Jump to content

How do you deal with stress?


How do you deal with stress?  

117 members have voted

  1. 1.

    • Exercise
      24
    • Talking
      47
    • Drinking
      17
    • Yoga or equivalant
      6
    • Keep it bottled up
      23


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 45
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I run.

Running cures everything.

Long, slow, distance - 5, 8, 12 miles at a time. Nothing like spending 1.5 to 2.5 hours of quiet, solitary bliss. I can actually feel all the evil leaving my body - sweat drop by sweat drop...

and if that don't work, I drink lots of beer (which is an indicated treatment for post run recovery drink, I might add)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Usually in this order: drink 7 shots of Tequila, chain smoke a whole pack, dont eat for a week, and then some.... Then Im fine. My personality doesnt change, just my habits.

People have told me, its not healthy. And I reply back to them, is breathing our polluted air healthy??

-Dixie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

new studies are showing that ems providers that go out for a drink and talk with friends, not necessarily ems involved people, is just as effective as other things.

they also say drinking should be in moderation, but ive always found its much more fun to get hammered.

dont remember where I heard that

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've found that sitting in the woods, surrounded by all the beauty of nature is the most soothing thing ever. Too bad it took the worst day of my life to make me realize this.

In 2000, I worked the wreck that killed three of my friends including my best friend since third grade and his wife....I was best man at their wedding a month before they died. To top it all off I was supposed to have been in the truck with them. If I had not stayed over at work to cover for another EMT I would be dead right now. There were times that I wish I had died along with them, things would have been so much simpler. The events of that afternoon ruined me as a provider and as a man for quite a long time. It also ruined my faith in God, which I have just recently began to regain.

My service forced me to take three weeks off of work and I found great solace in sitting alone in the woods just enjoying the silence. The silence forced me to deal with the flood of emotions that I had pent up over the preceding 3 1/2 years as an first responder and EMT. In three weeks I sorted through (if anyone ever really could sort out such things) not only . all the guilt, stress and pain from losing my friends but also all the other times I had seen death, misery and suffering and had simply shrugged it off. My advice to everyone: don't shrug off any death, you do not know when something will happen that transforms the guilt of a patient lost into the unbearable, insufferable torment of some assumed grotesque failure.

I cry after many bad calls, not afraid of my shortcomings, not afraid of anything that others might think of me, simply because I know the catharsis that comes from letting the tears and your emotions flow.

But I have learned to cope and to channel my emotions into something practical and useful. My friends did not die in vain: losing them, in some strange way, has made me a better patient care provider. I strive to be more skilled, quicker, more thorough and better educated than anyone else out there. I've lost the arrogance about my abilities that I held prior to all of this and now I'm just trying to make the most of what gifts I was given. I could have chosen to leave health care so as to never have to stare death in the face so intimately or frequently again, but then I would have failed not only my patients, but my friends and also myself.

I still have my problems stemming from that day. I was diagnosed with PTSD and I still suffer night terrors as a result of it. Luckily I have the most understanding fiancee in the world who is willing to comfort me when I need her most- the quiet hours of the night when all my demons come flooding back like some sort of Mongol horde from the nether regions of my psyche causing me to wake up screaming for the fourth night in a row. The flashbacks are not so much replays of the events anymore but rather they take the form of some faceless, shapeless, all-consuming malfeasance from which I can not escape.

I believe Jennifer (my fiancee) is the reason I was not in that truck that afternoon nearly 5 years ago. Our first child is due at the end of August and the happiness I feel because of that fact and because Jennifer loves me unconditionally (strange mental hangups and all), makes me glad I didn't die with my friends.

Sorry...I know this got way off topic....I just started typing and it all sort of spilled out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its ok to spill, that what we're for. Sometimes you just need someone to hold you tight and let you know everything will be alright when you finding it hard to be man. I've got a big shoulder to cry on if you ever need to borrow it.

-Dixie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...