Building Mastery Decreases Stress

 

It’s that Weird Wednesday challenge again, coordinated and directed by Mental Mama.  I know that last week, I had a hard time coming up with weird things about myself, but I just thought of one.  I sometimes don’t know the day of the week, and I certainly never know the date.  I guess it’s not that important in my little sphere (other than to know when “Under the Dome” or “Extant” are on), because every day is so much the same.  Maybe that’s a little weird in and of itself, like I am Bill Murray in the “GroundHog Day” movie.

Moving on, this week’s topic is:

What weirdest thing you do to relax?

Well, I do things like this.  I learn a tiny bit of something new from a friend, and then, even though I don’t quite understand it, or what I’m doing, I make the text of my entire post purple.  I would have made the font size bigger, but I couldn’t remember how.  Maybe in an upcoming edit.

One of the best things for me for stress relief is to try and do something new, something I have to concentrate really hard on.  This is called “building mastery” for all you DBT folks out there!  For example, when I was having my little mental health breakdown earlier this past month, I tried to teach myself to crochet.  It was a wicked failure, but it felt good to try and it definitely kept my mind off things.

And because I still have the supplies and the links MM sent me, I can whip out this project at any time.  I have a few needlepoints, too, that I should work on but it gets too complicated for me when the color of thread changes every fourth stitch.  Unrelated note, QoB is the ultimate needle-pointer.  Her hands are too bad to do it now (not sure she’d be able to find time, either), but back in the day, she rocked it.

Another thing I like to do when stressed is put lotion on my hands and then enjoy the smell.  Yes, that’s me over there, sniffing my hands.  It’s actually a combination of several DBT skills — distract, TIP/Chemistry, self-soothe.  My therapist could probably list off several more.

When I need to relax of calm down in a hurry, the best thing I can do is talk to someone.  Be it my mom, my dad, my sister, one of my online friends — I’ve really got to talk things out sometimes.  I think that’s pretty ordinary, though — venting about things.

My final answer to stress reduction is to clean my kitchen and dining room area.  These are the two areas where I spend the most time, so they get trashed out the most easily.  It usually only takes about ten minutes, just throwing some trash away and then unloading and reloading the dishwasher.  Those ten minutes, though, can save me from an entire day of antsy-pantsying.