Elections Can Be Stressful

It is 9 pm on election night, and I am experiencing election stress.  I am watching the results of the polls as they are reported on TV.  I have to say it is a roller coaster of emotion.  For those of us who are passionate about our country and who follow politics, election night can be a source of stress.

It does not help that I am in a “swing state.”  In Florida, the race is very close. I also live in an important voting area of Florida, the I-4 corridor.   It seems like this election has been going on forever.  For the past year, we have been bombarded by all kinds of advertisements, mostly negative.  And news stories.  To make it more intense, this year’s Republican convention took place in Florida.  Both presidential candidates have visited the state over and over and over.

This election has been a good example of a daily hassle for me.  Although it has often been in the background of my life, there is always some election chatter happening.  It is like traffic noise when you live in a big city.

I think that the election is stressful for me for a few reasons.  First, it reminds me that our country is so divided.  No matter what you believe, it seems that there are a whole lot of people who believe the opposite.  These divisions separate us in many ways these days.  After every election nearly half the population is not too happy.  No matter what you believe, you have been stressed out at one time or another as a result of an election. In other words, we have all been there in experiencing election stress.

Second, elections are stressful because they represent uncertainty.   Right now the race is very close.  And in Florida it is literally a difference of a thousand votes between the two presidential candidates.  I am not sure if it will be decided tonight.  And it reminds me of the presidential election of 2000 where the election was not decided for weeks.  The uncertainty is a bit frightening, like when your boss is considering retirement.  Will she leave?  Will the new boss be better, worse, or about the same?

Hopefully this uncertainty will come to a close very soon.  Hopefully my candidate will win.  And hopefully I will not have to hear more about another election for at least a few more years.

Have you been stressed out by the 2012 election?  How have you managed your election stress?

A Snake in the Grass

I have to say that lately I have been quite preoccupied.  It has been a very busy time for our family lately.  We are still finishing up our home projects and have several trips planned this fall.  I have also been lucky enough to get two grants at work, so I am busy with the activities involved in starting new projects.   Often, I am one place, but my thoughts are somewhere else.  So you can understand how surprised I was when I discovered a snake in the grass when I was digging up weeds.

Snakes are relatively common where I live in Florida.  In fact, we had a four foot snake on our front doorstep about two weeks ago.  However, this is the first one that I have uncovered in nearly two years of our massive home and backyard renovation.  Of course it happened when I was multitasking.  I was in the backyard talking to my brother and digging up weeds so that we could finally finish laying the grass.  I grabbed this massive clump of weeds, pulled it out of the sand, and that I when I noticed the snake wriggling away.

It was black with red on its tail.  As it slithered away, I screamed and did some kind of weird snake dance.  The snake dove into the grass.  I found it a second time, and yes, I screamed a second time.  But again, it got away.  Then, my brother was able to pull it out of the grass briefly.  When he did, we noticed that its belly was bright orange.  But it got away a third time, and we gave up our quest to relocate it.  So now we have a snake loose in the yard.

As I reflected on the experience, I realize that it took a snake in the grass to snap me out of my preoccupied state.  Until I found the snake, I was not living in the moment.  I was living in the future, doing one thing and at the same time thinking about all of the other things I need to do.  As a researcher, this is common for me to do.  For each project, I have a series of tasks that have to be done, usually in a particular order, and so I have to plan carefully.  However, I have noticed that this orientation has spilled over into all aspects of my life.  In other words, I am often not fully there in each moment.  The lesson that I learned in this experience is that I need to be more mindful by being more focused on the present.

Do you try to live in the moment?  What do you do to focus on being present?

Yoga Might Help Women Quit Smoking

Do you smoke?  Have you ever tried to quit?  Quitting smoking is one of the hardest things to do.  Many people use all kinds of techniques to stop smoking, like therapy and medicines.  However, up until recently yoga has not been considered as a way to help people stop smoking.

Recent research conducted by Dr. Beth Bock and colleagues and published in the Journal of Women’s Health has found that Vinyasa yoga might be helpful to women who are trying to quit smoking.  In the study, 55 women were given therapy to help them stop smoking.  This type of therapy is called cognitive-behavioral therapy.  Cognitive-behavioral therapy aims to help people change their thoughts and their behaviors, like smoking.

