Every now and again, I find myself reflecting on a time when I was really stressed. It started on a Monday my senior year. I had three tests that I to take this week, and an essay due that Friday. Every night I spent studying and writing to get prepared for these upcoming tests. All that would run through my mind is that there is not enough time to get ready for these entire tests. And the whole week I just nervous and stressed for the tests and the essay. I knew this is not the right way to be feeling before a test. I then decided there had to be away to change how I felt.
So the whole week I just wondered as I studied for the test what would be the best ways to deal with all this, so I could be relaxed for the tests. I finally thought and developed three ways to deal with stress and change the way that I feel. These incidents, as well as others, made me realize I needed to find some coping mechanisms for stress. My coping mechanisms for stress are three fold: fishing, watching T. V. , hanging out with friends. For fishing I like to go to a tank, or lake. It usually starts with me heading home from school after a long day. First I make sure that I have bait to go fishing with.
Then I get my fishing pole ready. Next I load everything in the truck and head out to where ever I want to fish at on that day. Once I get to the water I get everything setup for a relaxing time. After I cast my pole in the water I just sit back and wait. To most that might sound boring, but to me it’s amazing to just sit there and to hear nothing but the wind blow, or the birds chirp. It makes me real calm and allows me to just forget about my day and just relax. For watching TV I like to just go home and turn all the lights out, and lay on the couch. Then I grab the remote and turn the TV on.
Usually I spend the first minutes flipping through channels trying to find something to watch. Hoping that I will find one of my favorite shows on or even a good movie will suffice. Just knowing that for however long the show or movie is I don’t have to do anything but lay there and relax calms me. That all I have to do is watch and be entertained with little to no effort by me. It seems that all the stress in my life just goes away. And that I can just have joy from looking at a screen for hours. Most times I wind up falling asleep and taking a nap which makes it all even better.
It truly is a great coping mechanism for stress. For hanging with friends, it usually starts with me getting or receiving a call. Then I tell my friend about what’s going on, and why I’m stressed and that we need to do something to get things of my mind. Next we figure out something that we want to do. What’s great is that it seems to always change. One time we might go to a movie. The next time we might go out to eat. Most times when we don’t have much spending money we will go to one of our houses and just hang out. We talk and laugh and play video games, or we might go swimming.
I really like it because just when you’re hanging out with your friends I seem not to care about what’s going on in my life. It’s great to just not care about all my responsibilities and just be a kid and have a good time. To conclude, I will share a time were fishing helped me relieve my stress. It started just after I failed a big test. I was so stressed and afraid that I was going to fail for the year. I didn’t really know how to deal with the situation. So I decided I was just going to go fishing. I raced home and grab all my stuff to go fishing, got everything ready and headed to a tank that I always went to.
Once I got there I was still feeling pretty stressed, but I tried not to think about it I just threw my line in the water and waited. It seemed as if the fish could tell I was stressed cause they seemed to bite instantaneously. My heat was racing as I reeled up my catch. Once I got the fish off the hook I threw my line back in to the water. I got up to go put the fish in a bucket, and before I knew it I saw my line tighten up again my adrenaline was pumping as I ran back to my rod. The day seemed to be perfect and before I knew it I couldn’t even remember why I was stressed.
