Coping

I’ve been stuck on the couch for the past couple days, and I’ll probably still be here for at least the next few. Basically, I sprained my lower back really badly, and I’ve been prescribed muscle relaxants and narcotic painkillers. I feel bad, too, because with summer upon us, the library is entering its busiest time of the year, and, from what I hear, we’ve been slammed with customers and returns.

With all that stress, I wanted to share Five Tips to Help You Live a Well-Balanced Life. Like Michael Stephens, I’m especially fond of tip number two:

Learn Healthy Coping Strategies
Living a balanced life means that it’s important to learn healthy coping strategies. We all get overwhelmed from time to time so we need to know how to deal with stress and issues as they arise. One way to do this is by recording stressful events, your reaction to it, and how you could have reacted in a journal.

Using this information, you can change unhealthy coping strategies into healthy ones. This will help you focus on the positive and what you can change or control in your life.

This is something that I’ve always had problems with, but fortunately I’ve learned a lot of ways to take stock of my life, evaluate where I’m at, and cope with stress and change in healthy ways. While I don’t keep a journal, I do stay aware of what I’m doing and how I’m doing — and I do my best to “deal” with things rather than ignoring them or reacting to them in negative or self-destructive ways.

On a related note, is it me, or is librarianship a much more physically demanding job than most people think it is? There’s a lot of walking and up-and-down and moving about — just thinking about it makes my back ache a little more.