April is...

National Stress Awareness Month, National Mental Health Month, National Autism Awareness Month and National Women's Healthcare Month! It is also National Poetry Month and there is a well known poetic prayer at the end of this blog post.

I couldn't just choose one - these are all subjects near and dear to my heart. I make my living professionally as a psychiatrist, working mostly with the above population.

So how about we address some of them in a series, National Stress Awareness Month being Part 1?

Stress.

It's a very delicate and gentle way to introduce the subject of mental health in our culture, mental illness being a subject that is near taboo and that is only whispered about in dark corners of inner bedrooms back home. "O kan re mi di e ni." ( I'm just a little tired') or "Mo ni stress"( I am stressed out) or "Stress yen ti po ju, ori mi kan n yi round and round ni, mi o mo oun ti ma se pelu ara mi"( The stress was so much, my head was spinning round and round and I didn't know what to do with myself). Is this a familiar statement to any of us, including the writer?

I feel stressed already stressing about all this stress!

It is not a new revelation to all that stress is a normal part of life in the modern world.  The trick about surviving stress is recognizing when you have an excess of stressors stacking up against you. By the time you start to feel the tension in your jawline and your muscles are tense and you are fatigued despite a goodnight's rest, you are already there. Headaches for no reason. Irritable and snapping at others with very little provocation. Hmm hmm hmm. The southerners have a name for it. They call it being ornery. Its official - you are stressed Out. What are you going to do now? Abi won nse mi ni? FYI, it's not your mother in law or your enemies back in Nigeria. That juju is too far away.

De-stressing 101.

Americans have one on us on this issue as they will at least admit to feeling stressed and maybe even admit to needing time out and away from their jobs or daily lives. They take vacations and go away even if its only for a weekend. A week. It allows you to destress. It removes you from your current daily stressors so you can think more freely about a suitable course of action. You come back recharged. Refreshed. Ready to take on what life may throw at you.

We discovered this whole 'take a break' thing very late in the game but now that we have, I guard my time away jealously. Wouldn't trade it for anything. I once even traded a salary increase for more time off. My boss thought I had lost my mind. No sir. I was trying not lose it!

So what to do if you can't afford the luxury of time off?

De - stressing can be as simple as talking to someone. A close friend will do so long as you don't abuse them by monopolizing their time with your stressors. Your pastor or imam are other easy alternatives. And when you have lost contact with your close friends and the nearest family member is thousands of miles away, consider counseling - or the more frightening word to us Africans - therapy. It doesn't mean you are crazy. It means you are desperately trying not to be! And this is America. No one needs to know you are in therapy. And at this point of just stress, you don't need medications. Yet...


Other ways to de-stress?


Adopt a healthier lifestyle that can better cope with stress like with:


Exercise/Yoga.


Change your diet to a leaner higher fibre one.


Take up a hobby...golf, knitting, sewing, writing/journalling.


Meditation and / or prayer.

When all else fails (or maybe before it does fail), consider this, the serenity prayer, in all its entirety, and our poem for the month:

"The Serenity Prayer"

God grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change; (things that stress me out!) 

the courage to change the things I can;

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; 

Enjoying one moment at a time; 

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it; 

Trusting that He will make all things right

if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life 

and supremely happy with Him

Forever in the next.

Funke Abolade, M.D.

Social/publicity Secretary