Tuesday, January 21, 2014

about time. sheesh.

It's been a loooooong time since I wrote a post on our blog and I thought I'd give it a go as a means of some A: stress relief and B: procrastination of other duties (dishes eh hem)

Have I ever told you that I have CRAZY psychotic nightmares/dreams that I can remember pretty frequently? And by psychotic I mean that they are sometimes violent, gory, horror film material. Most often they are dreams of my children being close to the edge of my bed and they're falling off the edge of my bed so I launch myself forward to save them (I really do launch across the bed to try and catch the imagined child in peril-poor jack). Sometimes there will be an alarm going off in my dream and for some reason I can't get it to turn off and that's the only thing that makes me realize that I am in fact dreaming and there really is an alarm going off and I need to wake up. I think it has something to do with the fact that I may have some anxiety issues. Anytime I notice my dreams getting more and more "out there" I start to take stock on my life, and my stress level. As soon as I do so, I notice patterns of increasing stress levels. It doesn't matter if it's good stress or bad stress- either is sufficient to send me into the deep recesses of my nightmares leaving a mother of 4 waking up feeling as though I've been running an emotional marathon rather than logging some serious R and R. At some point I think I will find a good therapist to see if there are things that would help me manage said stress levels. For now, however, I will stick to the things that I've found to help until I can afford to spend the money on a therapist.
Things that help me to de-stress:

  • Massage with lavender
  • Listening to a calming soundtrack (sounds of the ocean, or classical music)
  • Nice Hot Bubble Bath
  • Fresh clean sheets from the dryer
  • a good movie to cry over and letting it all out with a soft box of tissues 
  • making a list of things that are stressing me out- taking note of which ones are things I can control/change and which ones I need to let go of
  • looking for good quotes that pertain to that situation on Pinterest
So now here is the issue- how does one make the time to do these things regularly in order to stay mentally and emotionally happy??

The Larsens