How I learned to stop 'stressing' about arguments with my son

Until recently, I worried a lot about coming home and finding my son sitting in front of his computer. This is where I usually find him, and the reason I worried was because we would almost always get into a fight about it. I started to anticipate the arguments, and so I didn't even want to go home!

When I realized this was what I was doing, I started to observe how I felt when it was time to go home. I paid attention to the things I said to myself. I paid attention to the ways I was creating distractions and finding excuses to stay away from my house. I was amazed at how talented I had become at this skill.

Then I started to talk with people close to me about my worry. I did a lot of brainstorming about how to address the problem(s) at different levels. There is the problem of me avoiding dealing with the problem. There is the problem of fighting over the problem. There is the problem of him sitting there!

Talking about each part of the situation calmly with people who offer me some perspective helps me to let go of the worry, anxiety and fear of coming home to a young man wasting his days gaming instead of moving forward with his life. I remind myself that I can only control my actions/reactions and not those of another person. I make sure to do my meditation each day. I do as many things as I can to improve my physical and therefore my mental health. All of these actions have greatly reduced my anxiety levels and let me stop stressing about and start dealing with a difficult situation.

Could It Really Be That Easy?

My son just recently took the GED. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s the test you take in the US to get your high school ‘equivalency’ if you don’t finish high school. Basically it’s what lets you move on to the next step in life and it's something that can cause people a lot of anxiety - even lead to a panic attack.

He had studied some for it, but he’s always done pretty well on standardized tests like this, so he wasn’t too worried about if he could pass it or not. But taking the test was a pretty important event because of what it stands for in his life, especially since he struggles with depression.

The morning of the test, he woke up with a killer stomachache. He was miserable. He had no idea what he was going to do because he couldn’t miss the test. He tried a couple of home remedies including eating some chicken noodle soup, but the stomachache wouldn’t go away.

A couple of friends suggested he ‘just try to relax’. Sounds like an easy thing when it’s someone else, but not so much when it’s you who has to do the relaxing!

Well, he got to the test. He looked at the test. He started to review the contents of the test. He told me later, that about 30 seconds after he realized how easy it was going to be, his stomachache was almost completely gone! He had been holding in that tension; that anxiety so strongly that he had caused himself actual, physical pain.

He was really lucky to have a concrete way to get rid of the stress even though he didn’t know it until it happened. It’s not always that easy to let it go, especially if you don’t know what you’re anxious about.

Sometimes you just need some ‘reprogramming’ so you don’t need to know exactly what’s going on – sometimes you have to get relaxed a little just to be able to figure out what’s going on. Luckily, one of the ways you can do that is with the use of Think Right Now programs. I've been using the Think Right Now! for Windows product for years and it's a really cool way to send yourself 'subliminal' messages of encouragement and positive energy - relaxation, whatever you want more of. Click here to learn more about these products and enjoy.