All of the women in the study got therapy for eight weeks to help them quit smoking.  In addition, some of the women were randomly put in a group that got twice weekly yoga.  The other women who did not get yoga were put in a group that got a wellness program.

At the end of the eight week program, the researchers found out that women who were in the yoga and therapy group were less likely to have smoked in the past 24 hours as well as the past 7 days than the women in the therapy and wellness group.  Women who had yoga and therapy reported changes from the beginning to the end of the intervention in several areas, including decreased anxiety, increased well-being, and fewer temptations to smoke.

However, the when the researchers contacted the women at a later time, there were no differences between the two groups (therapy plus yoga versus therapy plus wellness classes) in smoking behavior.  In other words, there were no statistical differences between the groups in the percentage of women who had smoked in the past 24 hours or seven days.

Although this study is promising, it does have some limitations.  For one thing, it was only done with a small number of women.  It is not clear that these results would be found in a larger group of women. It also used one type of yoga, so it is not clear that other types of yoga would have the same result.

One thing that surprised me with the study is that the length of the yoga was only eight weeks.  For people who are just starting yoga, eight weeks is a relatively short period of time.  Perhaps extending the yoga classes may further assist people who are trying to quit smoking and help reduce the likelihood of relapse at a later time.

Has yoga ever helped you do something?

Intermediate Yoga is Even Better Than Beginner’s

You might remember that I set two stress management goals for 2012.  One of those goals was to continue my practice of yoga. I believe that when I set a goal that it is good idea to revisit the goal to evaluate my progress from time to time.  I am happy to say that I have continued to develop my yoga practice and have moved from the beginner classes to more intermediate classes.

If you have been following my blog, you know that I started yoga in November 2011, as a beginner. The fall of 2011 had been a very stressful time for me, as I had multiple grants due and contracted pneumonia.  I realized that I needed a new way to help manage stress and get more exercise.

I remember how hard yoga was when I first started it.  I was still recovering from pneumonia, so learning poses like downward dog was a bit tough.  In my beginner’s yoga class, I focused on learning how to do the postures correctly.  We started with some of the most common postures and moved on to postures that were more and more difficult.  I continued through beginner’s yoga for a number of months until my yoga instructor told me that I was ready for a more challenging class.

When I enrolled in the intermediate yoga class, I learned that I would do most of the same yoga poses that I had learned in my beginner’s class.  These poses are combined in sequences, so knowing how to do each one correctly is so important.  I also found that additional challenging poses are introduced during each intermediate class.

I now practice intermediate yoga in one-hour sessions one to two days each week.  Many of the poses are much easier for me to do.  I feel stronger, more balanced, and more flexible than before I started.

What I learned through this experience is how important beginner’s yoga really is.  I found it really helpful to take my time learning how to do basic yoga postures correctly.  I think that doing so has helped me be more confident in intermediate yoga.  It also has helped me avoid yoga-related injuries.

Overall, I hope to continue yoga indefinitely.  It has definitely been beneficial to my life, both physically and mentally.

Have you tried yoga?  Tell me about your transition from beginning yoga to intermediate yoga.

Have you been feeling overwhelmed? That is a common experience for me.  If you have been reading my blog, you know that I have done some funny things because of stress.  In fact, over the last year, I  lost my Ipod, was nearly in a car accident without wearing a seat belt, and caught pneumonia, among other things.  But, up until now, I have not accidentally packed my cat in my carry-on luggage and flown him five states away.

I am not going to say that it will never happen.  The first lesson that I learned about being a parent was to never say “My child would never _________________.”  Fill in the blank with any bad behavior, and it seems to guarantee that your child will in fact do just that.   In fact, I think that there is some probability that I will do something like this one day.

It surprised me that the women with the cat in their carry on luggage got as far as they did.  First, the cat seems to be quite large.  Their bag must have weighed a ton.  Who lifted it into the overhead bin?  Nobody ever helps anyone with lifting luggage in the overhead bin, especially if it is meowing.   Also, how did they make it through security?  I am not able to make it through security when I forget a bottle of water in my purse.  How did they make it through with a live animal? Perhaps in this era of a la carte airline fees, live animals are relatively common in checked luggage.  People might stuff animals in suitcases so that they can avoid an “animal fee.”

