Stress.  Ironically in a country where it could be argued we’ve never had it so good, more and more people are suffering from it in Australia.

And I never thought I’d be among those ranks but I’m one of them.

Stress is a bastard of a thing.  It stops you sleeping, it stops you eating properly, it makes you feel like there is a giant knot in your gut that won’t go away.  It’s most certainly something that stops life being as fun as it could be.

But is the stress you are feeling valid?

Well I don’t know you but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say yes.  Yes it is.  Because you can’t control what stresses you – if you did you would most likely put a stop to it so you could stop being stressed.  Stress isn’t like say a teenage-angst depression (rather than the full blown one) where people get, as the song goes, addicted to a certain kind of sadness.  And since you can’t control what stresses you and that stress is particular to you then that stress is valid.  But it can be hard to maintain perspective.

Two pieces in the media last week have made me think about my own stress.  One was a half hour special on the ABC from the show ‘You can’t ask that!’ where they posed questions to former soldiers.  These people have, almost across the board, crippling physical, emotional and psychological impairments and will never be the same from what they went through in service of their country.  Many of them have had their relationships end or otherwise have trouble forming ones to begin with.

The other was a story on JJJ’s Hack program where they had people talking about how with the current state of the rental property market in Australia. To afford a place to rent these people have to sacrifice using the heater, eating properly and so on.  Now that may have been my world when attending Uni (I didn’t use the heater, I sat in a chair with a blanket over me and a hot water bottle between my legs) but then I wasn’t working a 40 hour week with children to support.  Amazing the amount of cold you can ignore while playing Mario Kart 64.

Now compared to those two groups I’ve got it pretty damn good.  Besides a back that plays up from time to time I don’t have any ongoing physical injuries and besides having the odd dream where I am back in high school, where I was constantly beaten up and bullied, I don’t have any emotional or psychological problems.  Financially I’m earning more money than I ever have and am comfortably ahead on my mortgage repayments.  Relationship wise I have the most wonderful wife in the world and our mutual love is never in doubt for a moment for either of us, likewise our love for our kids and theirs for us is rock solid.  Yep, compared to many I’ve got it pretty bloody good…

…yet I’m stressed as hell!

Does this mean my stress is less valid than others?  Well maybe the above groups would see me the same way I reacted to the suicide of Robin Williams a few years ago.  The outpouring of sadness from the public was phenomenal.  My reaction was somewhat different.  All I could think was “He had children – how DARE he kill himself!  When you have kids suicide is off the table, even if they are grown up –  period!  And what was wrong with his life anyway?  A multi-millionaire, internationally famous and beloved – what the f*ck did he have to kill himself over?  I’d kill to have the life he just threw away!”

In retrospect I didn’t know the man personally.  I don’t know what stresses he had in his life, though it was probably more a deep seated depression that caused him to take the action he did.  Just as other groups could look at me and be disgusted at me being stressed considering my relative good fortune, I reacted the same way to him and that was not the right thing to do.  Just because on the surface he had it a lot better than I doesn’t mean the stresses he felt in his life were any less valid.

I don’t want to go in to my own stresses too much.  Suffice it to say I am desperately trying to change careers and am feeling very trapped at my inability to do so due to my lack of experience in other fields.  I’m being turned down for jobs that pay half as much and require more hours yet provide less yearly leave than I get now.  I can’t simply quit my current job as I have a mortgage and bills to pay and a family to support – my actions affect far more than me.  My beautiful daughter still does not sleep properly and there is only one or two nights a week that my wife and I get enough sleep – sleep deprivation really does your head in, especially when it’s been going on for years.  I keep trying and failing at quitting cigarettes, mainly because I am stressed and I smoke when I’m stressed, and the fact I am smoking is making me stress about that too.  There are other stresses in my life but these are probably the big 3.

I try to combat this by thinking of all the good I have.  I have a wonderful wife, 2 beautiful children, a nice house and hobby a farm in the country. My job at least pays well and is reasonably secure.  I’m in no imminent danger of not having food in my belly or a roof over my head.  Does this dwelling on the positives always work? Often but certainly not always.  There are times I’m lying there awake for hours in the middle of the night and all the negatives in my life join forces and become a bit too much.  Those nights the giant knot in my gut rules the roost.

So how does one combat stress?  Well, there are a million experts out there that will give you the answer (and probably charge you a pretty penny for doing so) so I won’t really go into that.  All I can say is do what works for you.  Whether that’s spending time with friends and family, losing yourself in movies and television, having a beer at the end of a long day – it’s what relaxes you.  But, if I had all the answers I wouldn’t be stressed myself.

So don’t stress that your stress is not valid.  If you are feeling stressed and think you shouldn’t because there are those worse off than you, just remember that there are also people that are better off than you and they get stressed as well.

Now if you excuse me, I’m off to play with my kids and then sit on my veranda and have a beer -that’s what works well for me.

Got something to add or say about the article above?  Would love to read it in the comments section below!