Stress Management Technique

If you have stress, you need some stress management techniques that do not involve excessive eating, smoking, drinking or drugging.

Those methods do work...temporarily.

I used to feel great relief from my stress after eating a half dozen or so of donuts.  I used this method for years to deal with a seemingly never ending amount of stress.

It's hard to feel stressed when you are bombed out of your mind on booze or pills. All your troubles vanish deep into nothingness when you are temporarily screwed up out of your mind.

Smoking is the ultimate stress management technique.  When you die young, your troubles are over.

But I am suggesting another, less harmful to your health technique.

My Stress Management Technique

You know you need a stress management technique if you can't sleep very well, you worry constantly and may even get diarrhea. Those are my symptoms of stress and worry. I have had this diarrhea problem brought on by stress and worry my entire life. It's not fun or exciting or something that goes away. It is there whenever I am facing something that causes me stress.

Me stress-free relaxing in my big recliner and loving life

A few years ago I finally tried a stress management technique that actually worked very well for me.  It calmed my nerves (and bowels) and helped me to get the outcome I wanted.

The Story

I had to go to court. I had a 10:15 a.m. court appointment to try to convince the judge to allow me to stop paying child support to my ex-wife because both children were now living with me full-time. My son had been with me for nearly a year and my daughter nearly 6 months.

They just could not stand to live with their mother anymore. She is just a very difficult person to be with for any length of time.

It is a heart breaking situation when a child's mother cannot get herself together enough to care for her own children with the love, kindness and respect every child needs.

So I have been getting by with very little money for a year. But 2 kids take a lot of money to care for properly. There is more food. More stuff to buy. More household expenses. More clothes. More laundry to do. All that requires money and lots of it.

I asked my wife to help me help the kids. I even begged her to give me some money to care for them. She refused.

This was my money from my work that goes directly from my paycheck to the County and then they send it to her. My net pay was reduced by $1,160.75 every 2 weeks.  There is no way for me to do anything about it except go to court to try to get some relief.

I tried working with my ex-wife earlier. I filled out the forms and tried to get her to just agree to taking less money. I did not want to hire an attorney and go back to court. But she would not do that.

So I hired my divorce attorney to handle it for me.

Then I had the court date.

I did not sleep the night before. I had been tossing and turning for weeks. I had been eating even more junk food than normal. I had been basically medicating myself with sugar to try to get through this.

There is no way the kids want to go back and live with her. The house they were in (our family dream house) had been foreclosed and my ex-wife was now sharing a place with a male roommate. There is no place with her for the kids.

Plus, they resented being with her for too long. They just cannot deal with here chaos and drama anymore. They are used to my peaceful, relaxed way of living. They enjoy being with me. I do not shower them with gifts and luxury living. I cannot afford that at this time. I shop the sales and we get by as best we can. But I love them unconditionally.

There is no real pressure from me except for occasional encouragement to keep the apartment picked up, to get their homework done and to call me when they are out to keep me informed as to their whereabouts.

I treat them as respectfully as possible and they seem to thrive on this. They could not go back and live with the smothering ways of their mother and her non-stop drama and chaos.

It seems like my case is a slam dunk for me. The kids are with me. They do not want to live with their mother. The house that required enormous amounts of money to pay for is owned by the bank. There is no real reason why I should have been worried about getting the child support eliminated.

But I was.

I was filled with stress about it. My stress management method up to now was just to scrape by as best I could and give my ex-wife huge amounts of money for no reason.

I need my own money to take care of myself and the kids. It seems like a simple concept.

I arrived at the courthouse 45 minutes before my appointment. I did not want to go in then. That would be too early. So I drove around the neighborhood for 5 minutes. Then I pulled into the parking lot. The lot closest to the building had a 90 minute maximum time. What if it takes longer and they give me a ticket or tow my car? I left. I drove to the outlying parking lot.

My mind was reeling. I was filled with stress. It was still 35 minutes to my appointment. I could feel my bowels churning. I was afraid I was going to have to go right then.

I pulled out a wad of papers I had in my coat pocket to try to read a little bit.

It was a thick wad of papers that I had printed off the internet a year ago and was only carrying them because it was in my winter coat pocket from last winter.

I opened the paper up randomly and read about the best stress management technique I have ever known about.

The Stress Management Technique that Gave Me My Life Back

The method is to write, physically, with pen or pencil and paper, what you want to happen. Write out a script of what you want your life to be.

So I did that morning before court.

I scribbled these sentences on the back of one of the pages I was reading.

I went to court today. Everything went smoothly. The judge found for me. I will soon have all my money coming to me. My ex-wife was nice and not a problem.

Within a few weeks my paycheck will be changed. This change will give me tremendous freedom for the future. I am not locked into anything anymore. My ex-wife is on her own and I am on my own.

Those few sentences gave me a complete calm.

I walked into the courthouse, went smoothly through the security checks, found the restroom room, urinated, the urge for a dramatic, messy, diarrhea episode had passed and found the room where my case was. My attorney saw me and came out. We both went in and sat down and listened to the case before mine.

I just calmly sat there. It was an eerie feeling thinking that in a few minutes I would soon be free of the enormous financial burden I had been under for nearly 5 years.

My ex-wife did not even show up. The judged found in my favor. Not only was the child support completely eliminated, the maintenance was eliminated. I do not have to pay her anything.I went from paying her more than $2,500 a month to nothing.

The judge went out of her way to process the paperwork to make sure I did not have anymore money taken out of my check as soon as possible. She said that she does not want their system to be a slow problem for me.

I was of course, elated, gratified, but more importantly, amazed at the stress management technique I stumbled on.

Do This

  • Write out your life
  • Write out your desired outcomes
  • Write our your lists
  • Write out your immediate desired outcomes as well as medium range and long range goals

Writing is the answer.

Picking up a pen and paper or typing into your computer will calm you. Write, write and write. This is your life we are talking about. Writing it out the way you want is not only fun, it is rewarding because it works, it my be the best stress management technique I have ever learned.

Stress Management Techniques Will Save Your Life

From Heart MD Institute

What Stress Can Do to Your Body

This is an eye opening article on the destructiveness of stress in our lives.

From article - Stress is a weapon of mass destruction. You have to prevent it from destroying you!

Finding ways to relieve your stress is vitally important to the quality of your life. If the method I described does not work for you, look elsewhere.

Whatever you do, find ways to manage stress. This is your life we are talking about. Nothing is as important to you as your life, your happiness and your lack of stress. Do it. Find ways. Learn.

You need to do whatever it takes to minimize the stress in your life. 

› › Stress Management Technique

The only way I could become the happier man I am today was by leaving my wife.  You might be in the same situation I was in.  I suggest you take a look at my book - Leave Your Wife & Become a Happier Man with the 3 Step System.

Click to go to learn more about the book

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