Also, I am impressed that the cat put up with being packed, possibly thrown in a car trunk, an X-ray machine, the plane overhead compartment, and ground transportation to the hotel without being noticed…in some way. My cats certainly would not have tolerated even one of those experiences without making the lives of a plane full of people miserable in some way.

I think this experience points out that any of us can be overwhelmed.  And when we are overwhelmed, we might neglect a detail here or there.  Luckily, this situation turned out to be OK.  The cat seems to be in good shape despite its trip.  Here is hoping that each of us has the same outcome when we forget to notice something important.

Have you ever done something funny when you were very stressed?  Leave a comment below with your story.

Response to A Survey About Job Strain Sheds Light on Its Relationship with Heart Disease

If you have been following my blog, you may have heard me talk about my job stress  and heath.  Like many workers these days, I feel that I have too little time in the day to finish everything.  My work is very demanding.  It often requires my undivided attention and challenges me in numerous ways.  Since I work in a position that is almost entirely funded by grants, my job also feels very insecure at times.

At the same time, it is very rewarding.  I get to work with wonderful people.  I get to help communities achieve better health.  I get to train the health care providers of tomorrow.  From time to time, I get to go to very interesting places.

Recently I heard about a very large study which looked at whether job strain was related to heart disease in women.  Of course, this study caught my interest as it made me think about my own lifestyle.  The study, conducted by Dr. Natalie Slopen and colleagues, lasted for 10 years.  During the study, the researchers collected information about job strain and job insecurity from 22,086 women using surveys.  Then, 10 years later, the researchers obtained information about the health of the same women through multiple sources, including medical records.

You may be wondering what job strain means.  Job strain is measured using two different categories, job demand and job control.  People can score either low or high on either of these two concepts.  Job demand is measured by questions about the demand of work (i.e., is the work challenging, how much work is there).  Job control is measured in a few ways, including whether a person is able to make decisions related to the job.

These two categories are grouped to make four different kind of job experiences.  Some people have low demand and low control over their jobs.  Others have low demand and high control.  Both of these situations are considered lower job strain.

On the other hand, there are some who have high job strain.  The worst kind of job strain is found among those people who have high demand and low control, followed by those who experience high demand and high control.  I would say that, for the most part, my job is high demand and medium to high control.  So, I have high job strain.

The ten year study found some interesting things.  First, a woman’s insecurity about the future of her job was not related to having heart disease within the next ten years, when other factors were taken into account.  This finding surprised me.  One of the more stressful things in my life is having some insecurity about my job.  Then I considered the fact that perhaps these women in the study eventually went on to get more secure jobs and worried less about their employment.

Second, the study found that women who reported highly demanding jobs were 38% more likely to experience heart disease over the ten year period of follow-up.  It did not matter whether a person had high or low control over her job.  Having a highly demanding job was strongly related to heart disease.

So what does this mean for all of us in highly demanding jobs?  What should we do?  I am not sure that there is a study that can tell us that.  However, my plan to reduce the effect of stress on my health is to try to continue to live a healthy lifestyle that includes regular visits to my doctor, a healthy diet, exercise, and as much stress management as possible.

What about you?  What is your level of job strain?  If you have a high level of job strain, how do you manage it?

Photo courtesy of Craig Parylo

Our House Is Falling Apart

Have you every had one of those weeks where you thought to yourself, “everything is falling apart.”   I have written about the stress of being a homeowner before.  Over the last two years, we have had a lot of homeowner stress.  We have been renovating our back and front yards for more than a year, including laying sod and building a new shed and deck.  We have also had some unexpected stressful experiences when two massive tree branches fall on our roof and new wooden fence.  Thankfully, nobody was hurt.

The experiences that we had recently were like no other.  We would fix one problem and seemingly overnight another problem would appear.  I am telling you this story so that you can get a good laugh, as it seems that things like this only happen to me.  I went through six days of plumbing disasters.

