The Dangers of Daily Hassles
I had a less than stellar moment this week. I tried to hold a boundary and came across much more emotional than I wanted to. It was a great example of what can happen when daily hassles accumulate. Let me give you a little background.
Daily hassles are the ordinary day to day stressors that happen to each of us. Individually, they are not a big deal. Like, for instance, if you’re stuck in traffic on the way to work. Yeah, it’s obnoxious and in the moment, you may feel the stress, but if you arrive at the office on time and see your favorite coworker, it is most likely that stress disappears. The thing that can be dangerous about daily hassles, however, is the fact that they will tap into your energy resources, and they can add up. Let’s say that traffic made you late to work and in being late to work, you were late to a 1:1 with your manager… individually, each of these stressors are miniscule, put together however, they make for a pretty rough morning. Often, because daily hassles are small, we don’t realize the impact they are having on us until they’ve accumulated enough that they boil over. This happened to me this week.
Let me outline the daily hassles that were accumulating to my boil over moment:
Last week, I flew to Boston for an Active Learning weekend with my Advanced Public Speaking classmates from the Harvard Extension School. Knowing that my burnout can resurface in unexpected ways, I was nervous for the trip. I’m happy to say that overall, the trip was wonderful. This was because of the incredible social support I felt from my classmates. When I arrived home at almost midnight on Sunday from my trip, however, I began to notice the physical effects from such a rigorous weekend. From Thursday to Sunday, these were some daily hassle style stressors that had been accumulating:
Nerves around
New city – new logistics (travel, lodging, food)
Traveling as a single woman
Being social (introvert issues)
Research assignment due by Sunday night
Giving a persuasive speech
Sharing my burnout story vocally for the first time (hello vulnerability!)
Time zone change triggering past trauma around sleep (bigger story on this on another day)
Trying to fit in my daily necessities of healthy food, healthy sleep, healthy movement, and spiritual nourishment
Boy kept picking his nose at the airport (ick)
Coughs and sniffles from people on the plane around me (more ick)
Arriving home very late and trying not to wake up the whole house…
What I should have done was plan some recovery time into Monday. I knew the weekend was going to be tough on me. I thought that sleeping through my workout would have been enough recovery. I was wrong. Here’s where the daily hassles began to accumulate even more rapidly…
My daughter woke me up early saying her tummy hurt (every mom knows to not ignore this sound). I’ll let you fill in the blanks on the clean up we did from there (luckily it was an allergy thing and not a tummy bug).
Thanks to the unexpected wakeup, I didn’t have as much time to get myself looking as nice as I like before my 9am class. (Hello vulnerability with a webcam).
Feeling exhausted from not enough sleep and no weekend recharge time, I grabbed a soda to try and wake myself up. (I’ve been trying to stay off soda…)
In class we were practicing active listening, and I had some very vulnerable conversations with my group.
A sales rep I’ve been working with called me during that group exercise and left a voicemail explaining a new a tighter deadline that if missed would lead to a price increase.
Then the sales rep followed up with an email that said, “Erika ?????”
Can you guess where my mental state was at that moment? Yeah, not in a good place… With my blood boiling, I emailed him back to remind him that I’m in class on Mondays till 12:30 and asked him to lay off the pressure. My mind was distracted for the rest of class. I chose to try to go to a yoga session before calling this sales rep back.
Unfortunately, the universe wasn’t done with me yet. On the way home from yoga, I drove through some road construction and I got construction debris lodged into my tire… which also reminded me that I was supposed to take it into a collision repair shop to fix the bumper from another incident I had on the freeway last month when something flew out of the back of a truck on the freeway and hit me… but now I can’t do that because first I’ve got to get my tire fixed…
Feeling the stress yet? I wish this story was exaggerated.
I should have told this sales rep that I would call later, but all I could hear in my head was that I promised him I would call at 12:30. At this point, the daily hassles had drained my resources to handle my feelings. I was deep in the throws of a rumination spiral. Here’s what some of my internal dialogue sounded like:
He says he cares about relationships, but today proved this is just a transaction for him. He only cares about checking the next box to close his sale. If he were good at relationships, he would have remembered all those times that I told him we couldn’t have a call on Monday mornings because I have class. I’ve told him that at least 4 times now!
I called. It went to voicemail. And I left him a message that was not my best… I think I remember ending the call in tears asking him to “back off and give me a little space.” It’s a little blurry though, so I’m not sure. All I know is that it was bad enough that he asked our mutual friend to intervene and try to cool things over.
This story also illustrates what is known as stress generation theory. Often, if we are predisposed to stress, we will act in a way that can generate more stress. For example, the stress of travel resulted in me not getting enough sleep which led me to reach for foods that would give me a quick hit of energy, such as soda and sugar, but that energy is not lasting. Another example of how I amplified my own stress was the rumination spiral I took myself on when villainizing this sales rep. Although rumination can feel good in the moment, it does not end with you being uplifted or productive. On top of that, the environment can add stressors as well. For instance, why did I have to get a flat tire in the middle of all of this? There is truth to the old adage, “When it rains, it pours.” As these stressors accumulate, we have less energy to deal effectively with those stressors – which often results in more stress! And the cycle continues.
Now, instead of having 1 recovery day on Monday, my recovery attempts are bleeding into day 2. What’s important here, however, is that I am still actively attempting to recover. I’m looking at the places where I was adding to my own stress and choosing to change the cycle. I’m doing this by working on first recharging my “resource bank” or in other words by trying to restore the energy I’ll need to be able to deal with those daily hassles again. This is why, often when we get a little space from a triggering event, we look back on it wondering why it was such a big deal to us. When we look back, we’ve also usually done things that restored our energy such as good sleep or good food.
I’m currently spending the day repaying my sleep debt, getting outside, doing healthy movement, eating anti-inflammatory foods, and reconnecting with God. I’ve also made small goals to move things forward for the sales rep – since he and I do actually want the same outcome. I’m also preparing myself to apologize and acknowledge that I showed up as less than my best. I’m giving myself compassion for the fact that I will have rough days and I will be clumsy in my boundaries. However, I will also continue to learn from those rough days and practice my boundary skills because all of that is valid and necessary.
These goals show a balance of both problem focused and emotion focused coping. I’ll work to solve the problems that I can solve, and I’ll care for my heart and soul while doing so.
I’m also taking away the fact that I too often don’t notice the weight of the daily hassles others are carrying. I want to be better at extending grace to those who show up despite having the pressure of stress on their shoulders. I want to be better at noticing and naming the emotions and processes that we are using when we’re trying to get things done so that I can build stronger connections and cohesion with those that I interact with. I’m hoping that as I get better at doing so with others, I can also be better at doing so with myself. This is the actual cycle I want to generate in my world.
Thanks for being here today. I’m grateful you’ve spent some time with me. I hope you give yourself and others a little extra grace today.