The General American Stress System has us all…
GASS-lighting
It got me for 1+ year and I was warned, and prepared for it ahead of time! The General American Stress system is that insidious, that powerful, and that far-reaching to take down even the strongest preparations. And I bet it’s got you too. This sound familiar?
- Overwhelming…overwhelm, even though nothing bad happened to you.
- Anxiety from all ways: News, family, work, household chores, car, even hobbies.
- A strong desire to shut down and do nothing (when you used to be able to do more)
- Feeling like you don’t want to enter your house (or go to work) despite nothing being that wrong. Almost like your car is a cocoon of safety!
- Inability to chat with friends about anything important, you can’t make plans nor are others making plans with you. The rare plans that are made seem…too hard.
- Constant worry about saying or doing the wrong thing, that someone might put a gun to your head literally for expressing…anything.
- Heightened social anxiety and fear about other people.
- Feelings of needing to escape, but you have nowhere to escape to, and no money to do it with anyway.
- Extreme lack of focus, self-diagnosis of mental disorders (because something must be wrong in your head, right? You’re getting constant messages that you might have true ADHD, Autism, Social Anxiety, Depression, PTSD…)
- There’s more, but you can send me a mail with what you’re feeling, I might add it below as a secondary list!
We’re all in the same storm. Pandemically, and GASSlighting-ly.
- What you see is false.
- What you hear is false.
- You are most definitely crazy here’s some pills.
- Facts are wrong, experts know less than nothing.
- All opinions are right.
- Self-care is essential oils and weed!
- Everyone is dangerous.
- Selfishness is true freedom.
- Only America is free!
- Anyone who disagrees with you is EVIL.
- Everything other countries do is wrong.
- The company is your family.
- This latest toy brings happiness!
- The coronavirus is just the flu.
- Covid-19 doesn’t exist.
- If it makes sense, it’s the real truth!
- If it makes sense, it’s fake news!
And on it goes… everyone and everything we used to know is GASS-lit!
Everyone needs more than anyone can give...
And no one knows how to help….
“Buy this thing, it helped me!” “Read this book, it helped me!” “I do yoga, it helps me.” “I was in the same situation until I got a surgery.” “I protect my peace.” “Maybe you should take a few classes?” “Cheer up, this too shall pass.”
You’ve heard this before. It’s advice that may help a bit, for a little while…but then it gets swallowed by the stressors again. Then you’re off to look for a new miracle cure – which everyone seems to have and of course it costs money!
Some people are so lost they only disparage people in a worse situation than them…
“I got 3 jobs and walked to all of them, you can do the same.” “You are just lazy and entitled.” “Get a job, get some skills, go to college.” “There’s no such thing as racism anymore.” “I work hard that’s how I got to where I am!” “No one wants to work anymore.”
Many of us have been told this, to our faces, recently! All of it stings, and none of those disparagers can actually quantify what they did and how they succeeded. None of them have ever talked to anyone to hear their story or see their pain. None of them care, either! Because they too are under the General American Stress System, and they either refuse to see it, or simply don’t realize the extent to which it affects them!
It got me for a year and a half.
I knew about the General American Stress System before returning home from Japan. Thought I had steeled myself against it properly…and I had…for about 3 months.
Then came a fall, mentally, when I let an old friend move in, one whom I had lived with before and she was fine then. Then Covid-19 happened.
She lost everything and spiraled down into depression and alcoholism, dragging me unknowingly with her. She used me as an emotional life raft daily. The stress she brought into my home affected me silently. I couldn’t move forward, I became paralyzed and as hopeless as she was and I couldn’t figure out why!
It was only when my other friend said “We can’t get ahead like this” that it all clicked into place – and the roommate received 60 days notice the next day.
A month of repair and a long hill climb later…I still wasn’t myself and still had no idea why. Couldn’t find any feelings, any traumas, any emotions…
Damn it. The General American Stress System had gotten me and kept me down.
Name your Stressors
How to begin fixing it and getting out from the GASS-lighting…is free.
I do this when the stress starts taking me down, and it will help you if you do it fully and religiously check it to update it weekly!
No magic pill. No purchase. I don’t give a fuck about making money off this!
Get a piece of paper. No computer, no tablet, no phone, no kindle, no anything else but paper and a pen.
It does NOT WORK with technology. Our brains are not as tech focused as we’d like to think! Paper and pen makes it REAL. Tech makes it fleeting.
…Got that pen and paper?
Good. One thing per line, write small, on the right hand side.
- Write down every person, place, or thing stressing you! Do not make it a category like “school” or “work” but make it a direct thing like “English Class” or “Project 1” or “boss name”.
- Feel free to write down more as you remember them any time you think of them. Not all will come to you automatically! Make sure to add any worries onto the list as well.
- Once you have your list, put a line down the middle, middle right-ish of the paper. Like 3/4 is fine.
- On the other side of the line give each item a 1-10 number of how stressful it is. 10 is biggest, off the scale stress. 1 is a small worry.
Great! Now we have most of the mental fuzz of emotional-wreck-dom on paper.
- On any of the items you can do something about, write down one step that you can do today/tomorrow….that will reduce that stress number by Two Points. Only 2 points!
- Got 2 or 3 items you can do? Okay! …Go do them.
Don’t read farther until you have done them.
When you are finished with the tasks…
- Come back to the paper, cross out the steps you’ve done, and sleep. Yes, that’s all you need to do for the day. Do not do more, your brain needs time to catch up!
- Look at yesterday’s steps and the stress number. Has it changed? Cross out the number and write the new stress number next to it!
- Repeat the process with another 2-3 steps you can do.
- Rest again.
- Come back and look at those numbers again. Have the rest fallen, even if you haven’t worked on them? Most of the time they do!
- Add more stressors as they come up and repeat repeat repeat!