Originally Posted by
DnvrFox
50+ Destressing Techniques
Besides bicycling and exercise, what other techniques, if any, do you use to destress your daily lives?
Recently, due to very valid reason, which I won't go into here, my wife has been under a lot of what one might call "cumulative post traumatic stress syndrome" stress. Things that happened many years ago, and other things that are happening now leave us in the situation of having a lot of little straws around that are just itching to "break the camel's back" so to speak.
At these times, she needs my support a lot, which is one of the reasons I have not had many long rides this season.
Over the years, out of necessity, we have developed some techniques to help reduce stress in our lives. Here are some of them.
1. No phone calls answered after 8:00 pm.
2. Daily exercise no matter what the weather and how tired we might be.
3. We don't go to bed mad at each other, if there is any possible way to resolve the issue.
4. We evaluate each voluntary (and sometimes work) activity to see if the sum of the effects of that activity is positive to our stress load or negative. If it is negative, we either adjust it or drop it. She just dropped a bible study at church for that exact reason. I once walked off a job never to return for the same reason.
5. We are careful in any TV programs we watch. No gruesome or tense TV. We have a "cool down" TV time where we watch a funny video or something relaxing priot to retiring.
6. We try to practice good nutrition.
7. Adequate sleep/rest is high on the list.
8. At times, we have seeked, and found useful, professional help. Howeer, this is really tricky, as some of those professionals are crazier than we are!
9. We have relaxing group activites that we keep stress-free. I lead a men's singing group, she has a ladies singing group, and we both participate in choirs.
So, what about you? Any destressing techniques other than bicycling that your years of life have taught you?
Hi I am sorry your wife and you suffer in this way., I am post 50, have ptsdand a sexual abuse survivor and use many of the things you suggest. You both seem to have worked out a good physical regimen, and that has proven benefical to me. Two other things have become key to my thriving versus my previous surviviing. I believe in a regularly meditatating and regularly meet with people like myself, outside of my marriage, with whom I talk aloud aobut those trauma which impact my life today. I have been doing this for manyuyears and it is extremely important to me to be able to speak aloud, tell the stories, find the language to describe my reactions to these traumatic events. The retelling of the events only goes so far, after that it is the examining of how I re-create these cenarios in my current life and how to stop doing that.
Good luck to you both