Differences

Every person on this Planet is different and every person on this Planet deals with stress or frustration or obstacles in his or her life differently. There are as many different reactions to a single problem as there are people involved and neither one is more right or wrong than the other. Unfortunately sometimes people tend to forget that and try to apply their way of reacting to others, meaning no harm but making everything worse by doing that.

I have learned this in the last couple of weeks by experience. I met my ex and we both realized there are potentially more feelings for each other than expected. So we had to deal with the situation, knowing that however we decided to go on with our relationship, it would have an impact on both our lives. While my initial reaction was that we just try to be friends, staying in contact through social media, messages and phone, his reaction was to play dead and disappear from my life. Which isn't very helpful for me because I miss him terribly but won't get any reaction whatsoever from him, no matter how hard I try. Eventually I have to accept that this is his way of coping with the situation. Maybe one day he will be able to get back in contact.

When my Grandmother died everyone in my family reacted different. While my mom started feverishly calling everyone she knows, all relatives and close friends and everyone who knew my grandmother, my aunt fell into some kind of organizing mode and started sorting out all the stuff my grandmother had, giving away everything that wasn't personal things, like pictures or books or clothes. My mom is a really emotional person and started crying when my aunt yelled at her. Which shows that my aunt is coping by being pretty angry and dishing out, which she did even more when my mother started being emotional. I pretty much curled up on the couch and cried as much as I felt was necessary at the beginning. I sometimes cry when I think about the last time I saw her, or when we had to pack her stuff and empty out her room at the retirement home she had lived at the last few years.

Whenever I am hurt, sad, frustrated or stressed I usually talk about it. I need to get it out of my head, I feel the urge to put my thoughts into words. I overdo it a lot of times (I blogged about it before, read the post here if you want), creating problems that were not there before I started looking at that tiny problem from a million different angles. Sometimes it frustrates me and everyone around me even more, but a lot of times it helps, at least for me. Getting a few other opinions from friends usually helps me getting my head straight. Sometimes it makes me realize that I have a totally different opinion, sometimes one of my friends, looking at it from a more distant point of view manages to put my thoughts into words far better than I would have been able to do it.

On top of that I love quotes or phrases or poems, those little sentences help me cope with whatever is happening, and music. Sometimes reading or listening to the lyrics of a song makes me realize that I am not the only one who has to deal with problems, pain, frustration, stress or heartache.

How do you cope with things if nothing is going as planned? Any tips on how to cope with stress? Or good ideas on how to relax?

Irene