To add to my stress, I'm being challenged with my TSU students. It's a great learning experience that will add a lot to my future career but is a stressful challenge none the less. I am now starting the process of moving out of this rut.
- aside: the reason I haven't been able to manage my stress is I haven't been
meditating regularly. Too busy, tired, etc... I have lots of lame excuses of why
I haven't. It's SO crucial though!
No negative emotion is good to experience/feel for an extended period of time. The only exception I can think of might be grief. The kind of negative emotions such as stress and anxiety are the kind of emotions that are not good to experience/feel for an extended period of time.
I know many people say it's good to feel emotions of any kind and that we shouldn't be afraid of them or try to avoid feeling them or push them down or away. I believe this is only beneficial if you acknowledge the emotion you're feeling and try to work through it and release it. You're not meant to feel anything but love or any emotion stemming from love for extended periods of time. However, I know it's hard to work through an emotion if you're living from ego. I use energy work and spiritual exercises like meditation to release emotions. Some people get caught up in trying (ad nauseum) to analyze why they're feeling this emotion. That's not the best way for lots of people. As Deborah King says, it's not necessary to re-live certain old traumas in order to release the emotions and blocks they may be causing you.
Too many people accept feeling crappy mentally/emotionally for extended periods of time. This should not be acceptable. If you find yourself feeling very stressed or anxious (or any other negative emotion) for an extended period of time, you need to do something to change your life situation. You need to decide what you feel is too long - time is relative so only you can tap into your intuition and feel what is not good for you. For me it's longer than a month.
This is frequently the kind of thing that cause people to feel like they need a drink or smoke or other negative coping mechanism when they get home from work to reduce the stress/anxiety. I noticed this pattern in myself over the past couple months. In addition to needing a drink or smoke when I get home from school, I noticed the stress was causing me to be unusually fatigued and that led to not feeling like cooking healthy meals every night which led to me feeling even more like crap, which made me want to drink/smoke more which made me more stressed. It's a viscous cycle.
Too many people who are in a similar cycle don't recognize it or do anything about it. It can easily lead to depression. Many people go to a psychiatrist to get psychiatric drugs to get relief, thinking their must be something wrong with their minds.
Let me tell you, from experience, this does not help - it only makes things worse because the reason you were probably feeling crappy to begin with is you weren't following your intuition. You need to be honest with yourself and always be true to your unique desires/talents. You should strive for a happy or at least peaceful existence. Why would you want to settle for anything less?
As usual, I welcome your comments/experiences. :)
