In a crisis, I am about as cool and calm as a box of excitable frogs in the rain. That is, not very cool and calm.
Last week, when I was preparing for a client pitch, my mum messaged to tell me there had been a glitch in the voting system and my vote in the EU referendum wouldn’t be counted. I had a meltdown; including a little shouting, quite a lot of red-faced action and maybe even a little foot-stamping. Turns out it was a hilarious joke on my mum’s part (I voted to remain, by the way and I’m livid about everything in life right now…) and my vote had been registered. But, the fall out from the joke was that I was totally off my game in the client pitch. I just can’t deal with stress.
This week, it came to a head a bit. As I write this, I have had three migraines in three days and, my hopes are that today will be the day to buck the trend. I’m not hopeful, though, because my vision is very odd already.
For those of you who don’t get migraines, let me tell you about them. Firstly, NEVER mistake a mere headache (even a bad one) for a migraine. It’s like comparing a sneeze with a bout of flu that leaves you delirious for a week. Migraines are totally debilitating. When I have one, I first go blind. All of a sudden, out of almost nowhere, I’ll get a colourful zigzag across my eyes, as if I’ve looked at the sun too long. That zigzag will stay in my eyes for the next hour or so before being followed by a headache that feels a little bit as though my eyeballs are in a vice. It hurts to have my eyes open, it hurts to have them closed. When it’s really bad, my whole digestive system shuts down, so I can’t eat or drink and, I am so disorientated I can’t string a sentence together – all I can do is lie down and wait.
My migraine trigger is always stress. I get migraines on first days in new jobs, or when I am dreading a meeting or when things are getting really nasty at home (like when you’re living with your ex post break-up, as I had to last year for a few weeks). It’s pretty scary that my body is so unequipped at dealing with stress that, when it gets too much, it makes me go blind and shut down completely.
I am rubbish at relaxing. Yesterday I sat cross-legged in yoga class with one eye open as the girl behind me sat trying to stifle a cough. I wondered, with irritation, why she didn’t just leave the room and get a drink. I should have been concentrating on my breath and being zen, of course.
Every time I try and chill out, I get bored or distracted. It’s some kind of talent I have that I can turn anything into a stressful event. When I am in yoga, I make it competitive in my head. When I’m chilling at home, I start to think what a mess it is and that I should probably clean up. Even when I am totally debilitated with a migraine, I’m thinking how much stuff I have to do as soon as it’s passed. Even now, I am writing rather than closing my laptop and going to bed.
Dealing with stress is something you just have to get good at. We live in crazily stressful times, when we’re always available to contact, always on the go and always struggling to make ends meet. If you don’t learn to cope with it, you’re putting your health at risk – and probably a lot more than that – your sanity, job, relationships, etc. Ugh! And, with that, I am going to bed – both eyes closed, and laptop off.
