When I get stressed, I have a handful of effective coping mechanisms:
1) Crying. If it's been one of those days and nothing has gone well, a stubbed toe or paper cut will be enough to send me into a terrible fit of crying, usually in the privacy of my car or the shower. These fits usually last about 10 minutes and leave me exhausted and grumpy but feeling better about things in general.
2) Stop talking. For anyone who knows me, it's tough to imagine me keeping my mouth shut for any period of time. I talk a lot, and often about nothing at all. But when stress gets to be too much, I tend to shut down and keep to myself. This usually makes my mom pester me about it until I lose my temper and freak out, which usually makes me feel better in the end.
3) Baking. I love baking. Whether it's pie or cookies, bread or multi-level cakes, I want to bake it. Websites like Pintrest and StumbleUpon don't help me at all. Friends send me recipes they think sound good, and I horde them away for a time when I'm an emotional wreck and desperately need to bake.
Each of my methods of dealing with stress has pros and cons. Crying makes me splotchy and often causes people to stare at me when I'm driving. But it takes the least amount of time to get over and done with. Not communicating makes it quiet for everyone else, but is a problem that seems to build until I eventually lose my mind and take my anger out on someone, which really isn't positive. And while baking is relaxing and gives me something to take my mind off of my problems, eating four-dozen cookies makes a girl fat, and extra weight leads to more stress, then more baking, and so on.
So I'm working on the perfect hybrid way of coping with stress: silently crying while baking treats to give to friends, family and loved ones. It's ideal, really. I get to sob hysterically in the privacy of my kitchen, with only my mixing bowls to hear me. No one will be around to judge me, or for me to yell at when I lose it. Also, the relaxing element of baking might calm me down enough that I won't even want to yell at the people I usually like. Plus, by sharing my baking, I'm both amassing great karma for doing awesome deeds and bribing people to like me more, which could lead to less stress in the future.
After reading this, I'm thinking that journalism was not the correct career choice for me. Time to switch to psychology and become a therapist.
Tonaya Marr doesn't have finals this semester, because she's on internship. So she doesn't have a lot of stress at the moment. If you want advice on how to constructively deal with your problems, e-mail Tonaya at [email protected] or tweet at @TonayaMarr. See you next week!
