My high school’s formal is coming up this week. As I was looking for a dress to wear, it was really important to me to not just find a cute dress (that fits under our extensive dress code rules), but to find a special dress. If I didn’t love it, it wasn’t going to happen. I went shopping one day but wasn’t finding anything that worked for me. As I got home that night, I remembered a dress that my mom had hanging in her closet. The dress was my grandmothers and it was the dress she wore leaving her wedding reception to go on her honeymoon. I went upstairs and tried it on and it was perfect! Well….almost perfect. Due to the dress being so old, it had some tears and the fabric was worn through around the shoulders. So on Wednesday of this past week, I went to a local seamstress to see if she could fix it. (She couldn’t fix it, but luckily we came up with another plan that will hopefully make it work for next week). During this whole process though I was getting really stressed out. Lots of things are going on in my life right now and it’s amazing how each little thing causes me to fall apart. (Also my laptop completely died, so my weekly roundup posts might be extremely delayed).
The point of this story:
The day after I had all of this dress drama, I went to my Psychology class and we talked about stress. Appropriate, right? According to my Psychology textbook, stress is a,
Nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it; the arousal, both physical and mental, to situations or events that we perceive as threatening or challenging. (Psychology in Action Tenth Edition by Karen Huffman
The main thing that stuck out to me about stress is it is not necessarily the event that is stressful, most often it is our reaction to the event that makes us stressed. So when I thought my dress was not going to work out, my reaction was to go straight to panic mode, but if I had responded rationally, the event would not have been as stressful as it was.
The rest of the week had some slightly stressful situations in it, but my reaction to them was better. Knowing that I am in control of my stress level makes me calmer in these situations. (Having faith in God helps a lot also, when He is in control, I don’t have to be). Hopefully next week my dress will be done, formal will be amazing, and I will have figured out a good way to share my pictures with you and at least those stressors will be out of the way. Until then, I’ll just be here taking things one step at a time and hopefully not letting myself get too stressed out by the little things in life.
A Simple Breeze 