Battling Stress

‘She drove me to drink’ used to be a popular phrase. Its essential meaning is that stress induces people to consume alcohol. While it’s true that stress can be an incentive to drink, it’s equally true that heavy alcohol consumption causes stress.

Moderate alcohol intake, to be sure, can have beneficial effects. Research suggests that small amounts can even improve mental functioning and increase performance in problem solving while stressed. But, there are also studies that demonstrate that large quantities, particularly when consumed for long periods, actually worsens stress.

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No doubt it’s impractical to try to ‘cure’ stress in the sense of eliminating all occurrences. But there are several practical short-term and effective long-term strategies for minimizing it and its effects.

Most individuals under stress will let it build, ignoring it for too long. They cite the need to get a work project completed, or view their situation as unchangeable. “That’s life,” many will say. But no form of ill-effect is inevitable, nor is it necessary or wise to passively accept one.

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By Kelly Swanson

Every summer we used to meet over at Mee Maw and Paw Paw’s house on the pond for a family reunion after church – same Sunday every year. And you’d show up bringing your latest addition, or attachment, philosophy on life, lingering grudge, or the dish you were known for making, like Aunt Bitsy’s congealed salad surprise which just goes to show that surprises aren’t always a good thing.

And somewhere after dinner or supper or lunch - whatever you like to call it depending on where you are from - we’d all collapse anywhere we could find a spot inside to avoid the heat and commence to staring at each other and just talking. And somewhere out of the tranquil boredom of that Sunday afternoon a bud of an argument would sprout – usually over politics or religion or Cousin Enid’s latest experimentations with the darker side of life - something that tends to happen when you put folks together that are bonded by blood instead of choice.

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