When life gets stressful
Knowing when to step back and recharge
My right eye starts twitching in a Zoom meeting on Wednesday. It stops after a few seconds, starts again, then stops. I think nothing about it until Thursday, when it does it again on another Zoom call.
Perhaps it’s a screen thing and I don’t need to worry about my eye or that my colleagues might think I’m winking at them. It will sort itself out.
I promise myself I will do the 20-20-20 thing of looking up from my screen every 20-minutes and focusing on something 20m in the distance for 20-seconds. And I’ll blink a bit more. It’ll be fine.
But that evening it happens again. This time, I’m in the car, heading to Superbowl Barnsley for an evening of ten-pin bowling with the family.
‘My eye’s twitching,’ I tell Chris, my husband. ‘It keeps doing it.’
‘Maybe take some breaks,’ he says. ‘You don’t take enough.’
‘I’m working,’ I say.
‘It’s okay to have a break,’ he says.
‘Maybe.’
At the bowling alley, I start well, scoring three consistent nines out of ten. But on the fourth go, my eye twitches and I throw the ball into the gutter. Each time I step up to bowl, the ball veers to the left, to the right, in the gutter, anywhere except down the middle towards the pins. I score zero points on the next three goes.
The ball had seemed light at first, but now feels heavier with every turn. My arm aches, my right eye twitches. I’ve not eaten since lunch, so my stomach is rumbling, and I’m light-headed. Like the pins, I could wobble and fall.
‘What’s happening to me?’ I glance up at the scoreboard.
Chris is leading, hotly pursued by my brother-in-law Mark, my sister Sarah, and niece Olivia. And then me. Last!
‘Have you been in secret training?’ I ask Sarah. ‘I could always rely on you to finish last.’
But not tonight. She picks up a bowling ball and launches it down the lane with a ferocity I’ve not seen before.
‘Are you angry?’ I ask. ‘Or stressed? I’ve never seen you like this.’
While Sarah gets stronger and stronger, I get weaker and weaker, finishing with 50 points, my worst score ever.
I’m always a solid second behind Chris and in front of my brother-in-law. This time, Chris has won, Sarah, showing amazing improvement, takes second place (second!), Mark third, Olivia fourth and then it’s me. The loser! My name is on the screen for half of Barnsley to see. I’ve never finished last.
It stings.
Sarah and Olivia were just getting warmed up with the bowling. Next comes ‘Down the Clown’.
Mark and Chris hold our handbags and we set about downing the clowns. For every ball I throw, Sarah and Olivia launch five. I hit the target several times, but not with any force. The clowns stay perched on their spot, smiling back at me.
‘Let’s have another game,’ Sarah says. And another and another.
At the end of the night, I stagger to the sweet counter and stuff my face with strawberry Maoams, hoping they give me a boost. They don’t. We move to the restaurant, and I smile and laugh and do my best to seem fun, but all I can think about is going home, putting on my pyjamas and having a cup of Yorkshire decaf tea to recover.
The next day, I drag myself out of bed, drive to the stables where I muck out, fill hay nets, feed and brush the horses, inject one of them, give tablets to the other, then race home to shower and get ready for work.
When I sit at my desk, I struggle to lift my arm to type. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I ask Chris. ‘Surely this isn’t just from bowling?’
My body feels empty, depleted of energy, and I’m so tired, as soon as I switch on the computer, my eye goes into spasm.
Chris makes me a cup of tea and I set to work, trying to ignore my growing list of symptoms. Within half an hour, I am confident I can muster enough strength to do a good job at work.
My first task of the morning is to write some content about stress because April is stress awareness month. Before I write anything, I do some research.
Stress, it seems, can sneak up when we are least expecting it, causing headaches, sleeping problems, sickness, feeling unwell, and a lack of focus. There’s nothing about eye twitches, arm injuries, or bowling exhaustion, but it makes me take notice.
I live my life at a million miles an hour. I love to be busy with work, writing, running, fitness, and looking after the horses. Stress can be a good thing. It drives me to keep going and keep striving.
The problem is when it becomes too much.
Five years ago, I attended a wellbeing at work course where the trainer used the stress bucket analogy.
‘Imagine all the stress and stains of daily life going into the bucket,’ he said. ‘The water-stress level rises, so the trick is to do things to empty the bucket.’
I wrote all the things that filled my stress bucket—work, taking care of my geriatric pets, deadlines, staying on top of the housecleaning, studying… the list went on.
Then I listed all the things that helped ease the stress—reading, writing, running, walking, spinning at the gym, being outside spending quality time with my pets, time with Chris, holidays, Pilates, meditation, eating out, cups of tea and chats with friends, afternoon tea, bookshop visits, and time with my niece and family.
‘The more of these you do, the better you are at managing the stress bucket, so it doesn’t start overflowing,’ the trainer said.
Remembering it now, I realise I haven’t done anything this week to reduce my stress levels. There’s been no time for running or walking. My Pilates class was cancelled, and I didn’t do another. I’ve only read a few pages of my book.
And it’s not just been this week. I’ve been operating at the top end of my stress bucket for a few years, which means it is probably at risk of overflowing.
On the course, the trainer warned that this is when manageable stress becomes a problem. Suddenly, juggling so many things is overwhelming.
The eye twitching, the tiredness, the aching body, perhaps they are the warning signs. This is my body’s way of saying, ‘will you back off a second and HAVE A REST?’
‘A rest?’ I think and recoil in horror.
But managing stress doesn’t mean sitting down and doing nothing. It’s not wasting time. It’s doing the fun things, the little things that can, over time, make a big difference to health and wellbeing.
I have been doing it the other way around—piling on the stress, but not focusing on managing it effectively.
When we were younger, every Sunday morning Chris and I would run or race, and then have a few hours recovering on the sofa, watching sport or reruns of Columbo. But with less running, we’ve filled that time with other things. Without us realising, life has picked up to a relentless pace. I never stop. And I miss our Columbo afternoons.
‘If you don’t make time for wellness,’ the trainer had warned. ‘You’ll have to make time for illness.’
As soon as I remember his words of wisdom, my eye twitches.
‘We need to empty our stress buckets,’ I tell Chris, grabbing my laptop and booking a weekend in the Lake District.
Beautiful scenery, long walks, tackling a few hills, and relaxing in the pub afterwards, is exactly what we need.
Hopefully, the time away from my screen will settle my twitching eye, and I will return refreshed and recharged, ready to take on my family in a ten-pin bowling rematch. And if I don’t, I can always develop my sister’s approach and channel all my stress into bowling.
What do you do to manage your stress levels? Let me know in the comments.
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I prescribe a weekly episode of Columbo. Just sit on the sofa and watch it. No phones and dual-screening. I'm a firm believer that Columbo can cure all.
(And look after yourself at other times too, please) x