Blogtober – Day 30

Today I am going to share with y’all three things I do to help myself decompress.

Calm down. Relax. Take it easy. Wind down.

I used to handle stress so well but since becoming a mother, a wife, and a full time student all at once I don’t do so great at handling it anymore. Especially since having our third baby. My anxiety has been at an all time high; so much so that I’ve been diagnosed with postpartum anxiety and put on medication to help.

During my schooling for my associates degree my professor, who had also counseled people for years, shared a few ways to help with stress and feeling overwhelmed. I rolled my eyes and thought that shit is not going to help but it DOES. There’s a reason counselors tell you this stuff, and a reason for them sharing so many different techniques. I decided to take what she said, try it out, and hope for the best.

During a hard time in my life and marriage I decided to give these techniques a try and found three that work really well for me. When I’m at my wits end and I can’t handle things there’s a few different techniques I try until one works for me. I have my go to technique but sometimes it doesn’t work so I have to move on to another one. These three techniques are ones that I can rely on to work every time.

• Writing
• Driving
• Empty Chair Technique

Writing.

I think this is pretty self explanatory – I write. LOL. I write down all of my feelings, frustrations, etc and allow it to escape my chest. Once I’m done I either let whoever it’s to read it or I’ll trash it. Normally it goes in the trash.. however I have allowed a couple people to read my thoughts. I have used this technique when my husband and I are having a disagreement and I feel I can better express my feelings or point in writing but it is not something I use often. I have actually used my blog in this sense, as well. I will type it all up and just post it privately.

Driving.

Also pretty self explanatory. This is definitely my most used technique. Most of y’all know I’m a car girl (and if you didn’t.. you do now!) so it goes without saying I love my car. When I’m driving I get this free feeling. Everything just goes away. Having a free mind allows me to focus on what’s really important and a lot of time figure out what needs to be done. I’ll just hop in the car, roll the windows down, blast some music, and drive.. with no destination in mind. Wherever the road takes me. There have been plenty of times where my husband and I will sit in the car and just talk. A lot of our really good, deep conversations happened in one of our cars.

Empty Chair.

I’ve used this technique to talk with my grandparents who have long since passed away. When I’m having a hard time or I just really need to talk to them I’ll just sit there, looking into empty space imagining they’re there, and spill my guts. At first this was really hard for me but now it is almost natural for me to do this. There’s weeks where I’ll do this everyday. Similar to driving it allows me to feel free and unjudged. (Is that a word?) The first few times I did this I felt really weird talking to empty space but the feeling of getting things off your chest really feels amazing and it gets easier and less weird the more you do it.

So, there you have it. That’s how I decompress. How do you decompress? Do you have different techniques than I do? Please share! We can all learn something from each other.

Until tomorrow…

xoxo