I’m sorry that I haven’t blogged in about two weeks. Professional and personal responsibilities got in the way. But I hope to resume my schedule of writing twice a week.
This month I want to look at stress in the family. This obviously has many components and directions to go into, from finances to parenting to dealing with aging parents. The important starting point is to understand what stress is and is not.
Stress is tension we feel everyday. It is the tension we feel waking up and starting a new day, tension with our spouse, our children, the traffic, work, paying bills, socializing, going to sleep at night. It is not necessarily a bad thing. It can serve to motivate us, challenge us, keep us fluid rather than stagnant. But it takes careful management to keep stress at a healthy level. Much research has been done to strongly suggest that too much stress can weaken our immune system, leading us into diseases such as Cancer, Diabetes, and heart disease, yet no one seems able to clearly define what too much stress is.
In the next few weeks I’m going to be not defining stress as much as trying to describe it as we experience it in everyday life and suggesting some ways we might be able to manage it better. I invite you to join in by giving me examples of your everyday family stresses and how you handle it. This is not Dear Abby; I will not be trying to solve individual problems, but maybe we can collectively understand what we all experience a little more.
