Creatively Handling Stress

Ever get totally ticked off at someone and just feel the tension rising? One day while being very irritated at someone who thought it was his career path in life to make me as unhappy as he could, I came up with this idea and it has worked very well for me.

You will have to use your imagination by picturing in your mind’s eye what I am going to tell you. If your visual skills aren’t very good, you can just think these thoughts and eventually you will be able to see the picture in your mind’s eye. I love this solution for dealing with people who hurt me intentionally or unintentionally.

First of all, I had to stop giving this person the power to hurt me and I did but it was a difficult process. Once I started thinking better of myself, it was a lot easier to disregard the cruel things being said to me.

With my restored self esteem, when insults were hurled at me, I would just look at the person doing the bad stuff and say: “I really don’t care”. After awhile of telling them I didn’t care what I was called or what I was doing wrong, some of the hateful stuff stopped but would raise its ugly head often enough to where I knew I would be leaving the situation as quickly as I was able to do so.

Anyhow, here is the little trick I invented for myself to make a potentially cruel situation better for me.

Pick a word, any word that you feel fits their description. I always used the word “jerk. Picture that word in your mind along with the definition. In this case “jerk” means “an offensive term for somebody who is regarded as behaving foolishly or treating someone in a demeaning manner”.

Just to the left of the word and definition should be an empty box/picture frame.

In the empty box you should imagine the person walking into the box or picture frame, turning around to smile at you showing how happy they are to be in that frame.

Look how happy that person is to be recognized as a “Jerk”. You may add others to that picture as you find other “jerks” coming in and out of your life. I have one permanent “jerk” with others visiting him from time to time.

This is one of my better creative ideas for handling stress. It has certainly changed how I react to jerks. Now when someone is being deliberately mean, I just use my mind to have them walk into that picture frame and be welcomed with a handshake and a smile from the resident “jerk”.