Day 1: The Unfixable Toilet.   It all started with a running toilet.  The  toilet started to run on a Tuesday night, like at 8:40 pm.    I ran to Home Depot  about a minute before it closed and bought the part that was needed to fix it.  I came home and tried  fix it.  I started by trying to turn off the water at the valve on the wall.  That is when I discovered the valve was stuck shut.  So, I called my brother who had me look all over the house for the water shut-off valve.  I looked in the laundry room, under the kitchen sink, in various closets, but could not find it.  So then I tried to jiggle the part of the toilet that was broken.  And it came off in my hand spewing water everywhere!  After a lot of screaming, I managed to get the broken part back on the broken toilet and the water stopped.  I backed away from the toilet and closed the door.  And then I ran away (just kidding).

Day 2: Toilet Gets Fixed, Bathtub Drain Clogs.  Thankfully, I have a brother who works in construction.  He came out the next day.  He could not find the water shut-off valve either.  It there ever was one, it appears to be behind a wall now.  So, he had to shut off the water at the box by the curb.  He fixed the toilet and everything seemed fine.  But later that night, we noticed that the bathtub drain was not working. So, my husband spent the next two days trying to clear the clogged drain with a “snake.”   The snake is a long wired that is used to break up clogs in pipes.  Unfortunately, it did not work, but got worse and worse.  Finally, the toilet and the bathtub stopped draining entirely.

Day 3.  The Other Bathroom.  With one bathroom not working, we had to use the other bathroom.  In the early morning hours of day 3, my daughter started to cry.  She had dropped her orange plastic bracelet in the toilet in the second bathroom as it was flushing.  Luckily (or unluckily) we could still see it.  My husband fished it out with a coat hanger.  And that is when the kitten jumped in the toilet.

Day 4.  The Power Auger.  My brother came back  the next day and spent the better part of the day trying to clear the bathtub drain.  When I came home from work, there had been little progress in removing the clog, which we discovered was in our main drain pipe coming out of the house.  This is when we had to rent the power auger, which is a power tool used to snake the drain.  After about an hour of using the power auger on the pipe outside the house, he successfully cleared the drain.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  Finally everything was fixed.

Day 5.  Soaking Wet Floor.  And then I woke up the next morning and stepped on the carpet in my bedroom, which was soaked with water.  My brother came back and discovered that we had broken a pipe during all of that snaking.  Now all of the bathtub water was draining into my bedroom.  We stopped using the bathtub and started running a box fan in my bedroom to dry the carpet.

Day 6.  Through the Rabbit Hole.  The only way to fix the bathtub pipe was to go through the wall of my closet.  The access panel to the bathtub was in the back of my closet, so I had to remove half of the clothes in the closet so that my brother could fix the pipe behind the bathtub. He fixed everything and, finally, that was the actual end of our week of plumbing disasters.

On the seventh day, we learned that tropical storm Issac was heading in our direction.

Have you ever had a week like this where you felt like everything is falling apart?

Hurricanes Are Stressful

Our family spent the weekend preparing for a hurricane.  My brother, my husband, and our neighbor cut down tree branches that looked likely to break.  We removed things from the yard that could blow away.  We filled the car up with gas.  We bought non-perishable food and drinks.  These were the things that we did to keep us safe, to keep objects in the backyard from blowing throw our windows.  However, there were also a number of things that we have done all year long to manage stress related to a hurricane.

As a resident of Florida, I have some experience with tropical storms and hurricanes.  Luckily in my case, most of my experiences have been annoying rather than traumatic.  I lived here in 2004 when there was one hurricane after another–Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne.  Before that time, I wasn’t too concerned about them.  I really just had no experience with them to understand their danger.

Hurricane Charley was the hurricane that really scared me.  It was one of the first hurricanes that was predicted to make a direct hit in the city where I lived.  I was less concerned because I was not in a mandatory evacuation zone near the coast, but as it approached I got more and more frightened.  Hurricane Charley was a fast moving hurricane with a lot of strength.  It blew through the state of Florida quickly, like a massive tornado.

