Self-monitoring

[jack]

It occurs to me, that if I'm getting stressed by a situation, I feel compelled not to let that out in public, which is a very laudable aim, but typically backfires. Since I feel I can't show any stress until I have to, it means (i) I subconsciously want to boil over just a little earlier as a way to stop getting loaded with more stress and (ii) I've no way to escape until I totally implode.

I think it partly comes from socially-unaware and perfectionist tendencies: if you tend to equate any form of failure with "I might as well not bother", you subconsciously assume it's better to hold on as long as possible in the hope that you get through without any failure. Whereas for normal people, admitting a small failure now is better than holding on five more minutes and then imploding :)

Rather than going on thinking "I'm fine, I can hold on longer", it would be more useful if I could recognise when I was shortly going to run out of reserve, and get out somehow earlier. That might be rude, but presumably better than waiting till I implode. But I don't really have any practice at actually doing so, as I only just found the words to explain what I think was going on.

Comments

[redbird]

One thing I found useful was the realization that imploding like that is more draining, and can be more intrusive, than taking a break sooner. Once I put it that way, it reduced the feeling of "but I shouldn't do that to people, I should give as much as possible," because n minutes of my time, energy, and/or attention is usually more useful than n+10 minutes followed by an implosion that they need to deal with. And those last ten squeezed-out minutes of work are likely to not be very productive, even if the whole thing is done in private so nobody else hears the implosion.

I don't know how useful you'd find it to explicitly schedule breaks: go off somewhere by yourself for lunch and/or a walk some workdays (even if you have to plead "errands" to get away), or put "time to myself" in your calendar now and then and use that time to read or listen to music or otherwise relax, not to do Useful Things. I find that the hard part when I have designated a rest day is to, in fact, rest: mine are more about physical than mental strain, but I find myself doing bits of housework so I can tell myself I haven't wasted a day, even with my partners reminding me that rest is not in fact a waste, it's a part of self-maintenance in the same way that going to the gym is.