Good morning, ladies. For anyone just joining us, welcome to Cafe Nudge. Grab a coffee, a tea, a hot chocolate, a whatever, and get into deep-conversation-with-soul sisters mode. I'm enjoying a cup of PG Tips, which is a British tea that just rocks. I mean seriously, who makes a better brew than the English? (Okay, maybe the Japanese -- but that's for an entirely different discussion; do you see how if we were actually together at Starbucks the digressions would form bunny trails for miles?)

I've read your responses to last week's post and I see several threads in this tapestry of major adjustments that I'd like to follow. We'll get to relationships with parents in this time of change and finding times for friends and for self. But the thread I'd like to coax out today  is the issue of our bodies' responses to stress.

You've reported headaches, stomach aches, fluttery chests, high heart rates, and exhaustion so deep you can hardly walk. 

MELODY put it so well: "A few mornings a week I'll wake up nauseous and realize it's my body reacting to something that it thinks it should be stressed about, even if I'm not consciously too worried about it.  KATE echoes that:  "It's not that big of a deal, but my body thinks so."

Even though as young women you may be aware of the appearance of your body, like, constantly, all the stresses and concerns and adjustments of this time in your life make it almost impossible to pay attention to what your body's doing on the inside ... until it turns on you.

Here's the deal -- we may have control over how we handle stressful situations in terms of how we act, how we relate to people, how we move through the day, how much time we spend studying ... the list goes on. But our bodies have minds of their own and they WILL react exactly how they please.

Think about this first, if you will. Where in your body do you carry stress? What's your physical signal that there is way too much going on with you?  Hands down, mine is my jaw. Always has been. I'm not one to get sick to my stomach under stress, or get diarrhea when I'm anxious, or suddenly be stricken with back pain when life gets hard. But let me get overwhelmed and that TMJ pain kicks in so fast, it's like somebody flipped a switch. Where does your stress live in your body?

We can do two things with that.

    (1) Work on that area and relieve the pain. Absolutely necessary -- trust me. The clenching of my jaw from high school on did so much damage to my jaw joints, I had to have four surgeries to repair it. Jaw wired shut for weeks at a time ... it was ugly. (Didn't stop me from talking, but that's yet another bunny trail.)  

    (2) Deal with the stress itself. As long as we're anxious and over-extended and driving toward the ever elusive perfectionism, we're going to have upset stomachs, hammering hearts, achey necks. Number (1) is vital, but getting to the root of it is even more so. 

We'll talk about (1) next week -- with a guest post from a massage therapist who happens to be my daughter. As for (2), that's a subject that can cover a whole series of posts. Would you like to go there? Is that a direction you'd like to take here? Let me know.

For today, I want to offer one thing. It has helped me tremendously through the years of major adjustments -- even now as I adjust to new roles. That is this: focus on one thing at a time. A friend of mine recently reminded me that Jesus didn't multi-task. He had a huge amount of work to get done in, what, three years? But he devoted his energy to one piece of his call at a time. So can we do anything else?

It's one thing to review your notes one last time before the exam while you're brushing your teeth. How could you get through college otherwise, right? What we're talking about here is trying to write a term paper while you're worried about not spending enough time with your friends. Taking notes in class and at the same time texting your study group to set up a session for a different class. Having coffee with your friends and simultaneously stressing over quadratic equations, wondering if you're gaining weight, and rehearsing a dance routine in your head. If that's not a recipe for a physical stress response, I don't know what is.  

What does that multi-tasking thing look like in your life? Do you try to do six things at once, or try to do one thing while worrying about everything else you're NOT doing?

I can almost hear you saying, How can I NOT worry about all this stuff? I'm in COLLEGE!   I get that, because from now on there are going to be a multitude of things vying for your attention all at once. Like, for the rest of your life.  Now is the time to get a handle on it, to take charge and say, "I am only going to focus on this one thing for the next two hours. No texts, no phone calls, no emails. Just me and the task at hand" It may be hard at first - maybe more anxiety for a moment or two - but hang with it. It can even relieve homesickness. Give it a go.   

So on to the day, ladies. Do the next right thing.

Blessings,

Nancy Rue