Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

Do you ever feel like you’ll never be able to catch up? Like, you’re in that dream where you can’t possibly run faster, but you can’t run fast enough?

I think we all experience that sort of thing from time to time. Some people live for that kind of existence… if they’re not struggling to keep up, they think there must be something wrong. Others get overstressed the minute they schedule one meeting to start exactly when the previous meeting is set to end.

Gee… we all react differently to stress. Not exactly a scoop of a story, from my point of view. How we react to stress tells us exactly nothing.

Honestly, we do all react differently to stress, including the fact that some of us don’t even recognize it as stress at all. I think just like diabetes, we all react to stress differently, and we all manage it differently.

And that’s okay. If we had one exact strategy for dealing with the stressors in our lives, you know we’d all be working on it. But most people handle stress with a mixture of dread and resolve, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. There’s no use complaining about the things that get us worked up.

But… and this is a big But… sometimes the stress is too much. Sometimes we can’t just work our way through it. If that’s the case, we need help and we should be okay with seeking it.

Likewise, when someone else is having a tough time of it, instead of just complaining more, instead of judging someone experiencing difficulty dealing with their stress, we should be actively supporting that someone. Helping them feel not alone, maybe reminding them that you’ve been there too, and giving them the space they need to feel like they’re not being manipulated by life like they’re a little marionette.

In the end, it’s not a perfect appointment book or a perfectly clean home or anything else that makes us feel good as much as people do. Let’s remember to be kind this holiday season, but also be supportive. You and your friends and loved ones are well worth the effort.