A Useful Idea

Yesterday morning I was feeling overwhelmed by the stress of all the things in my life. Since nothing significant had changed from the day before I was a little puzzled at the change in feeling. By afternoon I realized that I was overwhelmed because I was getting sick. But in the morning I was stressed to the point of immobility.

Howard observed this and he sat me down at the kitchen counter with paper and pen. He told me to write down every single to-do item or stressful thought that came into my head. I sat and stared at the paper for 10 minutes while Howard repeatedly told me “Honey, start writing”. Finally I did. Some of it was a list, some were fragements of thoughts connected to other thoughts by arrows, but I got every stray stressful thought out of my head and onto paper. While I wrote I wasn’t allowed to judge. Every single stress got written down no matter how silly or unlikely it was.

Eventually my head was empty of new things to write and I was able to sort the stresses on my paper. Some could be resolved almost instantly with a phone call. Some were long term and therefore not to be tackled on an overwhelming day. Some sorted themselves out just by talking them over with Howard. There was a whole list of things detailing the parts of my life where I failed to live up to my own expectations. I was able to select one or two of those to work on right away and I could let the rest fall out of my head because I had them on paper. When I conquor my one or two failures I can go back to the paper, I don’t need to keep a running list in my head.

Being able to actually see my stress on paper was very theraputic. Being able to eliminate some of them and cross them out on the paper was even better. I don’t know if would work for everyone, but it certainly worked for me.