drwex | Journaling project, Day 1

The goal isn’t to get rid of all your negative thoughts, feelings, and life situations this summer. That’s impossible. The goal is to change your response to them.

What’s something small that’s been stressing you out recently? What can you do to improve your response today?

A small thing that's been stressing me out... it's hard to identify the small things when it feels like the entire country is on fire. But, OK, here's a small thing - trying to figure out what causes stent pain.

As I mentioned in earlier health updates, I've got this plastic tube inside me. Yay for helping things heal. Boo for the amount of pain I get every time I pee and the amount of bleeding. In many injury situations you can see "oh, this causes pain, so I'll stop doing it." Here I'm confronted with nearly random relationships between activity and pain or bleeding levels.

Sometimes it's obvious - I generally can't wear things that compress my abdomen, nor put a lot of weight on it. Standing hurts more than sitting. But some days I've done nothing but sit around most of the day and my pain levels are higher than other days when I'm doing things that I should be to try building my strength back.

Unpredictability is stressful. Back in the bad old days of undergrad psychology we watched videos of people inducing things that looked a lot like nervous breakdowns in rats by randomizing their punishment/reward schemes.

My life, it is hilarious. But at least nobody is trying to kill me, directly, nor steal my children, nor leave me with no power and no drinkable water. So on the scale of stressors, this one gets to count as minor.