Emotional turmoil seems to be a constant in modern society. This can lead to greatly increased stress, not to mention anxiety and depression. Creating an emotional safety net may be the solution you are looking for to reduce stress in your life, and increase your happiness quotient.
Detach yourself emotionally from stressors
The emotional attachment most people feel toward the people and things in their lives are a major cause of stress. While it may be human nature to create such attachments, and indeed it certainly seems to be, the ability to detach one’s self emotionally from things which create stress in their lives is critical to stress reduction and happiness. In other words, if your life is full of things you “can’t live without,” you are setting yourself up for an emotional roller coaster of a life.
As a concrete example, let’s imagine for a moment that you are completely invested in being The Perfect Mom. Your daily routine might include; up and dressed before everyone else in the house, to get breakfast on the table; kids dressed and ready for school with time to spare; you and the kids in the car and at the neighbor’s house to pick up their kids right on time; drop the kids at school and make it to work with time to have a cup of coffee before beginning to handle all of your bosses problems for her.
You can certainly imagine the rest of the day for our not-so-mythical Perfect Mom, can’t you? Now, let’s imagine the stress she must feel if just one thing goes wrong in the schedule of The Perfect Day for The Perfect Mom.
Unfortunately for Mom, on this particular morning, the coffee maker she set up last night was unplugged, so she had no coffee to begin her relentless pursuit of The Perfect Day. This made her 5 minutes late with breakfast. When the kids realized Mom was running behind schedule, instead of helping her catch up, they took that as permission to fall behind schedule as well. This meant she was late getting them into the car; late to the neighbor’s house; late to school; and late to work, where the boss had also not had her morning coffee and was on the rampage.
Detach yourself to reduce stress
By being so completely and absolutely emotionally invested in her role as The Perfect Mom, something as simple as being late for work might make her feel like a complete failure. For her to have the day described above, well, she could see herself as much more than ineffective; she may see herself as worthless. The damage to her self-esteem, her image of herself, may become irreparably damaged, all due to one small mistake.
By detaching from the emotional involvement in her self-image, she will free herself of these misconceptions. She will discover that she is what she always has been, the best that anyone can hope for – an Almost Perfect Mom.
And that’s good enough.
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