Stress Me Not

[garysharpe]

This is taken from my full length article "How to Love and Care for a Person with Parkinson's" outthinkingparkinsons.com/a...

A lot of people will know that anxiety and depression are associated with Parkinson's and that stress makes it worse. But not many people understand how much stress affects us. For me, stress is the real killer. I feel stress mentally and physically in ways which it could never even have understood before I had experienced the disease.

Remember, the very biggest amplifier of Parkinson's is stress. It locks PwP (People with Parkinsons') up into tight balls of pain and anxiety. Bodies become pulled into that classic C-shaped stance of Parkinson's, movement stops, muscles become knots of tensions, minds both close down and begin to race with negative thoughts at the same time. The mind and body rapidly amplify this negativity in each other. They trap each other and lock the other into unyielding positions of anguish and pain. For People with Parkinson's this escalation can happen very quickly - it would seem to me that we have become extremely over-sensitized to stress triggers. Little things can quickly be ramped up into crisis points.

So keep calm in voice and action as best you can and be always mindful that stress for a Person with Parkinson's is much, much more disabling and diminishing than for other people. I would also suggest to try to gently take away from a PwP any unnecessary responsibilities or unnecessary sources of worry too. I say gently, because having to admit that one can no longer cope like before, or that one is no longer as resilient, can be an extremely stressful thing to face and come to terms with in of itself.

[12stargate]

Thank you thank you thank you for posting this. It helps me understand myself better, and I am contemplating sharing it with friends and family.

Love and blessings to you from Eva G

🍀👍🌺

[garysharpe in reply to 12stargate]

Thankyou thankyou thankyou for this feedback Eva G. Our mantra is if our work helps just one other person, then it will be worth it!

[Hidden]

Hello garysharpe

In the evenings if i start to feel my meds wearing off and i guess this triggers my fear of what will happen when they do. When my meds don't work i suffer a lot of pain in my arms back and shoulders on a scale of 1 to 10 they are a 7 to 8. I feel the anxiety start to build, then anger, then depression comes and the i don't give a shit attitude. This will go on for a couple of hours and then i am back to normal (normal for me what ever that is) . This almost always happens when i eat a large meal in the evening. So now i don't eat any large meals.

A lot of stress will trigger it also.

I am retired and have a very tight family and a great wife of 45 years. No bills just what it takes to live.

[laglag]

Ditto to what Eva G said! I just sent an email to a friend last week trying to explain how stress really bothers me & how others just don't understand. I will also share your post, if you don't mind.

[garysharpe in reply to laglag]

Of course, it was made for sharing laglag

[Hidden]

When my meds are not working the longer it goes on the more depressed i get and the more angry i get. It just builds and builds. I am completely aware of what i am doing but i can not do anything about it. It is all consuming i just have to ride it out.

[garysharpe in reply to Hidden]

There are mind tools which can help this. I know this because this is exactly where I was at not very long ago Bailey. Counseling, coconut oil, EFT, cognitive behavioural therapy all worked for me. It is all about breaking the feedback cycle.

[Hidden]

When my meds are not working the longer it goes on the more depressed i get and the more angry i get. It just builds and builds. I am completely aware of what i am doing but i can not do anything about it. It is all consuming i just have to ride it out.

[cabbagecottage]

Stress is the biggest enemy .. I do everything I possibly can to take it away from my husband , that's not to say I don't include him , I only give him one thing at a time to think about at a time .

For instance if he has a nurse OT anyone or anything that might stick in his mind and fret about i don't tell him until a short while before . Well it works for because if it doesn't stress him I don't stress that he is stressing .win win ....

If he does start stressing ,worrying about I will change the subject get him to sing along with me .

[scubanurse]

Thanks for this; Wish I knew how to get the people I work with to understand it!

[garysharpe in reply to scubanurse]

Yes, I had to give me up my academic career for the same reasons, ginglou