How do you get yourself to relax as lifestyle and perspective change?
July 30, 2019 10:37 PM Subscribe
I know all the usual advice on how to relax - take a bath, do yoga, meditate, etc. But I need advice on the macro level. My normal state of being includes being under some stress/anxiety pretty much always, enough that I don't even notice it anymore really, and we learned it is likely affecting our fertility so I'm trying to figure out how to shift that baseline to become more calm as the norm. (I've been wanting that for years, anyway!)
There's some lifestyle choices I’m already working on (more exercise, eat better, more sleep) but when I've tried to work on this in the past I've found that making these types of changes seems to CREATE stress because there's so much more to pay attention to and manage. I also don't know what it will even really feel like not to be under stress? I definitely haven't been able to stick with healthy changes for the long term in the past but I really want and need to now, and I'd be grateful for your advice on how to really do it, for real and permanently. FWIW I'm definitely a recovering perfectionist!
There's some lifestyle choices I’m already working on (more exercise, eat better, more sleep) but when I've tried to work on this in the past I've found that making these types of changes seems to CREATE stress because there's so much more to pay attention to and manage. I also don't know what it will even really feel like not to be under stress? I definitely haven't been able to stick with healthy changes for the long term in the past but I really want and need to now, and I'd be grateful for your advice on how to really do it, for real and permanently. FWIW I'm definitely a recovering perfectionist!
For me meditating for a half hour every morning without fail makes a huge difference in my overall life experience. It’s a cumulative effect though — just doing it when I feel stressed helps at that moment but doesn’t give the overall effect.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:18 PM on July 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:18 PM on July 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
One thing that adds stress for me is being late. So I try to get ready and be on the early side of things.
The noise of commercials stresses me out. I always turn off commercials or even DJs talking when listening to the radio (or tv)
It sounds lame, but DECIDE not to be stressed - I tell myself things like 'i'm going to walk through this day as the most peaceful, even-tempered being I can be' - or 'no matter what.. i'm going to keep my cool' (sometimes it even works! haha)
keep news consumption to a minimum... esp. local news.
in managing big changes - it has helped me to think of new activities as slowly building a mandala.. stitch by stitch over time... it will grow into a strong habit, or yield a beautiful result if i stick with it. that puts the pressure off and creates some mental 'space.'
posted by mrmarley at 11:28 PM on July 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
The noise of commercials stresses me out. I always turn off commercials or even DJs talking when listening to the radio (or tv)
It sounds lame, but DECIDE not to be stressed - I tell myself things like 'i'm going to walk through this day as the most peaceful, even-tempered being I can be' - or 'no matter what.. i'm going to keep my cool' (sometimes it even works! haha)
keep news consumption to a minimum... esp. local news.
in managing big changes - it has helped me to think of new activities as slowly building a mandala.. stitch by stitch over time... it will grow into a strong habit, or yield a beautiful result if i stick with it. that puts the pressure off and creates some mental 'space.'
posted by mrmarley at 11:28 PM on July 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
For me, investing in meaningful close relationships with other people helps you see what you do wrong. Just talking to somebody and getting your worries off your chest is a great relief on its own right. I also personally find that swimming or pursuing a hobby like pottery has a soothing effect on me in times of medium stress level but then again they're by no means panacea. At the end of the day, I just accept that I'm stressed, and at least I stop worrying about it, breaking the vicious circle. After all remember that some people thrive under stress, just try to use it in a constructive way, doing things instead of navel gazing.
posted by raft at 1:30 AM on July 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by raft at 1:30 AM on July 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I started seeing a therapist for some anxiety stuff after my second kid was born (not specifically about the kids, more general). Just seeing the therapist helps, and two other things that have really helped are taking a short walk by myself every day, and doing a mindfulness meditation (I use Headspace) as often as I can. I do it like 3 times a week right now but I'd like to work on doing it daily. I know what you mean about feeling like "great, now I have to manage all this healthy relaxing stuff as well and I'm just more stressed" but the key with both of those has been to build up the habit and framework even when I don't feel like I need it in the moment. It's like strengthening a muscle for being able to deal with anxiety better. And I find it helps to "let go" of all the vague lifestyle stuff (like thinking I need to start eating better or start getting more sleep) and just focus on 1-2 concrete things I can do regularly. (I mean I still want to eat and sleep well, I just try not to stress about those as goals).
posted by cpatterson at 2:37 AM on July 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by cpatterson at 2:37 AM on July 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I've been trying to do this. It used to be such a chore to me all the things I had to do to keep on top of my mental health and to be able to relax even a bit. I need to exercise a lot to stay on an even keel and sometimes even just that gets, or would get, me down - before anything else I had on my plate that week.
