Living With Chronic Stress

I have had the most amazing opportunity to relax and unwind in a spectacularly beautiful home nestled in the outskirts of Princeton NJ. Molly went to summer camp through the American Diabetes Association this week, from Saturday to Friday at the local YMCA camp. We are long time summer camp fans, with all three girls going to YMCA Camp Kon O Kwee from age 7 until they worked there and Molly will be doing that this year too. Being a seasoned overnight camper, I knew she would have a great time, what I was not expecting was that they take over all of her diabetes care and remove the parents from the app that allows us to see and monitor their blood sugar. For the first time in 4 years, I don’t have to manage her sugar, I don’t have to wake up to alarms overnight and I know that she is safe. On the surface, I was obviously aware that we lived with chronic stress, how can you not? But the whole thing has become totally normalized to me. It’s our regular life. More nights than not, I am waking up to give her a juice because her sugar is low. My kid is amazing, but she sleeps like the dead, haha. She relies on me to wake her up and treat her low sugars. I have spent the last 3 days sleeping, watching tv, just sitting outside and I even got a meditation in with zero distractions or interruptions. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have not slept normally in 4 years. This disease is so much more than most people think, it’s truly life or death every single day. The simple act of playing on the trampoline can send her spiraling to a life threatening low blood sugar. We have a team of doctors that manage her medications, but diabetes is unpredictable. Insulin uptake and sensitivity changes from day to day and from hour to hour. It is influenced by activity, food, hormones, illness and sleep. She has had a really hard time getting control over it and I don’t blame her, she is 13 and has to stop and think, then medicate before every single bite of food. It’s not easy for anyone.

I have spent the last 6 months getting worked up for extreme fatigue, constant GI issues and pain in a couple areas of my gut. 6 months of no answers. I’ve been so tired that I literally couldn’t work. This coming from my former hustling self has been so demoralizing. I could handle anything, one friend of mine once told me I had a “start up mentality” because when push came to shove, I showed up, mentally prepared to work hard and miss sleep. This first have of 2024 has knocked me down so hard that I was convinced I had cancer. I don’t. In fact, I have nothing detectably wrong with me except some gallbladder dysfunction. What I have is burnout. In the past 3 days of sleeping and resting and having no real immediate life or death worries, my energy level has rebounded, I’m eating like a normal person without pain, I no longer have the severe GI distress and my cognition has drastically improved. I’m thinking more clearly than I have in 6 months, from 3 days of sleep. It is clear to me now that I have to learn how to manage the chronic stress of having a kid with a chronic illness. I have to learn how to identify and manage this life. I know it is possible. It can be done. I’m starting here, and then, when I get home, I have a whole new focus for my therapist to help me work on.

Chronic stress happens when you’re exposed to stress over a prolonged period, this leads to a heightened sense of alertness and tension. Unlike acute stress, which is temporary and can sometimes be beneficial, chronic stress is ongoing and detrimental to overall wellbeing. Most of us have chronic stress related to work, finances, relationships, chronic health issues and other things out of our control like noise, crowded living conditions or living in unsafe neighborhoods. All of this can become “normalized” if it’s out of our control and we must just live with it, but it can still wreak havoc on our health, as I have learned over the past 6 months.

Some of the physical health consequences of living with chronic stress include, hypertension, heart disease, increased susceptibility to illness, slower healing, gastrointestinal disorders (hi, it’s me, am I the problem? 😊😊😊), chronic pain, increased risk of injury, anxiety and depression, cognitive decline like memory loss and literal brain structure changes, mood swings and decreased resilience. It can cause sleep disorders like insomnia and poor sleep quality and some people turn to substances to cope like abusing drugs and alcohol and terrible eating habits. It can also cause social withdrawal. I know first hand that I have had ongoing GI issues, chronic pain, anxiety and depression, cognitive impairment, mood swings, sleep troubles and have long relied on binge eating the worst foods to deal with my stress. I still can’t believe that I was/am so entrenched in it for so long (really the past 7 years to be honest) that as a reasonably intelligent person with more than adequate health and nutrition education and a nursing background that I couldn’t see the forest through the trees. My body had to start shutting down AND I had to experience a break to really see how much it was affecting me. I knew on an intellectual level that I was living with chronic stress, I just couldn’t believe that it was affecting my health so profoundly. In years past when I was really struggling, I turned to hot yoga, intense exercise, radical diet changes and drinking too much to cope.  I don’t have any of that available to me at this point, I am literally starting over and now I’m 44 and can’t physically withstand the intense exercise, hot yoga, restrictive eating and alcohol. The last time I drank too much, I was so dizzy the next day that I fell over from nearly fainting when I bent over to put my shoes on. It’s time for me to explore a gentler approach. Throwing on a sleep meditation to fall asleep isn’t cutting it. This is going to take work, but a different kind of work. This work is going to be about focusing on more gentle means. Yoga will definitely be part of my life again, just not heated and maybe for 20 minutes instead of 60-90. Meditations will need to be focused and a planned part of my day, even if for just a few minutes. Healthy eating will be a priority for health, not weight loss. No more bashing my body into submission, that time has passed.

Some of the ways to manage and reduce chronic stress include mindfulness practice, guided meditations, deep breathing exercises, light aerobic activity like walking, strength training, yoga and Thai Chi, eating a balanced diet and drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, cognitive behavioral training, setting realistic time management goals, delegating what you can, building a support network (see Making Friends In Your 40s) and seeking professional help from a therapist/counselor and/or support groups. Prioritizing relaxation and leisure will be up at the top for me too. I have lost touch with most of the hobbies I used to love like cooking, knitting and riding my bike. Spending time in nature is another great way to relax and unwind and there is information all over the web about the benefits of being outdoors around trees and walking barefoot. There are countless ways to incorporate small lifestyle changes that can add up to huge health and wellness improvements, and I am so hopeful and ready to make some of them. I hope that you can use this to take a look at your own stressors and try to take some small steps to make your life better, every single person deserves to have a chance to feel better in this crazy, over stimulating, over demanding world we live in. Now I think it’s time for me to go take another nap!