My Top Ten Stresses

I am not the most anxious person in the world (I can actually hear my sister rolling her eyes when she reads this), but there are a couple things that stress me out to varying degrees.

I mean, I’m only human. Who hasn’t felt stress at some point in their lives?

Different problems will wreck my nerves more so than others, so for today’s post, I thought it would be fun (and de-stressing) to talk about some of the things that just get my stomach churning, my mind racing, and my palms sweating.

Here are the top ten issues that stress me out in order from least to most stressful.

10. Environmental Hazards

Yeah, okay, I’ll admit it. I’m very much a homebody. I stay in my house for both work and play because I’m a flabby, lazy couch potato who does not do well in the outdoors. I take walks around my neighborhood every evening, but that’s about it.

As a result, the few times I have gone hiking or visited a National Park have filled me with a bit of trepidation.

That’s not to say I’m terrified of the great outdoors. I mean, clearly this is my lowest-ranked stressor. But I have to admit I scan the ground nervously for snakes and spiders whenever I’m walking out and about away from civilization. And I’ve only recently learned what poison ivy looks like, so now I’ll be on the lookout for that too.

9. Family Disagreements

It is very rare that I get into a blow-out with members of my family. For one thing, I’m a fairly amiable person, if I do say so myself. I don’t like to make waves, and I adore my family, foibles and all.

But when we do butt heads…

Man, nothing stresses me out more than knowing that my family is mad at me.

8. Work Confrontations

I like to know I’ve done a good job at the end of every work day. Knowing that I have helped assist in keeping things running or that I got a coworker out of a tight spot are very gratifying aspects of my job.

But I can get uber anxious at the thought that I messed something up or that a higher-up believes I did a poor job. I live in a forever-terrified state that my boss will one day think, “Huh, she just sucks at her job. But it’d be too much of a hassle to replace her. She might as well stay.”

And being in a position where people work under me is just as stress-inducing. I always wonder if they respect me or if they think I’m too impersonal or if they think I’m a laughingstock.

7. Health Issues

Funnily enough, I’ve gotten better about stressing about my health. While the notion of falling ill and having to see a doctor or getting a shot or needing stitches is stressful, I’m way more chill about it than I used to be.

After years of WebMD telling me I have cancer when I looked up “itchy sore throat” or “stomach cramps,” I have become inured to the idea of getting a major disease.

Fun side fact: I’ve always kind of thought I would die from some health-related problem.

6. Social Relations

Damn, other people can be the cause of most of my anxiety. I really wish I didn’t spend half as much time thinking about what other people think.

COVID-19 has actually kind of helped in that regard, because now I’m so people starved, I don’t care if I look or sound like an idiot to them.

But almost nothing beats saying something stupid in front of a person I’d like to impress, and then standing in the shower with shampoo in my hair hours later wondering, “Why the fuck did I say that?”

5. Driving

Yeah, driving in traffic stresses me out. Sue me. (Don’t sue me.)

I also don’t like driving with another person in the car because both my mother and my sister, FOR SOME REASON, get hyper-freaked-out whenever I’m driving. They think I’m going to be some reckless driver or something, and I kind of want to look at them and be like, “You are getting on my case for being a bad driver?” They have forever damaged my confidence in my driving skills.

(Alya, mom, I love you very much. Please don’t be mad. Refer to Stressor #9.)

4. Performance Anxiety

If I’m doing anything and I know people are watching, my performance suffers. Like when I’m playing a video game, and I’m playing with people who are a) better than me, b) super competitive, or c) men, my skills just nose-dive.

It’s gotten so bad that I’ll start preemptively putting myself down first in order to lower expectations on how well I’ll play.

I think I tried trash-talking once, and I got blasted into tomorrow by everyone else. It’s like they went out of their way to put me down. Never again.

3. Money Issues

Yeah, anyone who needs to survive has felt this one.

I don’t make the best money, but thanks to recent promotions, I’m finally in a financially safe place.

However, nothing stresses me out more than having something go wrong with my finances, be it a missing check, a problem with my bank account, or an error with some online banking. If something like that happens, it will consume my every waking thought, and it will make falling asleep a nightmare.

2. Tech Woes

Oofsies.

So I make my living working from home. In order to do this, I need a functioning computer, phone, and Wi-Fi connection. If something amiss happens with any of these three things, my world is turned upside down. It turns into a cavalcade of stresses that leak into other anxiety-inducing areas.

I lose access to work, I lose my ability to earn money, I lose my ability to stay connected and in touch with people. It just sucks.

In addition to that, it can also affect my relaxation time if, let’s say, my Xbox or TV starts to crap out on me.

And the only ways to fix these problems…are usually expensive.

1. Pet Problems

Nothing churns my stomach more than when an issue regarding Froley arises. When he gets sickie or when his poops are not right or even when I have a nightmare that he flew out of the house and I couldn’t find him that shatters any equilibrium I could have had in a day.