What I've done differently for the past 4 months and I'm definitely sticking with it is to write three pages first thing in the morning (morning pages). It takes under half an hour and something about actually listening to myself has really chilled me out a bit on a baseline level. Yes I did have to suck up getting up half an hour earlier which I thought might push me over the edge, but the results are actually worth it.
posted by london explorer girl at 2:59 AM on July 31, 2019 [2 favorites]
What I've done differently for the past 4 months and I'm definitely sticking with it is to write three pages first thing in the morning (morning pages). It takes under half an hour and something about actually listening to myself has really chilled me out a bit on a baseline level. Yes I did have to suck up getting up half an hour earlier which I thought might push me over the edge, but the results are actually worth it.
posted by london explorer girl at 2:59 AM on July 31, 2019 [2 favorites]
The best way to reduce your stress about being stressed is to take your practitioners advice on reducing stress and throw it out the clinical window.
I mean, stress may be contributing to delayed ovulation but not directly to lack of conception. According to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, "Even though infertility is very stressful, there isn't any proof that stress causes infertility." This is good because so much of the ART is focused on telling you the various ways in which this is all your fault. Prime example: you can't get pregnant, get stressed about it, see a fertility specialist, and are told it's probably your fault because you're stressed. Well, duh.
It sounds link your practitioner did not do a good job of explaining the role that lifestyle plays in fertility. Smoking, regular drinking, obesity or being underweight, too much cardio, and seafood high in mercury are proven to decrease fertility. Lack of sleep is correlated to difficulty TTC only because there is clinical evidence it leads to obesity. If you are not overweight, you don't need to stress out about your sleep habits. Same with exercise -- there is no clinical evidence exercise improves fertility, it just decreases obesity which in turn improves fertility.
If you do not have these issues, then stress is literally not your problem, so you don't need to be stressed about them. At the same time, if you are stressed about them, it isn't going to make any difference so... don't worry about being worried, I guess?
Here are the SART clinical guidelines on optimizing non-intervention conception, and here is a decent article summarizing the standard advice and why it is standard -- mostly not for the reasons we often believe.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:48 AM on July 31, 2019 [6 favorites]
I mean, stress may be contributing to delayed ovulation but not directly to lack of conception. According to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, "Even though infertility is very stressful, there isn't any proof that stress causes infertility." This is good because so much of the ART is focused on telling you the various ways in which this is all your fault. Prime example: you can't get pregnant, get stressed about it, see a fertility specialist, and are told it's probably your fault because you're stressed. Well, duh.
It sounds link your practitioner did not do a good job of explaining the role that lifestyle plays in fertility. Smoking, regular drinking, obesity or being underweight, too much cardio, and seafood high in mercury are proven to decrease fertility. Lack of sleep is correlated to difficulty TTC only because there is clinical evidence it leads to obesity. If you are not overweight, you don't need to stress out about your sleep habits. Same with exercise -- there is no clinical evidence exercise improves fertility, it just decreases obesity which in turn improves fertility.
If you do not have these issues, then stress is literally not your problem, so you don't need to be stressed about them. At the same time, if you are stressed about them, it isn't going to make any difference so... don't worry about being worried, I guess?
Here are the SART clinical guidelines on optimizing non-intervention conception, and here is a decent article summarizing the standard advice and why it is standard -- mostly not for the reasons we often believe.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:48 AM on July 31, 2019 [6 favorites]
I don't generally perceive of myself as particularly anxious nowadays, but my mom certainly is, and I guess that sometimes rubs off on me more than I'm initially aware of. When I got my dream job right after college I had to quit after a year, nominally to give something else a shot ( things I initially thought would be reconcilable weren't, so the opportunity costs of staying would have been higher than expected), but largely also for mental health reasons.
The experience triggered some soul-searching. I realized how much I had been driven by fear of failure up to that point, that it made all my ambitions empty and that I couldn't go on like that. Fear is a powerful fuel, but not very sustainable. It will get you going, alright, but it will eat you up before you get far. My past self had liked to be clever about "the productive level of fear" - just the right amount to spur you into action, not quite so much to paralyse you. I used to think I had the perfect dosis figured out and credited it for my accomplishments. Now I found that had to stop using fear completely. Even if that meant not getting up to much for a lot longer than comfortable.
There's a saying "Fail to plan, prepare to fail". So that's what I did - I planned to fail, or at least permitted myself to half-ass things. I wouldn't be on top of my game for a while, and I couldn't just bully myself into getting there any more, so I had to make peace with the fact that things would either get half-assed or not get done at all. Failures can be great teachers - one of the neat things they teach you is that you can survive them. Nothing else will, really, and it's a very useful thing to learn.
My mom needs to be prepared for every eventuality. She can't have peace of mind until she's made sure she has taken all possible precautions against all possible things that could go wrong. It works well enough for things she has as a reasonable amount of control over, but there will always be situations, when there's really not that much you can do. You'll have to cross that bridge when you come to it. And there's no use at all in wasting any energy on worrying until you get there.
