2022”
I like anybody else would have easily cosigned the sentiment until sitting in my yoga session and meditating on stress, taking a moment to add some critical thinking to the subject. It’s crazy because at about the 5-minute mark I was like nope, no good but by about 10 minutes I was coming up with all of the ways stress had actually helped me out. The most shining example I have of this is my lupus diagnoses.
After multiple bouts of hyper-pigmentation, hypopigmentation, and multiple misdiagnoses by a few doctors I was finally diagnosed with discoid lupus. The diagnoses wasn’t a shock after all, the other bad diagnoses had spent me on any hope of finding the right one. To add to the drama, I had been told that the latest outbreak was either going to be skin cancer or lupus, with that I was routing for team lupus. This biopsy came back conclusive! Team Lupus it is!
Fast forwarding to what I call decision day, I had to make a decision as to whether I would start a never-ending journey of medications, medical interventions and trial drugs because there were no cures or medication for lupus just a series of meds to help with it’s affects and Plaquenil which is made for malaria and has plenty of side effects. The other option was to listen to my body, listen and understand my stress, stressors and make daily sometimes hourly choices about what my stress experience was, an indicator for change or adaptation. I would need to learn that stress in itself wasn’t bad. My chosen response to or lack of response to the stress is what would have my body to reference it as bad. I understood this and gladly accepted the assignment. This was about re-educating myself and making well informed choices. I made the choice of minimal medication, only one in fact to help control the high blood pressure and a life that meant choosing the to do the best for my mind and body and that didn’t necessarily mean the easiest but sometimes waiting for the stress to signal me.
Stress is so necessary. Without stress we miss key signals that help us make critical changes. Without stress we don’t adapt as needed and we don't change!
What has your stress taught you? How do you view stress? Leave me a comment down below. I'm always learning and appreciate the exchange of info!
This is a Life moment.