The days before a hurricane are unsettling.  You sit by the computer and the television waiting for updates and hoping that your home is not in the path.  In the days leading up to Hurricane Charley, we watched and waited for the path to veer in a direction away from our city.  It didn’t.  So then we had to make a decision.  Should we evacuate or stay?  Each choice has good points and bad points.  When you evacuate, you join a mass exodus of people in cars carrying as many of their worldly belongings as possible.  There are unhappy pets and kids.  There are gas shortages along the highway.  You may have trouble finding a place to stay, and it is possible that the hurricane could follow you or worse, avoid your home, and instead hit in the place to which you evacuate.  If your home is on or near water, you may have no choice but evacuate as ordered by the municipality where you live.

In the end, we did not choose to evacuate, but instead chose to prepare.  We taped up windows and put valuables in plastic boxes.  We gathered food and prepared a place to hide in case the worst came.  We gathered batteries, radios, and flashlights.  This took half the night.  I awoke early in the morning to all my phones ringing.  It was my mother begging me to get in the car and drive…away.  But by then it was too late.  The hurricane was coming and being out in the middle of an open highway, possibly stuck in traffic, was not a good idea.

So we stayed and watched.  We were lucky.  Charley came ashore in Port Charlotte, Florida, as a category 4 hurricane and had winds of 150 miles per hour.  It was definitely something to avoid.  But it did not hit us.  It basically ran up the middle of the state, and the worst part of it completely avoided us.  Nonetheless, there were several people who lost their lives.  Many of those who survived lost everything.

Looking  back, there were several things that I learned, which have helped me manage stress when a hurricane approaches.

You Cannot Predict or Control a Hurricane

When a hurricane hits, you have to expect that the worst will happen and plan for the worst.  After the Charley experience, I would evacuate if another strong hurricane was predicted to hit my home.  Hurricanes are sometimes tricky to predict, so you have to keep watching and adjusting your plans according to how serious it might be for your area.  If it looks like it will hit you directly, you should consider leaving or staying in a shelter.

Protect What Is Most Important to You

There is nothing like a hurricane to teach you what is really important to you.  If you have to evacuate, you will have limited time to go through your home and gather together important things.   You will either need to pack them securely or bring them with you when you evacuate.  Be sure to take all living things with you.  Pets will not necessarily be safe if your home is damaged.  Also, gather sentimental objects, legal documents, medications, pet and kid needs, electronics, and anything else you deem important.

Get Insurance Before Hurricane Season

One thing that should make you feel better about a hurricane coming is being insured.  You should make sure to buy insurance before hurricane season starts in the spring.  Be sure to discuss the types of insurance that you need with a knowledgeable insurance agent.  Your homeowner’s insurance may not cover all of the damage from a hurricane.  You may need flood insurance if your home is full of water or car insurance if a tree falls on your car.

Have  A Plan

In general, my family has a plan for various types of storms.  When a storm poses little danger, we typically stay and prepare for the fact that we might lose power for a few days.  We live near the water in an evacuation zone, so there are times when we are required to leave due to the danger of the storm.  For those times, we have identified friends and family with whom we can stay.

Work Together to Prepare

There is no better time to meet your neighbors as when a hurricane is on the way.  Neighbors share a responsibility for making a neighborhood safe during a hurricane because things that are dangerous on one person’s property, like rotten tree branches or debris, become dangerous for others.  If a hurricane is coming, take time to help your neighbors if they need it.  If you need help, do not be afraid of asking your neighbors for help.  Remember to enlist the help of other members of your family, including your children, as you are preparing for the hurricane.

If you have experienced a hurricane, what did you do to manage stress?

Lately I have been in the process of making a major decision.  I will let you know more about the topic of the decision once I have made it. However, I can tell you that it is a decision that will affect virtually everything in my life for the rest of my life.  It has been an extremely difficult decision to make, and it has been on my mind for more than a month.

There have been some things that I have done to cope with the stress of making this major decision that have been very helpful to me.

Discuss the Decision With Other People

Over the past month, I have spent a lot of time discussing the decision with so many people, including family, friends, and colleagues.  I have tried to get the opinions of people I trust and especially people who will not be as affected by the decision.   Each person has provided a different perspective on the decision and on the risks and benefits of each option.  Talking to so many people has helped me think through the good points and bad points of each option.

Maintain Yoga and Exercise Routines

For me, yoga and exercise both help relieve my stress.  Often, when people are under a high amount of stress, they stop things like yoga or exercise because they feel like they do not have time to do them.  I have tried to be mindful of the benefits of my yoga and my gardening activities and have tried to keep doing them as much as I can.