"Some people can get away with being ill prepared, but for that you need strong nerves. You need a cool head in a crisis", my mum often said, "but that's not us. We'll better be prepared." I still think there's some wisdom to that, but I also know now it's not entirely accurate. Because I have been ill-prepared, and I have had to improvise and scramble, and things worked out - more or less, often admittedly less, bust still. My nerves are not that bad actually. I have kept a cool head in a crisis. And I'm a lot more mellow since I learnt that about myself.
posted by sohalt at 6:04 AM on July 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
The experience triggered some soul-searching. I realized how much I had been driven by fear of failure up to that point, that it made all my ambitions empty and that I couldn't go on like that. Fear is a powerful fuel, but not very sustainable. It will get you going, alright, but it will eat you up before you get far. My past self had liked to be clever about "the productive level of fear" - just the right amount to spur you into action, not quite so much to paralyse you. I used to think I had the perfect dosis figured out and credited it for my accomplishments. Now I found that had to stop using fear completely. Even if that meant not getting up to much for a lot longer than comfortable.
There's a saying "Fail to plan, prepare to fail". So that's what I did - I planned to fail, or at least permitted myself to half-ass things. I wouldn't be on top of my game for a while, and I couldn't just bully myself into getting there any more, so I had to make peace with the fact that things would either get half-assed or not get done at all. Failures can be great teachers - one of the neat things they teach you is that you can survive them. Nothing else will, really, and it's a very useful thing to learn.
My mom needs to be prepared for every eventuality. She can't have peace of mind until she's made sure she has taken all possible precautions against all possible things that could go wrong. It works well enough for things she has as a reasonable amount of control over, but there will always be situations, when there's really not that much you can do. You'll have to cross that bridge when you come to it. And there's no use at all in wasting any energy on worrying until you get there.
"Some people can get away with being ill prepared, but for that you need strong nerves. You need a cool head in a crisis", my mum often said, "but that's not us. We'll better be prepared." I still think there's some wisdom to that, but I also know now it's not entirely accurate. Because I have been ill-prepared, and I have had to improvise and scramble, and things worked out - more or less, often admittedly less, bust still. My nerves are not that bad actually. I have kept a cool head in a crisis. And I'm a lot more mellow since I learnt that about myself.
posted by sohalt at 6:04 AM on July 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
I know what you mean about changes creating more stress rather than less. I used to be an always-stressed person and in my journey to less stress I found a few things. First, stress was part of my identity. I thought I was successful at work because I kept a baseline level of anxiety. I loved filling my life with menial to-dos so I would feel busy and productive. Acknowledging and letting go of that part of my identity helped.
Second, learning to be present was a big one. Instead of putting a lot of pressure on yourself to eat healthy, just try to be present when you eat. Don't bring your phone to the table. Look your partner in the eye. Really taste the food. Breathe. Don't think about what you have to do after the meal. For exercise, maybe it is easier to be present during a walk outside than a gym session - preferably, one with no screen and no headphones.
On the really macro level - breathe. If you feel the stress, make sure to breathe OUT all the way. If you aren't catching the stressful moments, you could set a timer for yourself every couple of hours to check in, just for a day or two.
posted by beyond_pink at 6:28 AM on July 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
Second, learning to be present was a big one. Instead of putting a lot of pressure on yourself to eat healthy, just try to be present when you eat. Don't bring your phone to the table. Look your partner in the eye. Really taste the food. Breathe. Don't think about what you have to do after the meal. For exercise, maybe it is easier to be present during a walk outside than a gym session - preferably, one with no screen and no headphones.
On the really macro level - breathe. If you feel the stress, make sure to breathe OUT all the way. If you aren't catching the stressful moments, you could set a timer for yourself every couple of hours to check in, just for a day or two.
posted by beyond_pink at 6:28 AM on July 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
Self-improvement isn't relaxing. It doesn't reduce stress. So maybe hold off on the self-improvement. You don't have to eat, sleep, exercise, etc perfectly right now.
What do you actually find refreshing? Prioritize those things. That will probably mean putting at least one of your other projects/activities/goals on the back burner for now.
Some things that you find rejuvenating might actually be good for you in that "eat your vegetables" kind of way. Maybe you like taking a dip in the pool or gardening or cooking. If you genuinely find something refreshing then you should do it! But there will be other things that are really refreshing to you that aren't particularly "productive," too, and they are just as valid to make time for. Read novels, get coffee with friends, shop, do hideous crafts, go to the movies, compete in a fantasy league, play dominoes, whatever floats your boat. It really doesn't have to be wholesome or healthy or productive, it just has to leave you feeling refreshed and happy when you spend an hour or two (or more) on it.
