#WritingPrompt: What is a sign that you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed?
What Is A Sign That You’re Starting To Feel Overwhelmed?
a poem and a reflection challenge
I may have tips and tricks up my sleeve to get myself started on chores I hate,
from the 5-minute rule (a foot-in-the-door tactic) to get started on an overwhelming mountain of unwashed dishes, to using these moments as mindfulness to simply focus on: the warmth of the water the clang of the dishes the cuteness of my bowls the smell of dish soap…
but when I zoom out and look at it all, the state of my dishes gives me a signal of exactly how goddamn stressed and overwhelmed I am in the first place if I have to use little tricks and tips to get something so basic done, and then double-schedule even this so that I’m using a daily chore as a stress-relief activity.
It tells me that I’m running out of time, the little pockets of time confetti that I may have used to catch up on little batches of dishes between meetings.
It tells me that I’m too tired to get up sometimes at the end of the day and the exhaustion extends over physical and mental domains.
It tells me that I’m then coping with an age-old mechanism of eating and snacking and grazing which then generates more dishes.
So I could lasso all the little tips and techniques I may find on the internet to wrangle this one habit into structure and completion,
or I could look at the bigger picture and think about what factors led to this mountainous pile of unwashed pile of dishes in the first place.
#WritingPrompt: What is a sign that you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed?
Inviting Vivian | Crystalclearcandace | Yana Bostongirl | Rachel Ramkaran (she/her) | Melissa Speed | Neha Sandhir S | Sharing Randomly | Las siete y más| Mark Tulin | if you’re up to it and anyone else interested to smash that writer’s block, join in on this tiny challenge and write a response, wherever it takes you! It can be a tiny poem, a shortform piece or an essay — whatever comes into that brain noodle!
Hi, I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and I think one powerful thing that I’ve gotten from a therapist was to not only have techniques to help manage stress, but to know when to deploy them in action. Sure, there are the little things you might incorporate into daily routine so that your overall stress level might decrease overall. 📚📚 PS, I published a book of tiny poems!
Hop down the rabbit hole? 🐰🕳
^ by R. Rangan PhD!