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3 Silent Stressors Killing Your Mental Health
And what to do about them
In every group of friends, you can usually find a few on the periphery, ones you can enjoy in small doses but with sufficient downtime to recover from the experience. That’s how we described Beth, usually pleasant, usually fun, and generally adept at stimulating conversation. I stress the word “usually” for a reason. She perceived the slightest offhand comment or joke as if it were intended as a public insult to her and everyone and everything she ever loved, cared about, or believed in.
Whenever we accidentally upset her, she’d let it be known and carry a grudge for weeks or longer. Her presence caused stress in her company and in anticipation of it.
I once made an offhand comment about the name of her fish, and in the subsequent times we hung out in a group setting, I had to endure how upset she was about my perceived slight of the name she had given her fish. Everyone who knew her back then could tell a similar story.
Years later, long after she had moved away, I heard she had started therapy and had become much more easygoing. Good for her.
People, not situations, often trigger the most anxiety when it comes to life stressors. If you’re lucky, you can remove those people from your life. One of the most overlooked stressors, however, is not other people but the stories we tell ourselves.
With these three self-inflicted causes of stress, we take outside forces and transform them into stories that generate anxiety. As someone who once succumbed to this stress without pause, I know how it can impact day-to-day life.
After years of self-work, I learned to identify these stories and develop simple solutions to curb the negative impact.
What is versus what should be
In life, the reality of what is often conflicts with what we believe reality should be. Even if we don’t articulate our problems in these terms, we demonstrate them this way.
Here’s what I mean.
If you’re struggling to pay your bills from a minimum wage job, you may complain to friends or yourself that you shouldn’t have to work a second job on weekends in addition to your…
