As our parents age and start to lose some of their abilities, we find the roles starting to reverse, with the children becoming the “parents” and the “parents” becoming the dependent children.  This can be very stressful for everyone because it usually doesn’t happen overnight.  It is a gradual process. 

Understandably, the aging parents do not want to lose their independence and many times do not see or won’t admit that their abilities are decreasing.  They are used to having the authority and their independence and to lose that is very stressful for them.  They will often resist their children’s efforts, interpreting it as interfering.

Another aspect of this change that can be especially stressful is when there are well-established and often negative, habit patterns in the way we interact with our parents.

For example: my father was a big, strong willed man who was amazing in many ways.  He was very talented, could do anything and had lots of interests.  He was also intolerant of anyone he thought was less intelligent than himself - which was just about everybody.    He didn’t listen worth a darn and I don’t think that he ever saw me as a real person. 

When he got sick with cancer, it was shocking to see him deteriorate into a sick old man.  But he didn’t feel that way in his mind.  He was still the demanding, intolerant person he had always been but without the physical abilities to be independent anymore. 

He was also a big man at 6 feet, 2 inches tall.  My poor mother was worn to a frazzle trying to care for him.   When his illness finally required him to be hospitalized, he drove the nurses crazy.  Nobody was going to tell him what he could and couldn’t do, even when it was obvious that he no longer had the physical ability to do what he wanted.

I have tremendous empathy for those people who are going through the stress of trying to be the caregivers for their aging parents.

Today’s blog is about the stress you can experience if you are involved in any kind of volunteer or community service organization.  Examples of this could be: church work, clubs, associations, organizations, sports or teams.

Actually, any time you are involved with people, either in a leadership role or just as a participant there is the potential for stress.

The reason for this is that you have to communicate with different personalities,  communication styles, background conditioning and levels of understanding.  All of these can be stressful.

Under the best of circumstances, communicating effectively can be challenging.  That is because people don’t necessarily hear what you say.  They hear their interpretation of what you’ve said - which could be completely opposite to what you were trying to convey. 

In a later blog, we will talk about why there can be such a difference between what you say and what someone else hears.

The second source of stress can be having children.  One thing I didn’t mention in the last blog is that it doesn’t matter how old your children are.  Actually, in many ways, the older they are, the more stressful they can be.  Being the mother of five adult children, I have found that I have no control any more.  All I can do is listen and make suggestions, if they are willing to listen. 

I have also found that as my children marry and have children, the number of people I now have to be concerned about grows. I can now worry about my children’s relationship with their spouses and the welfare of my grandchildren.

The next area of stress for many women is working outside of the home.  (If you do, I’ve just thrown you another ball, which you need to juggle with the others.  

Working out of the home creates whole new multiple layers of stress:

–  The stress involved with the performance of your actual job

–  The stress of working with your supervisors, co-workers and/or the public

–  If you have children, organizing day care, transportation and all of the other million responsibilities that parents have in meeting the needs of the children.

– Finding the time and energy to still do the cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, etc. etc. that is involved in maintaining a home.  In most homes, it is still the woman’s job to cook, clean and manage the family affairs even if she is working.

Do you remember the picture of the woman standing on the balance board?  The balance board represents our life and we have to stay balanced as we try to juggle all of the different balls.  How many potential stress balls have been thrown to you? How are you doing?  Have you dropped any of the balls yet?

We talked about how being in a relationship can be stressful.  Today, let’s look at another area of stress.

Do you have children?  If so, how many?  (If the answer is yes, pretend that I have just thrown you another ball and you have to try and juggle them - while still keeping your balance).

Now, I have just thrown you one ball but it could just as easily be a separate ball for each child.  Why is that?  Each child is completely different. 

How you interact with one child is not how you will interact with the next because of their personalities.  Also how you interact with your spouse about each child is also different.  So there are multiple areas of possible stress with each child.

I once heard a man say: “Before I got married, I had no children and half a dozen theories on how to raise them.  Now I have half a dozen kids and no theories!”

That was certainly my experience.  I never knew what I was doing!  Oh, I’d read all the books and took many different parenting seminars, but they didn’t really help much.  Our poor first child got the brunt of our ignorance and our exceedingly high expectations.  She was always the child we practiced on because she was the first one to go through each new stage.  By the time we figured out what to do with that stage, she was through it and into another one!

And what we learned on her didn’t work at all on her brother.  He was SOOOO completely different from his sister.  There were two and a half years between them and they were miles apart in temperament. 

And then we proceeded to have three more children - all sixteen months apart.  So we had five children all under the age of six, with the fourth child severely handicapped. 

Each child’s personality was completely different and what worked with one, didn’t work with the other.  I usually went through the day, not knowing if what I was doing was good or not; if I was helping or hurting my children.  Most days, I just survived.  Does that sound familiar to you?

Do you know what a Balance Board is? 

It is a flat board that is attached to a curved board beneath.  The curved board causes anyone standing on the flat board to rock from side to side; requiring them to use their hands and legs for balance.

