STRESS - POSITIVE & NEGATIVE

 One of the reasons why I decided to move to Coimbatore and stay in Nana Nani was because of the stress, both physical and mental stress, I was going through maintaining the independent home I was sharing with my son`s family in Chennai. Every other day, I had to sort out some problem or the other - chasing the elusive electrician, plumber, carpenter, mason and other service providers to attend to specific problems. It was frustrating. In my old age, I was looking forward to a stress-free life without any responsibilities. Today, I am leading a life without any family responsibilities and the only stress I have is health-related. And I have learnt to live with age-related health issues. Besides, I find my writing and cooking act as effective stress busters.

Google knowledge says that `Stress is the body's physical, mental, or emotional reaction to any demand, challenge, or pressure from a "stressor". There are both positive and negative stressors or painful or pleasurable stressors, as I call them.

 

Positive stress is what you experience when you are bringing up children, or preparing for an important event like a wedding in the family, or anything that eventually brings joy.

 

The kind of stress I experienced when I was building an independent home for my family- buying a plot, finding the money for building the house, getting the plans cleared by the authorities, chasing the contractor for speeding up the work and many other issues that kept me stressed through that journey. At the end of the day, when the house was ready, and we moved in, the joy and happiness I felt made all the stress worth going through. Living in a 250 sq. ft. tenement in a chawl in Mumbai, sharing two toilets with 56 others in the portion where my family lived, to owning my own independent home with two bedrooms with attached toilets in Chennai, was indeed a pleasurable experience, in spite of all the stress it involved.

 

The negative form of stress causes discomfort and can lead to feeling overwhelmed, unable to cope, and eventually burnout. When you have major differences with some near and dear ones, leading to misunderstanding, it can cause painful stress or when your life partner is suffering from a terminal disease, or someone close to you has had an accident and is on life support, what you feel a painful stress. Caregivers of family members suffering from chronic diseases suffer from such painful stress, which sometimes contributes to their own health issues getting aggravated.

 

Periodic stresses are part of everyone`s life. I have gone through many such painful stresses in my life and each time came out of it because of my positive attitude and my belief that `everything happens for the good`. Having learnt a lesson or two from such experiences, I move on with my life, ready to face the next challenge.