By Dr. Susan Rempel

Have you experienced one or more of the following scenarios?

Scenario 1: It’s 6:00 a.m. I open one eye as I hear the dog scratching to go out. I become aware that my muscles still ache from physical activity I engaged in around the house the day before. Next, I hear my son noisily opening the door to the room to let me know "it’s time for breakfast." Then, even though I close both eyes again in hopes it really isn’t time to greet the new day, the alarm clock goes off. I wearily drag myself out of bed knowing that in the next two hours a meal must be made, the house must be picked up, everyone needs to be dressed, telephone calls need to be returned, and so on before I must be ready to begin working. The daily household routine that I refer to as "the road rally" has begun.

Scenario 2: I stroll into my office, pour myself a cup of coffee and casually flip on my computer. After settling into my comfortable chair, I hop onto the Internet and start my e-mail program. My heart begins to race as I see more than 300 pieces of e-mail flood into my mailbox. My workday has officially begun.

Scenario 3: Never being one to be satisfied with merely maintaining the status quo in my business, I decide to launch a new inspirational quotation service on our website ( http://www.uncommoncourtesy.com/motivati2.htm ). I thought it would be a popular service, but I had no way of knowing how much people enjoy receiving positive quotations! The entire UCC staff has been working day and night to process all the subscription requests for the past two weeks.

If you have experienced something similar to one of these three scenarios, you undoubtedly have felt tired and stressed. The three scenarios represent three variations on the same theme: too much of a good thing can be overwhelming. Everyone experiences periods when one or more aspects of their lives seem to be overwhelming. However, feelings of stress and pressure may begin to accumulate if multiple parts of your life start moving at a fast and furious pace! In my own case, these three scenarios (plus other stressful events) have been present in my life for the past few weeks. When I recently stepped back and examined my own life, I determined that I am definitely suffering from the "too much of a good thing" syndrome.

How you respond to the simultaneous appearance of multiple stressors in your life depends on several factors. The first factor is the image that you try to present to others in response to a stressful situation. Can you acknowledge that something is difficult for you? Do you have a support network in place to help you through tough times? Conversely, is it your desire to behave as if no amount of stress bothers you? In general, people who need to present themselves as being able to handle any stressful situation that occurs in their lives without a hitch will respond to the stress psychosomatically (i.e., an ulcer) or in a way that is unintentional (e.g., getting into a car accident because they are not paying attention to what is happening around them).

A second factor in responding to multiple sources of stress is how you internally deal with stress. Are you able to deal with chaos, or do you have the need to only tackle one problem at a time? Do you feel it is acceptable to postpone things that are not critical at any moment, or must you complete every task in your life according to a rigid schedule. Let me analogize how you internally deal with stress to how you might respond to a large wave that is approaching you while you swim in the ocean. You could choose to fight the wave by swimming over it or trying to swim faster than the wave is moving toward shore so that you would escape being impacted by the wave. You might even choose to keep swimming as if nothing is about to happen. If you have ever tired any of these strategies, you know that the consequences of your actions will not be pleasant. You would probably end up lying on the beach with your mouth full of sand. However, if you take a deep breath and dive to the ocean floor, the wave will most likely wash over you with only a small amount of pull on your body. This strategy acknowledges that you can’t get out of the way and can’t ignore the situation. Your choice acknowledges the stressor’s presence and deals with it in a realistic manner. Further it is both an active and a positive response to a potentially problematic situation.

A third factor that impacts your response to stressful situations is how those around you respond to your statements and behavior. While you may receive some amount of empathy for a hectic home life, you should anticipate that the majority of the responses will be different from what you would like. Some people will tell you, "that’s what happens when you have children." Others will explain to you that all families go through periods which result in parental stress and exhaustion, but someday those periods will be fondly remembered. The third general type of response will be advice about how to minimize the stress or deal with the situation. Of course, there are as many different ways to parent children as there are children to parent. Consequently, you may interpret the advise as an irritating directive which cannot be followed rather than the helpful hint in which it was intended. The response that you will receive if you are "too successful" in business is more than likely going to be less empathic than if you appear to be overwhelmed by your home life. "Awe, gee, that’s too bad" may be a common response because others will wish that they had that type of "problem" to deal with.

There are a myriad of possible responses to feeling overwhelmed by the combination of stress and responsibility that may occur simultaneously in several different areas of your life. The least desirable is to adopt an "I can handle it all" attitude. This is a very tiring approach to life. Eventually, any human being will become weary from living life at the pace of an Olympic runner. Trying to do too much too fast will not only result in mistakes but possibly accidents. It also often results in an ill advised decision to stop doing everything at once. Let me suggest that you step back for a moment and gain some perspective on your life. Now is the time to analyze the choices that you have made. Are you trying to do too much at once? Think about the priorities and values that you have about living life. What do they direct you to do? Is that what you are doing, or have you adopted the priorities that have been set for you by someone else? Now may be the time to focus your attention on your family or seize the opportunity to make your business a success. Is there something you are doing that can be postponed, or is it possible to delegate a time-consuming task to someone else. I often tell my clients that life is like a train. It doesn’t stop moving along the track just because you would like it to slow down. However, you do have the choice of what your destination will be, what line you will ride on, and whether you ride first class or coach.

© 1998 - 1999 Susan C. Rempel, Ph.D.  All rights reserved.

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