layout: post title: Stress — I need to start posting more often, huh? Well after reprioritizing some things I think I’ll try to post a little more often than once every six months. It was a lot easier to do this in school when I knew people would read this and I could say hi to them.

So anyway I decided this would be more interesting if I started talking about things in general and narrow them down to my life instead of just reporting on the days events. Today’s topic will be stress and how I’ve eliminated it, at least temporarily.

So a few weeks ago, I had some severe allergic reactions. A few weeks later I was diagnosed as being allergic to, dust mites, all sorts of tree pollens, ragweed and cats.

The allergies have plagued me at least since when I began college about 5 years back. The worst effects until this point had been extreme colds where my body would be burning up and I’d need to be a climate controlled environment. I could not handle dusty central Illinois in a dorm without Air Conditioning. I would huddle up like a hobo in the basement and sleep all night during my freshman year until my cold had subsided and I could better deal with extreme heat.

My allergies have been a battle since I do enjoy fresh air and I like cats. Fortunately I usually didn’t have that bad of a reaaction. This year it was extremely bad. I tend to have this condition where perhaps my body tenses up when I sneeze or rather a sharp jolt of pain shoots through a limb of my body - typically my arms.

Last month, I felt it through my neck. It may have been a different reaction all together. It was a very violent sneeze. It was so painful it brought me to the floor in pain. It had happened twice in one night and I was at the point where I’d rather be dead. I felt like I was forced to play the role of a Pez dispenser.

Anyhow, I scheduled an appointment for myself for my allergies, but the real problem at hand was a persistent neck pain that I feared wouldn’t go away. For me that was depressing - the thought of not being able to do things without pain. I knew in the back of my mind (no pun intended) that this would subside or I’d get used to it. But I wanted to take some active steps.

I read up on neck pain and learned that it was one of those things that normally went away without medical attention. It also got better with more neck use. Additionally a “serious” look at controlling stress would be necessary.

For me this was tough. I cringed when I sneezed, and although normally I can be quite lucid, I knew there were moments where I was stressing myself for no reason at all. Perhaps it was a restlessness or just anger for no reason.

Lucky for me my neck pain ended up being a way to cure my stress issue. I had in my head at least (again no pun intended) an indirect link between my constant headaches and neck pain to stress. The more I stressed about things, the more severe the headache/neckpain was.

What this did for me was give me a system to detect when stress started to build up. As soon as it started, I could feel my symptoms become more severe, but I could talk myself out of the stress. Sometimes it took deep focus, and attention. I just had to start slipping into meditative states or something. If it meant halting what I was doing then that was what I did. Within minutes with real effort, I could get the pain to just disappear or at least be severely limited.

As my neck got better, my stress levels seemed to stick to being low just out of habit. I think it’s allowed me more pleasure in getting things done. I can now redirect my stress into focused energy or whatever and get a lot more done in my life.

As always, rollerblading has severely helped as well. Rollerblading is the one time where myself as a whole is relaxed. The wind through my hair that cools me down as my blood pumps and just the feeling of freedom just does wonders.

So that’s what I have to share for now. If you get an opportunity to cut stress down try it, it pays off.