Take a Break from Thinking About the Decision

Making a major decision can consume all of your thoughts.  One thing that I have done that has been very helpful is to take time away from the decision making process.  In other words, I have tried to take a weekend off of thinking about it.  Instead I have done other things, like reading a book or spending time with my friends and family.  By doing so, I have helped reduce the stress I feel when I consider the implications of the decision and the changes in my life that would occur when I make the decision.

“Try On” the Decision

For the most part, my choice was made about a week ago.  So, over the past week I have been trying to act as if the decision has been made.  I have started to make small changes in my life that are in line with the choice that I made.  In other words, I am “trying on” what I have decided to see if I feel good about it.  “Trying on” the decision can only be done if you still have time to choose one option over others.    As you “try on” the decision, if you feel that the choice you made was completely wrong, you have the opportunity to change your mind before it is too late.

Making a major life decision has been very stressful for me.  In making the decision, I tried to be mindful about my level of stress and used techniques to reduce my stress.   I have to say that I am looking forward to resuming my life after this decision is made.

What about you?  How have you coped with the stress of making a major life decision in your life?

Photo courtesy of Mihai Tamasila.

Going Back to School Can Be Stressful

I found myself in Kohl’s this weekend looking for a pair of shoes for my child.  It was mobbed. It looked like a day after Thanksgiving sale.  This is when it really hit me that it was time for kids to go back to school.  Going back to school is an annual ritual for children who do not have school in the summer. Despite the fact that it is a predictable event, it can be a stressful time for both parents and children alike for several reasons.

First, going back to school is expensive.  After a few months away from school, it becomes clear that the kids have grown out of their clothes and need more supplies.  If a family has multiple school-age children, the costs can really add up.  Second, going back to school involves some unknowns.  Most of the time, both the student and his or her parents have to adjust to a new teacher, who may or may not work well with the child.  Also, some children and their parents may face the possibility of starting the year at a new school, which has many unknowns.  Third, going back to school is a transitional time, which means adjusting to the schedule of school, getting up in the morning, having to do homework, and having to manage sports and extracurricular activities.  It is no wonder that many families experience stress when going back to school.

You can manage the stress of going back to school throughout the year if you remember that it is an event that happens over and over. Here are some tips for how to manage stress of going back to school.

Buy School Supplies and Clothes All Year Round

Although you may save some money, back to school sales are stressful.  Being in Kohl’s this weekend was like being in a developing country.  There were people and merchandise everywhere.  When we tried to purchase a pair of shoes, we found that one of the pair of shoes we wanted was missing.  This was an experience I hope to avoid next year.   Most of the time, I try to buy school supplies and clothes for my child all year round.  I look for sales and keep a stockpile of things she might need.  I give my child her favorite color school uniform shirts and dresses for birthday and holiday gifts.  By the time that school starts in the summer, I usually have everything that I need and can avoid all retail establishments right before school starts.

Help Your Child Prepare

If your child is going to a new school, you will need to help him or her prepare for what to expect.  Visit the school a few times and try to find his or her classrooms.  Meet the teachers.  Talk about how things will go and what will happen when he or she starts school.   If possible, start this process a few weeks before school starts so the child can get used to the idea of school.  You may also want to do this for after school activities if they are new.

Start the Transition Before It Happens

If your child has been sleeping until noon every day this summer, you will need to help him or her readjust to the school schedule.  You want to start the process of getting up early, getting dressed, and gathering everything that is needed before school starts.  Also, designate a place and time for homework to be done and stock it with necessary supplies.  Be sure to establish the school year expectations before your child’s first day back at school.

Talk to Your Child About Going Back to School

Some children get nervous about returning to school, while others are relatively unfazed.  If you child has a tendency to worry about new situations, be sure to allow the child to speak about his or her concerns.  Validate his or her worries by telling your child that you understand, and help the child think of ways to solve problems.  Listening to your child’s concerns can encourage him or her to talk to you when future challenges arise.

Here is hoping that you enjoy the last days of summer before school starts.

What do you do to manage stress related to going back to school?