I was somewhere between 18 months and two years of age (I suspect closer to the 18 months side because I am seventeen months older than my sister) the first time I remember being placed in a situation of overwhelming responsibility. My mother had gone somewhere or returned to work after having given birth, and my father had locked my baby sister and I into our bedroom. His parting instructions, given with enough expressive menace on his face to indicate there would be unpleasant consequences if I failed, were to make sure that she didn’t cry or make any noise.

As a mother of two, I would never think a child so young could safely provide care for an infant in any way, shape, or form…and I certainly wouldn’t expect they’d be successful in keeping a baby quiet. I remember looking at her, stunned frozen by the emotions that fluttered frantically inside of me. The need to protect her. Enormous fear and inadequacy. Hopelessness at the task. Then I firmed myself up, tried to make every emotion I had take a quiet seat in the back of my mind, and did everything I could to become a toddler mother.

Although I am sure that I had probably experienced some form of stress in my life prior to that given the other things I remember from my very earliest years, this is my first clear memory where I can access my thoughts and feelings enough to identify that condition existing in me. Since then, significant levels of stress have always been a part of my life. Not because I frequently overreact to certain situations, but just because my life has unfolded with a whole lot of events most would find highly stressful. And, I didn’t really begin to understand what high levels of stress could possibly be contributing to health challenges for me until I was in my twenties.

All my life I have struggled with allergies, and I’ve had a fair number of hypersensitivity reactions of one kind or another (with a mix of being in the moment and a bit delayed). After I read Gabor Mate’s book, I wondered if it couldn’t be that because my psyche felt overwhelmingly under siege from such a young age, perhaps my body was striking back at a world my emotions were constantly signaling to it was dangerous. That is sheer speculation of course, because no amount of meditation, relaxation, and mindfulness has eliminated my allergies…but I can link nastier flair ups with stronger reactions to periods of higher stress in my life. So certainly there is a connection between my stress levels and some of the hypersensitivity reactions.

I was diagnosed with IBS in high school…my friends had to walk me the nurse’s office because I developed stabbing pains in my abdomen. This was during a period of pretty intense turmoil in my home life. I was sent home, taken to a doctor, testing was done, told IBS was my problem, told to take some pills (that I stopped taking because they didn’t really do anything but make me feel stoned out of my mind loopy) and that was it. Only years later did I learn that IBS was considered to be a condition caused by stress.

Becoming mindful of that connection in my twenties and carefully regulating my fiber consumption has allowed me to stay flair up free most of the past two decades. Now I only have problems if I’m having one high stress event right after another for a sustained period of time…and unfortunately, even though I left abusive situations behind a long time ago, as a parent of a kiddo with some pretty intense challenges, that can still happen sometimes.

After my second ER visit in January (for the elevated heart rate and low blood pressure), I started trying to ask my body what it needed to recover and do everything I can to give it that. One of the things a moment of mindfulness made very clear to me is that right now, in this moment, I need to give myself more time to rest. I’m not really talking about sleep here, that’s still often outside of my control. Despite a recent med change our kiddo’s developmental pediatrician made to try and help with that, I need to wake up and be up often in the night to help Tony or keep him safe.

What I can do is have extra down time to just watch videos, read, or just exist quietly in the moment. Some of my favorite ways to provide extra nurturing for myself include listening to relaxing music while bathing, playing ASMR or meditating before sleeping, and doing affirmations while I’m putting on my makeup. I’m a big fan of yoga because it’s like moving meditation, and sometimes that helps me to stay in the moment more easily.

I also am honoring what my body is telling me about readiness to resume certain tasks. I’m still leaving most of Tony’s habilitation hours I am responsible for undone and replacing them with self-care, and the tasks I am doing (like community safety) I am not clocking in for because it’s easier and less stressful for me right now to do that without having to complete the paperwork required for getting paid to do them. That will probably change more in the upcoming weeks, but for now, I need to give something back to this body that has allowed me to do so much for our son over the past nearly nine years because emotionally I just need a break and there isn’t anyone but me available to make sure that happens without costing him therapy hours. If my body doesn’t get what it needs to heal adequately, the long term impact of that would be much worse for him and our entire family.

For anyone with a high stress lifestyle, understanding the stress-disease connection is critically important. Some stressors can’t be eliminated, and when that is the case, a self-care game plan is necessary to offset some of the possible health impacts. And as a side benefit, having so many mindfulness tricks that help me relax also helps me to identify when a problem needs further medical examination or just extra relaxation.

I just finished the food scratch testing, and next month I start challenge tests for some items that were indicated as new allergies. And I am doing the best I can to adjust my diet according to the results and pay more attention to what my body is communicating about items I consume. Having xylitol turn up positive as a new allergy on the scratch testing was a real bummer, because it’s in plenty of dental products and I loved me my xylitol mints and gum. I still have some cardiac testing outstanding that would be prudent at this point, though my standing heart rate is greatly improved at this point, it still goes up higher than normal quicker than normal (normal for me that is) for anything but milder activities.

As I said last week, high stress is often how my life rolls. But I’m still so grateful to be on this ride that my life has become. I may not be able to change some of the sights along the way, but I do have things I can adjust to help me stay on it as long as possible (and probably each of you do too). And I love (and do everything I can to live) that.