One thing that I would 100% make time for is socializing. Relationships are really important to well-being on a fundamental level. When in doubt, spend time with friends and loved ones, sincerely.
And I mean, the old fashioned cure is a long vacation. So maybe consider taking some time off and getting away from it all, too, if that's at all feasible. Even on your own, if your partner or friends can't take the time off.
posted by rue72 at 7:43 AM on July 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
What do you actually find refreshing? Prioritize those things. That will probably mean putting at least one of your other projects/activities/goals on the back burner for now.
Some things that you find rejuvenating might actually be good for you in that "eat your vegetables" kind of way. Maybe you like taking a dip in the pool or gardening or cooking. If you genuinely find something refreshing then you should do it! But there will be other things that are really refreshing to you that aren't particularly "productive," too, and they are just as valid to make time for. Read novels, get coffee with friends, shop, do hideous crafts, go to the movies, compete in a fantasy league, play dominoes, whatever floats your boat. It really doesn't have to be wholesome or healthy or productive, it just has to leave you feeling refreshed and happy when you spend an hour or two (or more) on it.
One thing that I would 100% make time for is socializing. Relationships are really important to well-being on a fundamental level. When in doubt, spend time with friends and loved ones, sincerely.
And I mean, the old fashioned cure is a long vacation. So maybe consider taking some time off and getting away from it all, too, if that's at all feasible. Even on your own, if your partner or friends can't take the time off.
posted by rue72 at 7:43 AM on July 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
Something that lowered my stress levels and has a pretty impressive track record for improving fertility: eating Keto. I'm just throwing it out there because it profoundly reduced my life-long anxiety. And I did almost immediately get pregnant too, as did many women in my infertility world. I don't mention it lightly, because I know there is some start-up effort involved, but the xxketo Reddit sub was incredibly helpful and made it a lot easier.
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 11:59 AM on July 31, 2019
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 11:59 AM on July 31, 2019
A lot of good advice here and mine is along the same lines. I find I can be a happier, calm, more generous person -- the person I really want to be -- when I'm not stretched. It's the everyday things that add up and matter. Big things that have made a difference for me:
- Being able to walk to work. I get exercise and it destresses me going to and from work. Before I either had a long commute by bus or even worse, by car.
- Having a cheap apartment. It's not the nicest, but it's within 25% of my take-home income and it means I don't have to worry about being able to pay the bills. I also don't ever worry about spending money on things like going out for dinner or a drink with a friend. I live alone and not getting isolated is important to me.
- Not having a car. I'll rent a car for the weekend to go visit family or use a car-share program for errands in the city. I don't want to worry about the expense of owning and maintaining a car.
- Having creative outlets. I see this as a valuable 'mental health' expense so I'm happy to pay for art supplies, classes or makerspace membership.
I'm sure that to many people, I don't appear that 'successful' because of how modestly I live. By keeping my spending way below my income, and not stretching myself time-wise it means I can do things like give to charity, spend time with elderly relatives and things that make me feel like I'm being a good person. It also means I have money to do things that bring me joy, like travel and art.
I've had periods in my life that were a lot more stressful, and I'm so much less stressed now -- I'll probably try to keep living this way for the rest of my life.
posted by Pademelon at 6:18 PM on July 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
- Being able to walk to work. I get exercise and it destresses me going to and from work. Before I either had a long commute by bus or even worse, by car.
- Having a cheap apartment. It's not the nicest, but it's within 25% of my take-home income and it means I don't have to worry about being able to pay the bills. I also don't ever worry about spending money on things like going out for dinner or a drink with a friend. I live alone and not getting isolated is important to me.
- Not having a car. I'll rent a car for the weekend to go visit family or use a car-share program for errands in the city. I don't want to worry about the expense of owning and maintaining a car.
- Having creative outlets. I see this as a valuable 'mental health' expense so I'm happy to pay for art supplies, classes or makerspace membership.
I'm sure that to many people, I don't appear that 'successful' because of how modestly I live. By keeping my spending way below my income, and not stretching myself time-wise it means I can do things like give to charity, spend time with elderly relatives and things that make me feel like I'm being a good person. It also means I have money to do things that bring me joy, like travel and art.
I've had periods in my life that were a lot more stressful, and I'm so much less stressed now -- I'll probably try to keep living this way for the rest of my life.
posted by Pademelon at 6:18 PM on July 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
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Also, around the same time I took a hard look at the division of household labor between us as a couple, and stopped doing any planning or substantive execution of grocery shopping, weeknight meal prep, or laundry. My husband now does all that and I occasionally (maybe once a month?) offer to pitch in if we’re our of milk or clean socks or something, but otherwise, it’s straight up not my problem. If you’re managing more than half your household’s emotional labor in your head, not doing that any more can be a huge stress relief.
posted by deludingmyself at 11:03 PM on July 30, 2019 [10 favorites]