Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

There is a point a person's stress level when they can take no more.  Everyone deals with that point differently, and to complicate matters that threshold varies from person to person as well as from time to time within an individual's life.  How we deal with stress is a complex bit of magic that takes its influences from chemistry and hormones and all sorts of physiological balances along with a lifetime of lessons and examples that began at day one with our caretakers.

As a mom, I hope to teach my son my to handle stress with a smooth grace and a calm demeanor.  I want him to have the ability to manage a superhuman amount of pressure and still be cool and miraculously relaxed.  And I want him to be able to recognize when the stress and pressure he feels is just too much, and that he needs to ask for help.

This is something I am not good at, and that I fail in my parenting and being an example for him.  I do not have the ability to ask for help, I do not have a superhuman ability to handle pressure and the weight of a million tasks and responsibilities and remain collected and cool and un-phased.

What I do have, for better or worse, is a deceptive ability to APPEAR as though I can handle it. Until I can't.  These last few months have been heavy with stress, anxiety, pain, pressure, intensity and disappointment.  And given who I am, the time of year, the challenge of my circumstances, and a host of other excuses - I was unable to ask for or receive help to get out from under it all.  Instead I tried desperately to juggle, balance, manage, and maintain (often failing) - barely keeping my nose above the rising tidewater.  At times it poked through, at times the meltdown appeared imminent, and often I felt like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  (A much darker less entertaining version of a farcical Almodovar movie).

What I do know, what I can pass along, is a small bit of self awareness, that in these moments of unbelievable pressure and stress and turmoil - what often suffers and takes the lion's share of neglect is ourselves. The things that make us healthy and happy. They are the first to be ignored in place of the thousands of noisier moving parts requiring more attention.  And this is a mistake.

Allowing for a certain amount of madness and meltdowns and insanity is one thing.  It may even be unavoidable, given a balls to the wall sort of lifestyle (which can make one prone to those sorts of things).  But letting it go on forever without taking care of one's self is inexcusable.   its an indulgence that is supremely annoying and gets in the way of truly living.

So bring on the new year.  Bring on 2013.  And say goodbye to last year's stress and madness and pressure and upheaval and uncertainty.  In its place, make self-care and attention and health and happiness a certainty -  worthy of the time and attention it requires.  No one wants to repeat history, and last year only needs to happen once.  Deep breaths.