Thursday, April 16, 2015

How do you deal with stress?

Over the last few weeks, I have had some stress in my life.  Nothing huge, but last night the wife said out loud that "you just can't deal with stress".  I completely disagree with her, while also agreeing with her completely.  Does that make sense? Well, it shouldn't.

Basically, I have decided that for normal things that stress us all out, I do extremely well handling my emotions.  To those who know me, I basically don't have any emotions, so it seems like I can handle stress very well.  Typically, I'll just throw my stress into my workouts and have a killer swim, bike or run.  I won't take it out on anyone, I won't let it affect my everyday life, and everyone will be none the wiser.

Where I become a crazy lunatic is for things that I find just ridiculous and I can't control.  Note that this is very different than normal things that I can't control.  I learned a while not to care about those things.  If I can't control it, then no point in getting stressed over it.  But for things that are plain out ridiculous and they affect me in any way, then I lose my sh#$t.  Like really lose my sh#$t.  This past week while on the phone with a friend who is helping the wife and I with something (and is doing an amazing job), he is explaining to us about something and I don't like what he has to say.  It's not his fault and I never once thought it was, but I threw the phone at the wife and said I can't deal with this, "you do it".  The problem is that my friend didn't know I wasn't mad at him so he felt I was taking it out on him.  I wasn't, but I just couldn't listen to anything anymore.  I didn't care about anything.  I wanted off the phone, I wanted to stop hearing anything, and I wanted things to be different.  I was screaming at the situation but not at that.  If it was possible, then my skin would turn green, my shorts and shirt would get torn off, and I would turn into the real life Hulk.  That's how bad I am.

It usually is caused by something that has to do with money, but there are other triggers involved.  Riley has known to cause a few of my Hulk-ings, the wife definitely has, yet Thunder and work have never (weird).

So when it comes to handling stress, I would say that I do a very good job of handling the normal day to day stress that we all have and is unavoidable.  But when things happen that affect me that I can't control and is just so insanely annoying, I freak out and do a bad job handling emotions.

How do you handle stress?