How Does Stress Affect You?
Do you know the signs that you’re over-stressed? We don’t always feel stressed even when we are. It requires some thought about how you react at times to realize the impact of stress.
Starting in the Fall of 1999, my body started a particularly strange stress reaction. It started as tiny little bumps that looked like blisters. Only on the palm of my right hand. They were very small, no more than about 1/16th of an inch in diameter. But there would be more and more of them. When there got to be a lot of them, they sort of merged into one large sore. It got so bad that I could barely use the hand to grasp anything. There were so many things that I couldn’t do.
I saw a couple of doctors about it. The first one had no real answer for it, but gave me a cream that had only a marginal effect. The second doctor diagnosed it as a “menopause-related” rash. That was sad, his nurse saw me first to get my history, reported to him, and he had his diagnosis BEFORE he ever saw me. I really wish I had walked out on him. I think 30 years ago he probably would have prescribed Valium.
That rash started at the same time that my husband decided to take early retirement and become a contractor. It continued for a while as I changed jobs, we sold 2 houses, we bought a house and moved from Houston to San Antonio. I’m not 100% sure when it went away. It lasted at least a year and then just faded. At its worst, it was miserable, but it did get me out of doing dishes for quite a while. 
Well, last Fall it came back, sort of. It started after my father fell and broke his hip. An injury he ultimately didn’t recover from. And being his executor, I had a lot on my plate. This time it is different. It starts on the little finger of my left hand. More on the side where the skin isn’t quite so tough. In bright light you can see the blisters, but mostly it starts by turning red and hurting. I looks and feels like a burn. It spreads down that finger and up my ring finger. When it’s at its worst, I can’t even wear my wedding ring. Eventually it stops hurting and then a week or so later it peels. And the cycle repeats. It had stopped for awhile, but came back recently as we were preparing for the military service at Fort Sam Houston.
I haven’t been to a doctor about it this time. I’m not sure they would have any better answers. It’s much more tolerable where it is now, though I wish it would just go away. I even gave it a name - I call it a strash. That’s short for stress rash.
Another way that stress affects me is that I can become immobilized. I can sit at my desk w/ a million things to do and can’t even decide what to work on. If this is due to too many things to do, it usually helps if I prioritize things. Some things turn out to be not as important as I first thought. I’ve also found that having a “To Do” list helps. But other times, I become immobilized because of other stress factors. At those times, I just have to work through it, somehow. Ironically, even realizing that it is stress that has me immobilized can help to relieve it.
Not everyone recognizes stress though. When I lived in Houston, I worked downtown. I worked with a woman who drove over 20 miles one way to work each day. If you know anything about Houston, you probably know that the traffic is horrible. Freeways or surface streets, it doesn’t matter. The HOV lanes help, but you have to have a passenger. She didn’t. She drove it alone. And she always insisted that it caused her no stress. Then she would also talk about how she was always so tired, how she would generally go to bed at 8:00 pm. But she never put the tiredness and the driving together.
I have a dear friend who has MS. She has never let it slow her down, although there may be times when she should. She’ll tell me that she doesn’t feel stressed with all her activities. But, whenever she gets very, very busy, her MS nearly always flares up.
Our signs of stress can be telling us different things. It might be telling us we have too much on our plate, or that the stress of our activity is wearing us out. Perhaps we need to slow down, or it could be that we need to find a healthy outlet for our stress. What is that outlet? Only you can answer for yourself. It might be taking a break, talking about what’s on your mind, slowing down, getting more exercise. Whatever it is, you need to listen to your stress.
