we discussed in Rung 1, there is a direct link between emotional health and heart health. In fact, researchers at the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have found that emotional stressors may trigger changes that can cause such health issues as coronary artery dysfunction, headaches, digestive problems, insomnia, and even cancer.
Stress is both inevitable and ubiquitous in most of our lives; yet we seem at a loss for ways to modulate it for ourselves. We all have so many responsibilities that we rarely allow ourselves a moment to think, to experience—to dream. And unless we get a handle on our lives, emotional angst can have serious consequences. But, what can we realistically incorporate into our daily lives to help get us through the difficult days? This rung is devoted to finding those ways and means.
The Kaizen Secret
The whole concept of being Better Than Before implies change—and the best place to start is in your mindset. Granted, it’s not possible to become the pure, innocent five-year-old you, who (hopefully) never experienced an emotional crisis. But you can constantly try to be better than a day ago, an hour ago, or even a minute ago. The secret is to take small steps, what the Japanese call Kaizen (from the ancient Chinese words meaning “change to make good or better”). It is all about making an effort to continually improve each day in very small increments. You can begin by gradually replacing the negative self-talk that keeps you from becoming the person you truly want to be.
You Are Not Alone
We all suffer from something, be it as simple as cuticle biting, jaw clenching, or smoking; to more complex issues such as chronic stress, fears, low self-esteem, neuroses, and phobias. In response to these universal complaints, everywhere you look there’s something either written or broadcast about stress management. What not to eat, what not to drink, what not to think. The fact that you know you shouldn’t be stressed—and you are—can cause even more stress. Take The Lawyer, for example, and his Orwellian theory on ice cream: “Forcing myself to resist my natural urges to eat it will cause more harmful stress than the physical LDL damage of eating it. So therefore, it will be even worse for my arteries to not eat ice cream!”(Huh?)
Chances are you are one of the millions of people who are overwhelmed in every aspect of their lives—at work, at home, in relationships, financially, and even by the little yet annoying things such as traffic jams and people with too many food items in the express checkout line. Unfortunately, the stress epidemic sweeping our country is not only widespread; it’s also on the rise. Perhaps that’s because the sources of stress are also multiplying.
Stress is epidemic. According to the American Psychological Association, 77 percent of Americans say that they “regularly experience physical symptoms,” 73 percent have “experienced psychological symptoms,” and 48 percent feel that “their stress has increased over the past five years.”
Stress Comes in Many Forms
The major personal stressors are well-known: Illness, dating and marriage, breakup and divorce, and the death of a friend or loved one. Then we all have career and financial worries. And for the more emotionally fragile, almost any change from their normal pattern can set emotional anguish in motion. Additionally, there are environmental stressors, such as smog and noise pollution. In today’s digital world, stress may also come from a constant bombardment of e-mails, texts, and voice messages that gives us the feeling of being on-call 24/7.
However, the most difficult stress to deal with may stem from within—low self-esteem. It is most often triggered by trying to live up to the expectations of others—or what we assume others think of us. There will always be those who are more beautiful, wealthier, or more successful. You are who you are. And if you are doing the best that you can, there is no reason to feel “less than.”
We must also address the fears that turn into phobias and anxiety, that horrific sense of being out of control. It can be associated with a specific issue, such as flying, public speaking, driving on freeways, or even visiting the doctor. (Being that I am a hypochondriac, the very sight of a white coat, even on a butcher, causes my blood pressure to soar to stroke levels.) Anxiety can also manifest in that general sense of dread that comes out of nowhere, sometimes for no particular reason, but frightens the heck out of you.
That brings us to perhaps the greatest source of stress of all—motherhood, the veritable mother lode of emotional stress. No matter how good a parent we may be, we all feel (undoubtedly correctly) that we have made mistakes along the way. We fear, for example, that our kids will always remember the time(s) we sent them to school when they felt sick to their stomach, believing that it was only because we had other things to do—and the school nurse promptly sent them back home (secretly, I feared, thinking I was an unfit mother).
While we all make sacrifices for our children, every mother feels guilty about something. If we work, we wish we stayed home. If we choose to stay home, even for the first year or so, we think we should be doing more important things with our lives than discussing the relative merits of Pampers versus Huggies.
Sometimes we erroneously assume that we have the best of both worlds. When Elise, my youngest, was born, I began to write a few days a week from my home office. Granted, it was nice to secretly wear sweats and bunny slippers when I was doing important phone interviews. But unfailingly, every time I made a call, the children began to loudly attack one another in one made-up game or another. I would sigh and assert to my sympathetic interviewee that an inconsiderate coworker had brought his or her disorderly kids into the office.
For all you new moms, I do have good news—it does get easier with each child, I swear. For example, when Alex was a newborn, I used to rush him to the pediatrician whenever his temperature reached 98.7. With Philip, four years later as a more experienced mom, it was only when it got over 100. By the time Elise came along six years after that, I wasn’t even upset when her temperature hit 102. Knowing by then that a healthy child tends to fever high to naturally fight infection, I merely gave her a dose of liquid Tylenol and kept a close vigil. Suffice it to say, she’s still alive and thriving.
Yes, dads suffer stress, too! But as women, we tend to have even more responsibilities. We are nurturers by nature; so, for the most part, child care is in a mother’s domain. It’s exhausting just thinking that it could be possible to have it all—if we do it all. And we can’t. It’s both physically and mentally impossible.
And trust me on this one, ladies, it is okay to not be Wonder Woman. She’s the one who gets up at 5 AM, sprints to the gym, then showers, answers all e-mails, fixes her family a breakfast of flaxseed banana waffles with organic maple syrup, and is ready to go to the office as soon as she drives her 2.4 equally perfect children to school. Her male counterpart is just as accomplished. Not only does he hold down a high-powered day job, but he is a nationally ranked squash player and on weekends writes poetry when not competing in an Ironman Triathlon. In a pinch, he can reshingle his roof. But unless they actually hail from the planet Krypton, inside they’re a hot mess!
And I know this in part from my brief foray into Super-parenthood. It was one winter, many moons ago; I had really felt sorry for my husband as he somehow managed to always get sick at the exact same time as the children. Needless to say, he did not get a whole lot of sympathy. So when everyone was well, I decided to make it up to him. “Tomorrow, dear,” I announced, “I will prepare you a special breakfast, lay out your clothes, and drive you to work.”
So I spent more time fussing over his meal than I did taking care of the children that morning. They had cold cereal; he had steel-cut oats with walnuts. I carefully chose his suit and tie, and even made sure that he wasn’t wearing one brown shoe and one black, as sometimes happens when he dresses himself. And as soon as I rushed my older sons
