KABOOMERs: Coping Skills for What’s Eating Them

In any epoch, your life can get zany to the point of wanting to launch 
a Munch scream



Credit E. Munch:  The Scream British.Museum.Blog

I bet a tuppence [not the VP type of Pence] that our extended COVID and Presidential election 
epochs are maddening for you to a Nth degree.

What is a KABOOMER to Do?  How can she or he Cope?

=> Go on the Offensive

Coping Step 1: Start with a personal, candid subjective check of your current stressors and 
environment.  One solid way is to take this quiz, then adapt or adjust as you can.

Here are three more checks, as offered in KABOOMER: Chapter 6

www.stress.org/self-assessment/

A Personal Well-Being Survey: www.heartmath.org/resources/personal-well-being-survey This online Survey has 25 questions and only requires4-5 minutes to complete. I don’t want you to stress-out on this—just take it.

And try this Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory. Your free limited-use template is located at www.familyofmen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/stress_scale.pdf.

What are bumming big deals and stressors for us?

At the top of our 2020 list is loss of a loved one or loss of your livelihood.

And, home-schooling of kids in two-career families in COVID can make parents scream too!


Coping Step 2: Know your internal adversary - You likely know some simple yet very hard theories of de-stressing and keepin’ on when factors beyond your control can really get you down.

Let us refresh on the definition of our coping adversary - STRESS:

“a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.”

Coping Step 3: See or Feel Something…Do Something!

   I beg to differ slightly with folks, like author Austin Bay,  who suggest that you Embrace the SUCK – meaning that life can be and often is adverse or demanding, so deal with it.

Granted, life is hard. Isn’t avoiding or mitigating the SUCK superior to embracing it?

 Don’t get me wrong. Countering evil triggers and disease-related Chronic Stress is by no means as easy as 1-2-3.

Our Viable Stress Counters include: 

1. Walks by Golden Pond – bonding with Mother Earth can promote Serenity and help you compartmentalize stressors.

- Hug a Tree instead of booting Fido when frustrated.

2. Exercise (go ahead and scream at that punching bag or hoot at the end of a weightlifting set

3. Eat an anti-inflammatory diet and try to limit alcohol – particularly post-dinner hour.

 - Don’t let what you eat contribute to what’s eating you!

4. Adapt some type of mindful breathing and body flow exercise – perhaps YOGA or Qi Gong

Credit: 15_vector_STRESS Not_Puzzle pieces_Fiverr

5. Do not suffer in silence.

- You have a friend who can help you Chill or work through a SUCKy incident!

6. Mimic Morpheus with restorative slumber. This is a TOP Priority.

 A KABOOMER’s summary offense/defense/special team pictorial can be viewed @:
15_vector_STRESS Not_Puzzle pieces_Fiverr

If we think of Coping Saws which, with skillful use, adjust and adapt to changing carpentry surfaces, 

we might see a metaphor for adjusting to adverse triggers which face us.

What does this KABOOMER do to Cope?  

Well, the classic UP ON THE ROOF song by James Taylor helped me get through demerits and restriction at the Naval Academy.

 Lord knows I’ve played that ballad and hummed it (recalling that humming is good for our Vagus nerve) too many times to count in 2020.   

I stay away from nightcaps, move to sweat, and try to please my Gut.  A little solitude and even worship has worked, too!

I do my best to sense and respond, or get more than a gentle prompt from my Bride if I appear hassled.


Now, recall, from KABOOMER what Hans Selye asserted about Stress
[whether triggers are from Fight, Flight, adverse temperatures, the Suck, Friction or Pandemic
Toxins]:

“Stress doesn’t kill you.  It’s your reaction to it.”

Hans Selye

This theoretical Doctor of Stress promoted a three-step framework, a Classical GAS, so to speak,

to depict human reactions to chronic, non-specific or Fight/Flight stressors of life:

1. Alarm Reaction

2. Bodily Resistance

3. Exhaustion.

How we react or adapt to a mental, and/or physical stressor

is predicated on many, many hormonally-triggered secretions and results.

Clearly, we wish to minimize chronic exhaustion if we can.

When merited, Defense is superior to Disease as an after effect, if our many Sense and Respond signals are working for us, rather than against us.

And, our Defenses need to be body-wide. 

We MUST manage Stress to keep it from chronic drip, drip, drip of elevated Cortisol which can lead to disease.

Go on the offensive, sidestep or rope-a-dope the SUCK.

Yes, you can!

Be well and try to be UNbeatable like this elder British gent,


Koach Dave