This One's Not About the Kids

http://www.foodmatters.tv/articles-1/emotional-stress-how-chronic-emotional-stress-can-ruin-your-health

I read this article by a doctor named Ben Kim on the almighty internets today and felt a strong need to re-post it, even though I have an aversion to re-posting other people's stuff - it's why I feel weird about Pinterest. But this article has particular relevance to my life right now, so I love it...and hate it with the heat of a nova (to quote Toby from The West Wing).  But let me tell you why.

Hate it:  Here's a quote from early in the article:  "...your body cannot defend itself against the damage that emotional stress quietly creates over time. [You] pay a heavy physiological price for every moment that you feel anxious, tense, frustrated, and angry."   Just reading that makes me feel anxious, tense, frustrated and angry about my anxiety, tension, frustration, and anger.  Could it really be true that I'm doing irreparable damage to my body every moment I experience one of those feelings?  Is it helpful to even have the thought that my body is damaged every time I feel these things?  

As a therapist, mother, wife, daughter, sister, etc. etc. and just as a participant in the game of life, there are things I've come to understand about myself and everyone else.  Here are two of them: 1.) We can't change our feelings, or make ourselves not feel them.  We can tolerate them, or squash them down and pretend not to feel them, and we can make decisions about what we're going to do because of them, but we can't change them.  At least not without some serious, long term alterations in our thoughts and behavior, and even that's questionable.  2.) What we think has a huge influence on how we feel.  

For me, reading things like Dr. Kim's statement on the damage stress does to the body causes stress.  It makes me feel scared and guilty on top of stressed - scared that the stress I'm experiencing in my life right now, and struggling to overcome, is doing permanent damage from which I have no hope of recovering, and guilty about what I've apparently done to myself.  Not helpful, Doc.  

He fleshes things out a bit here:  "I'm not suggesting that you should strive to never feel these emotions. Anxiety, tension, frustration, and anger all serve important purposes when they first arise. The danger is in experiencing these emotions on a chronic basis."  Now, the second sentence in this quote seems to directly contradict what the good Doctor said in his intro about every moment of stress causing dire physiological consequences.  So I wonder which statement he truly believes. 

She's Getting Older and Wise-ass-er

I'm in the car with E. the other day, on our way to pick up A., and we sit at a red light next to the Trader Joe's construction site.  I'm all happy about Trader Joe's coming to our town, so I entertain myself with a little made-up song about it.  After a minute E. says, without looking up from her Leapster, "Mommy, stop it!"

I ignore her and keep singing.  She ratchets up the whine: "Mommy-y, stop iiiiit!"

"Aw, why?" I ask her.

"Because.  Noying."

Fine, cuteness wins.  Again.