The Art of Avoidance

Ah yes, procrastination my close friend. I have a teeny tiny habit of avoiding responsibilities in favour of doing silly little tasks like re-orginising my bookshelves or emptying out my chest of drawers and ensuring that everything is placed back in a highly practical manor. But at least those methods of procrastination are slightly usefully as while I may not get my essay finished up early, I will on the other hand have a perfectly alphabetized DVD rack. I'm not talking about those kinds of procrastination here, I'm talking about the stupid, useless kind in which you watch 10 seasons of a tv show in a month. Yeah, that's not an exaggeration. I procrastinate to the extreme.

I have had bad experienced with stress in the past, it exacerbates other problems that I have going on in my life so obviously I try to avoid getting stressed at all costs. However being in High School and studying two Advanced Highers and a Higher doesn't really allow for a low stress mock exam diet. 

It's like I have a limit now, an intangible stress limit, that every time I creep even the slightest bit over that line my body just seizes up into a whole load of 'nope.' It's like every cell in my being is screaming at me to stop, to get away from the stress stimulus. 

Psychologically, its a simple premise. Put simply, when the body gets stressed it initiates a 'fight or flight' response in our bodies. Our heart rates increase along with our blood pressure, in order to deliver more oxygen to our muscles so we are prepared to either perceived threat to our survival. The fight or flight response is hardwired into our brains and the only way to successfully tackle it is to do physical activity in order to trick your brain into thinking that you have defeated the threat so that our body can return to a state of calm. That's why we're told to exercise if we are stressed. There are some really good articles about this online if you are interested in checking them out.

As I mentioned, I don't even let my body get to this stage of fight or flight anymore, if I begin to get stressed its just like a giant 'nope' and I turn in the opposite direction and avoid it, which let me tell you, is entirely counterproductive when you are trying to study. But alas, this study leave Grey's Anatomy was my poison of choice and I watched a fair bit of it in order to take my mind of school work.

I did manage to manage my time though, it's all about finding balance and it just takes time. I try to power through the stress as much as possible and get as much word done as I have learned that as soon as I hit that wall, that limit then its just best to close the books and take a while off to reorganise my thoughts and get a little perspective.