Can You Tell When Your Stress Cup Is Almost Full?

[Nam]

I don't seem to be able to detect that. It's either I'm fine or I'm totally NOT fine. My hubs wants me to tell him when things are starting to get bad...and I just don't know what to tell him. I think sometimes the act of saying it puts me over the edge. I do my best keeping the stress levels down that I can control, but some things just pop up, you know? I had a birthday, several emotionally sucking conversations, company came over, remodeling has started... I really thought I was okay. But I'm not.

So, I'm wondering if you can feel it coming? And if you do, what are the signs? And have you been able to curb it?

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

When I am getting near the edge, I can feel it physically. Like I will be very tense.
It's hard to notice if you are tense all the time, but one way I learned to notice is to control where my shoulders are. If they are down then I'm okay. If they are all the way up then it's bad. When I feel safe enough to, I try to relax. And breathe in and out very deeply for a good while. Try to switch my brain back to reality.

You could write down the situations that usually trigger you?
I agree that sometimes you can't tell though. Yesterday my cousin & girlfriend came over, I had expected it to go badly, but it went o.k.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Hi,
The signs are different for everyone. I just typed this out in another thread. I suggest keeping a log of your episodes. Date, time, trigger/stressor, preceeding events, noticeable symptoms, how you reacted, etc. Over time you will see a pattern. I know my signs, but they are likely different than other people's signs. Good luck!

 

[WillyKat]

I think @Radise is right, that its hard to notice if you're always about to spill over.

We live in Plato's cave, where we don't know anything different than having a full cup, so we're unable to tell when it isn't full or when it is.

So it's important to experience relaxation as much as possible. Use breathing exercises, mindfulness, grounding, etc. Once you've experienced this a few times, you'll have a yardstick by which you can tell when you're not relaxed.

Hope that helps.

 

[Momofthree]

This is a hard one. I'm working on it myself, but like others have said it's a matter of practicing mindfulness and grounding. I usually start to feel heavy and tired, like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. My first response usually is to ignore this feeling and keep pushing through (when you have to survive that's what you have to do) and then the next thing I know my stress cup is overflowing; but I'm trying to teach myself to step back and take a deep breath when I start to feel this way or even ask for help from my support system when I know that it's going to be a particularly busy day, week, or month.

 

[ghotiff]

I find it difficult to notice feelings and emotions and they can be too subtle for me. I did a diary like @Solara said above and I noticed that there are more tangible clues for me that I worked out. One for me is the way I park my car. I normally like to park neatly etc, but when heading into overflow I stop caring about parking and will park "badly". Obviously this is unique to me but it's a very clear sign that I have learnt to pay attention to. There are others indicators, all just as silly.

 

[sun seeker]

We live in Plato's cave, where we don't know anything different than having a full cup, so we're unable to tell when it isn't full or when it is.

Good analogy. I feel I am very near a full cup most of the time, so there isn't much between this pseudo-normal and overflowing. I wish I could get inside of an untraumatized person just for a while, to see what it feels like. Sometimes it takes so little to put me over the edge, it would be near impossible to eliminate all the triggers (a sensory deprivation tank, maybe? No, I'd probably get claustrophobic.) You wouldn't believe how stressed I get sometimes just cleaning house. Yesterday it was my cat pulling a shirt off the clothes drying rack and the resulting loud noise that reduced me to a shaking mess and I had to take several hours to lie on the couch and decompress. If you're anything like this, maybe you can't tell when you are getting close to a full cup because you are near there all the time?

 

[holdenmonty]

It is really tough to do and like Solara said I did a journal that I still keep but is more of a venting tool to get my thoughts down on paper so I can look at them and re read them and see if they are really something to get angry over and how to fix the issue. But for me it is still tough because depending on what happens depends on if my anger slowly increases or if it just explodes. But I have learned what most of my triggers are so I can challenge it/mitigate the circumstance so my anger doesn't explode. But my personal triggers are disrespect, and a lack of control. But I have noticed that as my anger slowly increases it's almost like those cartoons where you can see the person's level go from their toes all the way up to their head in red and then their ears have steam coming out of them.

 

[Nam]

After I wrote the original post, I realized that there are at least two phases before overflow. First phase is normal feeling: take on the world type feeling. The second phase is depression. I'm very much like @Momofthree that I tend to muscle through tiredness. And like @ghotiff , I don't feel emotion as much as other people, but when my cup is over, I'm very sensitive to looks, body language, and tone of voices, especially if it's dismissive. It drives my hubs crazy.

I'm journaling. I haven't been this anxious in a while. Like years. My startle response is back and I'm overwhelmed by little things that I could do easily before. I hope it doesn't last long. My kids make too much noise to be jumpy.

 

[holdenmonty]

It's amazing how us with PTSD are so similar in different ways. I as well don't feel emotions as much except when my cup is running over or is about to run over then the smallest of things can set me off. Before I was started on my meds it was the most anxious I have ever been and I could probably get my dosage increased but I like that I'm not relying on my meds 100% for me to feel "normal" It is a struggle and I journal daily which I have learned helps a lot.

 

[TonyG]

My anxiety starts to build and I feel like I am loosing control of my ability to think straight, prior to using medication I would find my anxiety so extreme that I just couldn't do anything, now I can use breathing and find a quite place and relax, It still feels bad but nowhere like it was before medication.