WHAT ME, STRESSED?

So it’s late on a Tuesday afternoon (this post posted posthumously - does that mean I'm dead? And speaking Seuss?) and I’m feigning study… Reading about the physiological basis of stress with your hypothalamus and your autonomic nervous system and whatnot, I stumbled on this psychological tool called the Life Change Units Stress Measurement System.

Being a sucker for a pop-psych quiz, I decided to tick off a checklist of my own recent experiences in the last month or two. According to my results, my head should already have exploded from all the stressful events I have experienced recently. Psychologists are such drama queens (spoken like a true psych major drop-out). Us Life Coaches are made of sterner stuff...

Here’s what I’ve recently experienced from their list of 22 major life stressors:

Death of family member 65
Unemployment 65
Financial difficulties 35
Changing job 35
Giving up smoking 20
Changing residence 20
Changing social group 20

TOTAL STRESS COUNT
A WHOPPING 260

As a guideline for comparison, scores of 160 and over are considered to be very high ie in layman’s terms your life is pretty well fucked up at that point. I must admit, I have been sucking down the Rescue Remedy like a demon lately…. (For the benefit of my family and all other non-woo woo audience members I'll post a brief description of Rescue Remedy shortly)

By any standards I’d probably also score highly on the Life Change Units Stupidity Measurement System if they had one. Sure - convince your partner to both quit steady jobs, pack up and move everything we own interstate, to a house we’ve never seen, in a city we’ve never been to, with no money, friends or jobs to greet us on the other side. Genius!