Personal Narrative: Chronic Stress

I fight for my health every day in ways most people do not understand I lay in bed struggling just to get up in the morning only to get faced with a new day of troubles. All I think about is the day that being a normal eighteen year old ended for me. I was responsible went to work every day, and was trying to figure out my first year of college until everything was flipped upside down.

We also got a brother along with a mother and father. He was born with alcohol syndrome because his mother drank when she was pregnant with him. We all had our own bag of problems. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for everything that happened to me. When I was a year old, one of my foster families didn't strap me into my car seat, and they got into a wreck. The car accident started my PTSD, but after that, everything bad that happened made my PTSD worse. My sister had mental health issues, to the point where the doctors said her mindset would remain at 15 until she's 35.

My whole life, I had always thought that people reacted the same way I did in stressful situations, and the people around me experienced emotions and thoughts the same way. The realization that I overreacted and suffered immensely because of it made me feel isolated and seemed daunting, as if I would never understand or be able to fight the feeling of hopelessness that overwhelmed my system.

Everyone gets nervous every once in a while. Whether they have to present in front of a certain amount of people, or going out with someone you just met. I, on the other hand, get nervous over the smallest of daily tasks. I was in denial that I was nervous about such tasks until I had been diagnosed with anxiety about a year ago.

When you told the class about our assignment and how apart of it was going to be not using our phones for 6 hours, I felt a rush of anxiety jolt through my body as you said those words. I know that sounds terrible that I physically could feel anxiety in my body after hearing that, but it’s true, I was anxious and honestly a little annoyed. My phone is my lifeline, basically it’s like a baby to me. I have it with me for almost twenty-four hours a day and have it right beside me when I sleep.

I have never had a real tough life. I don’t have abusive parents, problems with money all the time or anything like that. You could say, looking from the outside, my life is pretty basic and it really is.The problems I do go through lie within my head.

I have used minute clinic a few times with my children getting sports physicals and once with strep throat. I was impressed by the time it took to get into the office, get the physical, and get out. I only paid half of what I did with their pediatrician of seventeen years. I did not like when I took one of my daughters in there with strep throat and had to sit over two hours! I think that was a little excess vive. However, it was the weekend and we had no other option but the emergency room and I did not want to go there and pay a $300 co pay.

It is deathly quiet in my apartment, just like always. Every night I come home to silence, no one to greet me ‘hello’ or a ‘how was your day’. My father left my family when I was only a baby, and my mother was a bad influence, so my aunt decided to take custody of me and my little sister. Living with my aunt was a blast, my little sister and I always had fun there. Only a couple years of living with her, my aunt and little sister passed away because of a car accident.

Anxiety and overwhelm took over me, as I began to ponder what college I would like to attend as the first semester of my senior year is coming to an end. As I began to look through what college best suits me, I knew that UNT was the perfect candidate for me. As I finalized the application, I knew that once I got into this college my whole world will drastically change as a new chapter in my life begins. Growing up in a Hispanic family wasn’t easy as I constantly had to modify my lifestyle to fit in with “my people”. My diverse culture and poor background are truly a blessing as I got the opportunity to obtain various scholarships.

Several health issues applied to me personally. I am an ex-smoker and have done my share of drinking in the past. Both, I happy to say are no longer an issue. When I was a smoker, I was one of the 23-43% of women that quit when I became pregnant. (Helgeson)I also resumed about 6 months after my daughter was born. Quitting after that was much harder, but I eventually succeeded with hypnotism. I have been smoke free for 15 years now.

Back in 7th grade I wasn’t a very smart kid. I hung out with kids that I probably shouldn’t have hung out with and I regret it to this day but will always be with me. I was a good friend with this kid and we were both out for track because it was track season. We were just getting done with practice and he wanted me to stay the night so I called me mom and she said sure. So I rode the bus home with him and when we got to West Union we got off the bus and went to his house. He said lets got to this other kids house so we walked to this kids house that was all the way on the other side of town. When we got there we were both wearing shorts and sweatshirt and we both were running through the snow so our socks were wet. When we went

Stress has always been an extremely interesting and complicated part of my life. I suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, which also results in anxiety and depression at times. During my teenage years, I self medicated frequently. I didn't want to put in the work and the time to figure out what was wrong with me and how to make it better. Drinking and experimenting with drugs was my way of processing any conflict that arose in my life. Over the past five years, I've been attending therapy, I've started hiking and camping and the birth of my child had since changed my enthusiasm for getting better. I've been baby carrying him since he was born. We've summited mountains, visited hidden, cascading waterfalls and hiked for miles into old growth forests to visit hot springs and lakes. My OCD will never be cured, but I truly work as hard as I possibly can now for myself and for my family to be strong and present and level-headed. I have a bag of emotional tools that I've become accustomed to using now and I am able to process and deal with stress in healthy and productive ways.

I have plenty of sources of stress in my life, but to narrow it down to just a few, I would have to say, my responsibility in my position at work as well as being a mother. Trying to balance both of the two can sometimes be difficult. I have a required amount of hours I have to work each week which does take away time from being a mother. I spend a lot of my time at work and not being at home as much as I would like, stresses me out. Some techniques I do use are visualization, and knowing I am not alone. Visualizing the outcome of the work I am putting in. Knowing the outcome is something that is beneficial to both he and I. I am able to provide for my family. This goes along with knowing I am not alone. I know I have people around who support

In this competitive world, stress has become unavoidable (Marrill, Read, & LeCheminant, 2009). Stress is defined as the arousal of the body and mind in response to the physical or psychological demands placed upon an individual (Marril et al., 2009). Stress stems from situations that require mental, physical and emotional adjustments (Marril et al., 2009). Literature has shown that we all experience some level of stress in our lives (Paul & Saha, 2016). Keeping this in mind, the current essay reflects upon a stressful situation which I have encountered in my life. I will begin the essay by analysing and describing the origins of my stress experience. After which, I will discuss the positive and negative outcomes of my stress. Lastly, I will

In conclusion to assessment two, my anxiety levels have diminished. The assessment required several thinking processes and encouraged me to face a few formidable challenges. Overall I had no difficulties attaining the answers, the challenges I faced were predominantly communicating and explaining my thinking and recalling the ‘language of mathematics’. At school mathematics was not one of my preferred or illustrious subjects until I had a teacher in year seven with a passion for teaching, this changed my whole perspective on mathematics and schooling completely. Over time as a parent, teacher aide and an active citizen I have encountered many problem solving situations in a work place environment and everyday occurrences, some daunting,