-Question submitted by Anonymous

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Dannielle Says: 

Everyone deals with stress differently and no one is a normal people… SO LIKE… The way I deal with stress is by taking care of myself. When I’m super stressed out, it’s 50,000 times worse if I’m not eating well, going to the gym, and taking some me time. SO THAT’S WHAT I HAVE TO DO. I know you’re constantly working hard in the military, so i imagine working out won’t help.. BUT MAYBE IT WILL, I DON’T KNOW. 

There are very few things we have control of in our lives, and being healthy (both physically and mentally) is a huge huge huge huge huge huge huge huge #huge thing we have to consider. Maybe you’re working 20 hours a day for six days in a row and you have to decide between getting 4 hours of sleep or getting 3.5 hours of sleep and taking 30 minutes to yourself to sit outside, breathe in and out VERY SLOWLY, and write out all of your feelings. Write them down, cry your eyes out and deal with your stress head on. A lot of us try to push the stress out of our minds because we think it makes us weak. IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU WEAK. It makes you human. 

Take that time to deal with the stress head on, think about why you’re stressed, how upset you are that you aren’t getting any sleep, how much you miss your family and friends, how hard you’re working and how little you feel like you can handle. Try to be okay with all of those things, we’re all overwhelmed at some point in our lives and it just makes it worse when we “push through” and pretend we’re totally fine. You’re not fine and that’s completely okay, make sure you’re dealing with these emotions or one day they will all catch up to you at once and you’ll completely breakdown. It’s okay to feel totally broken. Just make sure you’re taking the time to actually feel that way AND remember to breathe. 

Kristin Says:

Twenty hours a day is a completely unreasonable amount of time to be doing anything. In my opinion, the biggest cause of stress for anyone is lack of sleep, and lack of downtime. You are facing both of those things, and, what’s more difficult, you aren’t making the decisions… so you can’t just saunter up to your OFFICER IN CHIEF #armytitles and be like, “Hey yo, the girls at Everyone Is Gay told me to tell you that you should let us have some more time to relax so that we can be more mentally sound. AY OH.”

I mean, who knows, maybe OFFICER IN CHIEF will be like “OMG KRISTIN AND DANNIELLE SAID THAT!? EVERYONE GETS THE DAY OFF.” …but I don’t think that’s the way it works in the army.

My advice would be to pay close attention to your breathing. I know that sounds like the most lame and tiniest morsel of advice that one could ever give to you… but in a situation like this you are probably holding a SHITTON of tension inside of yourself, and that makes a person hold their breath, breathe irregularly, etc. If you can remind yourself several times a day to check in and take a few long, slow, deep breaths, that will help regulate all of that tension that this lack of sleep and onslaught of work is causing in your body.

I also second Dannielle’s motion of trying to claim a small amount of time to write or reflect on your day, your feelings, etc. Sure, that might be five minutes before you fall asleep - but those five minutes can be crucial to you remembering that you are a human being with feelings.

Don’t beat yourself up for feeling overwhelmed. Anyone - anyone - in your position would be struggling. Breathe. Reflect. Repeat.