Personal Narrative: The Stress Barometer

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 quickly swallowed my homemade authentic Indian food leftovers and gulped down my chocolate milk. Looking down at my watch that read 11:28am, I knew that I only had two minutes until my most favorite part of the day: recess. This particular day in 5th grade, I had run a lap around the playground before getting the rest of recess to myself. As I started walking for my warmup, another student ran up and said, “My parents said that your people caused 9/11.” Completely caught off guard, I held back the tears in my eyes and tried to shake off his comment. I had never encountered something like this.

The state of resiliency is the competence to recover quickly from difficulties; resilient individuals are efficient in avoiding anguish. In the past I have encountered multiple situations where there was no option but to be resilient. At a young age I experienced homelessness. My mother could not pay the bills in the apartment, so we were evicted. Imagine being led astray not knowing when the struggling times were going to end and then having to undertake school. That was a very arduous time for me being that I was only a freshman. Living in that position was not a thrill; we wondered from place to place like drifters. The steadiest time period was when my family and I slept on my mom’s coworker’s living room floor that lasted about 8 months. Because of this financial depression

After the incident, there were multiple Acute Critical Stress Symptoms that have occurred. Upon discovering the hole on the fuel truck, I froze and slowly climbed down the truck, myself and the driver of the truck assumed that the mortar round was inside the truck (it turned out, the mortar round hit the tank and ricochet and hit the ground, leaving an 8 inches hole). I have been thinking about the incident and the what if scenario kept playing on my head. There were a great deal of questions, such as, exposing my team to danger, to include the considerable amount of what could have gone wrong that could have loss many lives that night. I woke up several times with a cold sweat, nightmares, difficulty sleeping and fear of event repetition.

The 6 point grading scale along with my erratic home life has made it challenging to get good grades. My mom is an alcoholic. Her drinking became really atrocious in 8th grade through my junior year. She went to get help at a treatment center at the beginning of my sophomore year. When she got back, she relapsed several times during the next year, but in the middle of my Junior year she drank for the last time and has not touched alcohol since. The drinking and having an autistic brother put an enormous amount of stress on my parents marriage and they ended up getting a divorce in 10th grade. I lived with my mom and saw my dad just a few hours a week maybe less for the next few years. I was forced to grow up quicker than most kids because

It was a quiet week in the Sadr City and the surrounding area. And we were gearing up to support another Red hat and Orange hat operation (Special Ops Teams) but this time the Seals were also included in this operation. The operation was to secure and capture a building with Four High-Value Targets (HVI’s) from Iran to include a high ranking officer out of the Jaish Mahdi Army (JAM) that were supposedly having a meeting. We were given four hours of prep time after Warning ORDER was given to the platoon. The Company has been waiting for this mission for about two weeks now. This time I was a Bradley Commander in the Platoon and we did not have much to get ready because we have our equipment and Bradley’s always ready and prepared for this mission or any mission within a short notice. This made things so much easier for me to concentrate for all things to have ready for the mission. This would give me the chance to cross talk with the Teams we were going to support, this would include call signs, radio freqs, CCP’s and exfill routes among other intelligence they could share with us. In the past three months the JAM had been avoiding the fighting, and we knew that the JAM would have their backs to the wall and would fight if they had to fight it out.

When I was about twelve, I self diagnosed myself with anxiety. I was at a river in Austin with my mom and my two aunts. At that age, I was insecure about everything that had to do with my body. “Come on, get in!” I heard my over enthusiastic aunt yell from the dirty, brown water. I wanted to get in, but my mind was telling me, “Everyone is going to think your body is ugly”, and “Don’t get in, just sit and wait for them to come back”, so that’s what I did.

It was 9:00 a.m. Arriving 30 minutes early gave me time to get to explore the building I would be spending the next year in. I breathed in the crisp, metallic smell of drywall and aluminum. The school felt new and so was I in a way. It had been over 10 years since I have been in a classroom. How different would it be? Did students still use pens and notebooks? Would I be able to immerse myself in this new digital-dependent society to succeed? Would I be aging myself speaking these fears aloud? There was only one way to find out if my uncertainties and trepidations were true. I grasped the cold handle on the door and stepped into my future.

It’s been over a year since I came to understand what it is like to have anxiety---and not just have it, but to live with it day in and day out. This is my story.

The first taste of freedom is when a person turns sixteen and for me that was my first taste of freedom. Turning sixteen is the first taste of freedom for many because people get a car and licenses. However, I got a car, but I did not get my licenses until June. The reason I did not receive my license to later because my parents did not believe I was ready for my licenses. The day I went to take my test it was the most exciting and stressful day of my life. When I went to the DMV it was packed as usual and I was scared that I would not be able to take the test. I sat there waiting for two hours thinking of all the terrible scenarios for me to fail the test. When my number appeared on the board, I felt all my blood rush to my heart and hands started to shake with the nervous feeling of taking the test. I stood with my dad walked towards the desk and sat down to feel out the information to receive my licenses. This was my first step to freedom.

"Most everyone has a daily regimen that they follow like gospel. In mathematics, this would be considered commutative property:

Fatigue. What a faithful friend. It creates frustration. It slows down daily functions. It removes extracurricular activities you once could accomplish. It causes you to not want to wake up in the morning. It encourages you to sleep when you’re supposed to be working. It tells you that you can’t do anything without the energy that it has stolen. But what can you do? Sleep more? What if it comes with some condition you have? What if the doctor has told you they can’t do anything. It’s something you must do yourself. Wow. I forgot; it steals hope. Hope that you can go hang out with your friends. Hope that you can pass your classes. Hope that you will one day overcome all your adversities. But I've determined the worst part of the day is the morning.

“Ugh I'm so board!” I thought one day. I got bored of playing with legos and I decided to get a snack. While I was walking upstairs I saw something I've never seen before. A smooth black container, that read in bold letters PS3 gaming console and several other small boxes that said things I've never heard before like Call of Duty, Uncharted 3,and Sonic Dimensions.

One source of stress is “Chronic Stress.” Chronic stress means stress that is experienced for an extended period. One example from my personal life that was a chronic stress was my family and work stress. I think family and work problems of my own example connect because they fell under the same category and correlated with each other. A specific example is my mom forced me to figure basic skills myself such as driving. I was in and out of jobs and found myself having to figure out how to get to work. I could not depend on anyone to take me anymore and the bus system was undependable. I did nor deal with it the way I wanted at the time. I had just finished up an internship and found an excellent job but found myself having to figure out how to get to work. My cognitive

I hate when I think of a perfect comeback after it’s too late to use it.