✣ The Concerned Digest and Data-Informed De-stress

2023W03

Outside-in

Last week was my birthday, but also the most stressful week this year so far. It was so stressful that it manifested physically beyond a clouded head.

One night, in the middle of the night, I had a massive splitting headache that I had to wake up, and I almost passed out due to how painful it was.

I noticed that the pain increased when my head's position lowered. It means I must sit down or stand up to reduce the pain. I walked around the house to see if it reduced the pain, and I sat still in the middle of the night on the sofa in front of the TV.

Sleep tracker data when the splitting headache forced me to wake up in the middle of the night and just sit there for an hour, pondering.

I had three hypotheses on the headache:

1. Because I took a nap in the afternoon.

2. A problem with my wisdom teeth nerve.

3. Suddenly I pull back from caffeine after abusing it for the last two weeks.

To remedy it, I tried to take paracetamol with caffeine, hoping it would reduce the pain. It didn't do anything at all. I was getting all worried because my feet felt cold, and I was losing balance and consciousness.

I tried to hold on and think some more about what I ate during the day, so I went through my sustenance journal and found nothing but the usual meal. Although, I had too much spicy food for lunch.

Oh, wait…

While sitting in pain and going through my journals for the week, I remember having slight pain in my abdomen in the afternoon, which was unusual, but I ignored it anyway. So, maybe this is it? It may have been an increased stomach acid, which also causes headaches.

I started to connect what happened accumulatively this week with the trigger from strong spicy food.

I have always known and believed that the stomach situation is vital in maintaining one's overall health, so it is essential to keep a healthy gut. So even when it's not intuitive to connect headaches and stomach-related problems, there could be strong links.

I tried to rummage through my medicine box to find an acid-controlling medication while trying to feel the sensation some more. I couldn't find any meds, but I finally noticed the nauseousness, bloated guts, and feeling to vomit. It made the gut-headache connection stronger.

The headache was suddenly gone after the acid in my stomach seemingly rebalanced after a violent bowel movement.

It was not long since I was reminded of the death of passing colleagues and family members, and now I was experiencing a physically painful night where I was overthinking to keep myself conscious as much as possible. I was afraid I would never wake up again if I fell unconscious. It was hard not to make that connection since I've been constantly reminded about death within the past three weeks.

Upon waking up, I checked if there was an actual connection between the gut and headache, and I learned something called Gastric Headache, a secondary headache resulting from gastrointestinal issues. It still felt amazing how journaling could save my life in an urgent situation and help me de-stress.

De-stressing

Stress is uncomfortable. To my visualization, it feels like drowning in a river while gasping for air and reaching out to hold for things.

Stress is also personal. I've seen people get stressed whenever their plans keep getting disrupted, but I also saw some who didn't care about structuring their life.

Since I have lived my whole life with occasional stress, I think it's worth exploring the pattern of my stress, including the different sensations it gave, how I subconsciously cope with it, and how I experimented to de-stress.

→ Noticing Stress

Nowadays, I can pinpoint my exact sensation of stress. It comes in the form of a wave instead of a single point in time. Leading towards its physical manifestation, I noticed that keep dropping my stuff. My hand-eye coordination suddenly became distorted, and I felt rushed. Physically, my breath will be shorter, and my blood pressure will rise randomly.

Subconsciously, I slowly fell back to a combination of these patterns: overeating, or swung into the end spectrum of hyper-focused, or caffeine abuse (to stay focused) in the other extremes. The caffeine abuse often leads to an increased number of my tweets per hour, lol.

The day without caffeine is when the splitting headache happens. Notice the amount of caffeine days before and when it suddenly stops.

Journaling, which I call Day-Tracking, has been a tremendous help for me to notice the stresses. I think the value of journaling is not when you write it but when you re-read it. Reading through a recorded slice of our lives feels like shifting our perspective from the first-person to the third-person.

It's like a zoom-out view from someone experiencing a bad day to someone observing someone experiencing a bad day. It was a decisive shift, as we have spaces to recognize patterns in our lives.

Reflecting on the notes helped me to validate; is it normal? Is it an outlier? And most importantly, giving my mind time to process.

→ De-Stress

Thus, recognizing the symptoms and being more aware of my habit enables me to do interventions such as

• Acting outside-in; as moods and emotions could affect our physical situation, the same goes in backward; our switch in the physical could also elevate our moods and emotions. When I was stuck, I would walk around, preferably outside. Feeling in a rut, I would take a shower again. Can't stop craving; I would brush my teeth again. Unmotivated, I would work out to build energy.

• Take a break; knowing the boundaries and limitations of my mental bandwidth helped me decide when to take breaks. As little as standing up from my desk, leveraging timed break techniques such as Pomodoro, or as extensive as three days time off. Guilt that often comes when you take breaks amidst stressful situations could be lessened as I understand the need for the break and how long.

• Detaching; to observe the feelings more attentively and let them flow without reacting much. The boundaries will give it more time as it heals. Time will heal, but only if I take the time and care.

These are not psychological/productivity advice, merely tactics that work for me as I get to know myself a little better than yesterday.

Knowing the boundaries liberates me from burdening myself with unrealistic expectations, including the concern that this digest will get published later than usual. 🍵

To close the week, I ensured I had good food, so I ordered Seporsi Mie Kari and eased out from the week feeling relieved.

❖ Questions to you

What are the signals that you recognize from yourself when easing into a stressful situation? What are your go-to tactics to de-stress?

✻ Questions to me

I'm experimenting with a Q&A to gather anonymous/non-anonymous questions. The QnA might be a basis for the next publication post, so if you have questions to the void, share them with me here 👉 https://rep.ly/arieare

(shout out

Briandito

for sharing this tiny helpful app).