I'm easily overwhelmed. When my kids' exuberant screams reach a decibel level my ears can't tolerate, when Chuck E., the life-size "rat" at the pizza place, starts doing his jig while flashing arcade lights blind me, or when I open my email to find 100 messages--I feel a meltdown coming on. Which is why I came up with seven quick ways to calm myself down.
I turn to these when I don't have time to call my mom and hear her tell me, "Everything is going to be fine." They keep me centered and grounded for as long as possible, and they help me relax my body even during those times when screaming kids and dancing life-size rats converge.
1. Walk Away
Know your triggers. If a conversation about global warming, consumerism, or the trash crisis in the U.S. is overwhelming you, simply excuse yourself. If you're noise-sensitive and the scene at Toys-R-Us makes you want to throw whistling Elmo and his buddies across the store, tell your kids you need a time-out. (Bring along your husband or a friend so you can leave them safely, if need be.) My great-aunt Gigi knew her trigger points, and if a conversation or setting was getting close to them, she simply put one foot in front of another, and departed.
2. Close Your Eyes
Gently let the world disappear, and go within to regain your equilibrium. Ever since my mom came down with blepharospasm (a neurological tick of the eyelid), I've become aware of how important shutting our eyes is to the health of the nervous system. The only treatment available for this disorder is to have surgery that permanently keeps your eyelids open (you need to moisten them with drops, etc.). Such a condition would be living hell for my mom, because in closing her eyes she regains her balance and proper focus.
3. Find Some Solitude
This can be challenging if you are at work, or at home with kids as creative and energetic as mine. But we all need some private time to let the nervous system regenerate.
I must have known this back in college, because I opted for a tiny single room (a nun's closet, quite literally), rather than going in on a larger room with a closet big enough to store my sweaters. When three of my good friends begged me to go in with them on a killer quad, I told them, "Nope. Can't do it. Need my alone time, or else none of you would want to be around me. Trust me."
My senior year I went to the extent of pasting black construction paper on the window above my door so no one would know if I was there, in order to get the hours of solitude that I needed.
Be creative. Find your space. Any way you can. Even it involves black construction paper.
4. Go Outside
5. Find Some Water
While watching Disney's "Pocahontas" the other day with my daughter Katherine (yes, I do get some of my best insights from cartoons), I observed the sheer joy the main character shows upon paddling down the river, singing about how she is one with the water. It reminded me of how universal the mood effects of water are, and how healing.
On the rainy or snowy days that I can't walk the double stroller over to our local creeks, I do something the global-warming guys say not to; take a long shower, imagining that I am in the middle of a beautiful Hawaiian rain forest.
"Water helps in many ways," writes Elaine Aron. "When overaroused, keep drinking it--a big glass of it once an hour. Walk beside some water, look at it, listen to it. Get into some if you can, for a bath or a swim. Hot tubs and hot springs are popular for good reasons."
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