Going through the stress cycle
When you can’t eat to beat the blues, what do you do?
So, I’ve been sticking to a new diet plan recently, which means, no more random snacking. Yes, there are planned snacks, but no spur-of-the-moment indulgences. Usually I can handle it—drink water instead, do something engaging, have the next meal earlier—but the bad habit of eating when I’m stressed is not thoroughly broken.
Meaning, when stress hits, my first impulse is to break out the carbs and gorge. When I used to do this, I didn’t really enjoy what I was eating; I was just going through it mindlessly. For more than a year my mantra was “at least I can still eat”. Well, that didn’t translate well on the bathroom scale—hence the diet plan. Now I have to battle the urge to munch to take my mind off things.
Dental college is pretty stressful. You have tests, clinical quota, assignments, presentations, one after the other. These are quite routine things but I still can’t get over them. I still get a twinge of annoyance whenever a teacher gives us an assignment, and the clinical quota is like a sword hanging suspended over our heads, threatening to fall any moment. To top it off, there’s the matter of attendance—lower than 75% and you’re not eligible to give the examination. Since we’re studying to become medical professionals, the teachers don’t cut us any slack. It’s just rush, rush, rush, get one job done, there are ten more waiting in line.
Today I struggled not to break out the dark chocolate (I’d already had one square for today) after the class representative informed us that we’d have to take extra classes to fulfill our attendance requirement. As if the usual drudgery isn’t enough! I browsed Facebook ineffectually before closing it. Looking at Facebook when you’re upset is actually counterproductive. It’s full of people showing the brighter side of life, acting like their lives are rosy pink, and it doesn’t do anything to improve the mood. Here you are, stewing because you can’t wait to be done with college, and there on Facebook are photos of people who have already graduated. Wow. Just wow. Peachy!
I have a new mantra: “This, too, shall pass.” It applies to both good and bad. Specifically, it means that the rush, rush, rush of lectures, patients and tests will not go on all life long. Sometimes even this thought fails to put a handle on my stress. (You know, putting a handle on it—so you can turn it down to a manageable level.) That’s when I whine and complain—I can’t take this anymore! The funny thing is, when my mother says “OK, then we’ll take you out of dental college” my answer is “no, that’s not the answer I want. I just want to complain!” Letting it out, engaging myself in something else and sleeping over it usually brings the stress levels down, because, well, it’s just college, after all—it’s not a matter of life and death.
Still, when it comes down to sitting down for that extra lecture, or dealing with that tricky patient, or making the umpteenth assignment, it’s not a matter of life and death, but it is still something you want to get over with. When you can’t avoid it and you can’t distract yourself by eating, you wait it out. Enough time passes for the issue to become irrelevant. With the passage of enough time, all issues eventually become irrelevant. At the end of the day, we’re all going to die and we’re all going to leave everything behind.
And when you wait enough, eventually it’s time to eat again!