This Balance Board represents our lives.  Our job is to maintain our balance and to successfully handle or juggle the things that life throws at us. 

Let’s see what some of these things are.  I want you to imagine that you are standing on a balance board right now.  You will see that it is possible, but not easy to maintain your balance.

Now I’m going to ask you some questions.  For each “Yes” answer, imagine that I am throwing you a ball.  You are supposed to throw the ball(s) in the air and juggle them.

Let’s see how well you do.

Potential Cause of Stress # 1:  Are you married or in a relationship?

If the answer is “Yes”,  I have just thrown you a ball and you are to juggle it.  Can trying to live with another person be stressful?  Absolutely it can!

In the next blog, I will ask you some more questions.  The purpose is for you to realize the number of “Potential Stress” balls you could be trying to juggle right now.

The ideal would be to divide our lives into a series of compartments so that we could totally focus on the compartment we were involved in at the moment. 

For example; every employer would be thrilled if  their employees were able to leave their personal life behind when they came to work and would give 100% of their thoughts, time and energy to their work efforts.

But we know that for the majority of people, that kind of focus and compartmentalization is not possible.  We do bring our personal problems to work with us and they do interfere with how well we perform our labors. 

At the same time, we bring our work stress home with us - which interferes with our relationships at home.

It is our job to try and juggle or balance all of these areas of our lives so that we can function in each them.

But you know what?  You’re all wrong.  these are all just external events.  But they are not stressors - only if you make them so.

Imagine that I have two people standing in front of me and I pour a jug of water over each of their heads.  One of them might laugh and say “that feels refreshing”.  The other person could be furious.

They both had the same experience or event - but their response was completely different.  One person is stressed by the event and the other is not.  Why would that be?

It all depends on your perception of the event!  I will talk about that more in the next blog.

Also work starts to lose its meaning the more stressed you get.  It is easy to develop a “Who Cares” attitude.

This short quotation was taken from an article called “Mental Health Facts” in the Vancouver Sun newspaper in 2007 ( I forgot to write down the date of the article).

The source is Mental Health Works: an initiative of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario.

“Employees of three major American companies who displayed chronic symptoms of depression were twice as likely to miss work due to health reasons and seven times as likely to report missed workdays at the time of the follow-up survey.”

1.  Stress Eating:  I am a stress eater.  Under stress, you never crave vegetables or healthy foods.  It is comfort foods you want: sweet, salty, greasy, rich.

When I was going though my greatest stress, there were a couple of times when there was nothing sweet to eat in the house.  I can remember melting some butter, putting brown sugar and flour in it and standing over the stove, eating it right out of the pot! - and slavering as I was doing it! 

Another time, I got a phone call to say that my nineteen year old son had just become a father.  I had no idea that his ex girlfriend was pregnant.  I hung up the phone and went straight to the fridge.  My automatic response was to seek comfort through food.  Anyone identify with that?

What happens to stress eaters?  They gain weight - which lowers their self-esteem and increases their stress even more!

This is the reason why diets don’t work.  You can take the weight off, but unless you have resolved the underlying issue that caused you to put the weight on in the first place, it will come right back on; usually with interest!

2.  Anorexia:  Some people stop eating when they are stressed (sometimes I wish that I had that problem). 

What are the consequences of not eating?  Increased fatigue, decreased resistance to disease, malnutrition, and, unless corrected in time,  death!  Anorexia is a serious problem, especially among young women.

The more physically or emotionally exhausted a person is, the less attention they pay to their surroundings.  This inattention and preoccupation makes them far more likely to have an accident.

With prolonged stress, your body tries to save your life by pulling the blood from the large muscles and diverting it to your liver and kidneys in an effort to break down the extra stress hormones.   When this happens, there is less blood in your arms and legs.  This can lead to greater clumsiness.  You drop things or you can trip, stumble and fall.

Although the following example isn’t related to stress, (I don’t think), it does show how a decreased blood supply could lead to greater clumsiness and an increased danger of injury.  Two of my sons were almost eleven pounds when they were born.  When I was pregnant with them, every time I stood up, the blood supply to my right leg would be cut off.  Within seconds my leg would go numb. 

As well, if I did not change position, the nerves to my leg were affected and the feeling would leave my leg.  I could hit it and feel nothing - just like hitting a board.  It was almost as if my leg was paralyzed.  I had to be so careful when this happened because if I tried to walk, I would fall.  I had no control over that leg.

There is another way that stress can make a person more accident prone.  Remember that the body can’t tell the difference between physical danger and emotional stress.  It responds the same way - by preparing your body to fight or run away to save your life.  With increased stress, the body dumps extra glucose into the blood stream to give you the energy to fight or run away.  To assist this process, it also dumps more insulin into the bloodstream. 

If a stressed person skips breakfast, which is very common, the extra insulin can cause hypoglycemia or low blood sugar.  This can make you feel weak and dizzy because your brain isn’t getting enough nutrition.  If you have ever felt weak and dizzy, you can see how easy it would be have an accident.