Journal 3.3 Stress Relief Reminders...

So, I need to remind myself to relieve stress. Interesting. How do I relieve the stress of going back to school? Oh, that's not a stress I don't guess. On previous pages in our text book I have examined my stressors and relievers. A stressor is doing laundry. A stress reliever is not doing laundry. But, then it turns into a stressor again because I have no clean clothes to wear. Problem. The cycle starts all over. I have narrowed down my stressors to three. I have identified strategies to reduce stress, possibly, if I don't forget to remind myself to take action on them. 1. To reduce the stress caused by a traumatic set of life changing events, I will need to have the reslove to use every resource available to me. I am speaking in terms of reducing stress hindering my healing spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. 2. To reduce the stress the stress caused by unexpected heart attacks--wait I mean't panic attacks--they often mimic heart attack symptoms, I have to stop. Yes, they can be embarrassing, since there is no where to hide while having one at times. But, the goal is to change my breathing, get to a "pleasant place" in my mind for example riding a trail on a horse and enjoying the outdoors. 3. To reduce the stress caused by hypervigilence, I will try to scale it back a notch or two. Maybe I will carry one less pepper spray, one less golf club, one less well--whatever. Maybe I can sit on the front row in class and not on the back row. I don't handle individuals being behind me where I can't see them very well. I would hate to have to unleash my Ninja skills. 4. Lastly, one stressor I have is the ability to forgive. I cannot do it yet. It sounds good to say "You forgive the other person not for them, but for you". Or, Jesus commands us to forgive 70x7. I never had to face the forgiving concept spoken of in the Bible, until some traumatic events happened. Yes, it harms me in many ways. However, recently I thought of forgiving the other person as a way of thinking "You hurt me. You caused me pain". No one else did. You did. I feel better knowing that for me to forgive someone is to admit that they harmed me. And caused me pain, and that I need the ultimate Forgiver to inspire me to let the pain go, as much as possible.