Think about the tiredness you’re currently feeling. Tiredness in any form: mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. Think about how it might change, if something new were to exacerbate it. If a misfortune, challenging and weighty, were to bear down like the proverbial straw on one’s back.
Now, let’s say you prevail, you enter restoration mode. Perhaps this involves a movie, shopping, reclining in a mid-morning bath. Your recovery routine is practical and satisfying; relief floods your system allowing you to emerge refreshed, ready for the future.
Until the next thing happens.
Then, how do you feel? Does the new impact come as a fresh single blow, or does it travel deeper, re-animating old wounds? Cast your mind back, to the time you thought you were through the tunnel, only to suddenly find yourself at its epicentre. Were you as far through, as deeply rested, as the shopping or bath would have you believe?
These questions are asked to illustrate how the reception we give to stress can affect our wellbeing as much as the stress itself. The history of exhaustion, trauma, grief, or disappointment that we carry is often compounded when
