How do you handle stress?
My co-workers and I sat around the conference table wide-eyed and searching for a response to the loaded question my boss had just asked.

“How do you handle stress?”

It was a loaded question because just a week ago my boss dropped an economic bomb on us and we had spent the last seven days more stressed out than we’ve ever been in our entire careers.

Career? Did ten years at a job turn it into a career? It didn’t feel like a career when my dreams went in an entirely different direction.

It was also a loaded question because my boss wasn’t asking it to alleviate our stress; it was his icebreaker.

So there we sat, three managers and my boss, searching for politically correct words to answer his loaded question while he waited.

“I shut myself up in my garage and build things.” One of my co-workers responded.

My boss nodded his head and looked at me.

“I shut the world out, watch DVD’s, read books and eat ice cream.” I replied.

He nodded again and turned to my other co-worker who just shrugged his shoulders and remained silent.

Avoidance! Apparently that’s how we handled stress.

Avoidance wasn’t a new revelation for me. I’d been handling stress through avoidance for years. During my divorce I was practically a hermit and read five books a week; the used bookstore knew me by name. I always reverted to avoidance or escapism when under extreme stress.

I had been practicing my stress avoidance regime for the last several months while buying my first home. I was a pro at it. You see I was buying a house from a bank that wouldn’t respond while loan documents, interest rates, and commitment letters expired over and over again. Every time I turned around, I was being charged another five hundred dollars because the seller’s bank wasn’t responding. I had given notice on my rental because my home was supposed to close in April. I had to be out by the 31st and I didn’t know where I was going to live. Estimates to move and store my belongings were outrageous, and my boss’ economic bomb, that just upped the stress ante. Every day was a ‘bucket day’!



It had gotten to the point that I was having a hard time functioning; writing would have been impossible, so my blog suffered. All I wanted to do was crawl into the darkness and escape my problems until by some miracle everything worked out.


Darkness by Darren Hayes

I still believed deep down inside that everything would eventually work out. I was still fighting for my dreams. But right now… I was just handling the stress.

Labels: avoid truth, avoidance, Blogging, career, economy, ice cream, money, stress, Writing

  posted by Matildakay at 2:28 PM 0 comments