Blinded by Stress

Recently, the drain pan in my shower failed. After looking into repair options, I discovered the best solution was to rebuild the shower. Updating the bathroom had been on my wish list, but I hadn’t planned on doing it so soon. I started interviewing and getting quotes from contractors. Then a family member got sick and was hospitalized.

I hired the contractor, and while sitting in the hospital, I replied to a text message, agreeing to a start date. I hesitated, wondering if I should ask to start a week or two later, but I thought surely my dad would be out of the hospital soon. A few days later, I realized my dad would be in the hospital longer than we anticipated.

The contractor was able to bump back the start date by a week, but I hadn’t selected any tile yet. So, in any spare minute, I jumped into finding the tile I wanted to use and checking if it could arrive in time.

I picked out the tiles for the walls, then the floors, and then the niche. The staff in each store I visited expressed their opinions on the size of the tile and which tiles complemented one another. It was a lot to take in. I learned about the different types (ceramic vs. porcelain vs. marble, etc.) Whew! That piece was done, and the tiles would arrive just in time. Then, I selected the grout for each tile and placed my order. While waiting for that to arrive, I quickly purchased new faucets, shower head, and tub spout (mine were forty years old and needed an update).

As I rushed to get everything together, a few times I considered asking to push back the start date again, but I also didn’t want to delay the time it would take to put my bathroom back together so I could use it again. Instead, I kept pushing through, reminding myself that soon I’d have my bathroom back and could enjoy the upgrade.

Two days before the work began, my dad was well enough to be discharged from the hospital. I spent the next two days moving everything out of my bathroom and getting ready for the work to begin.

The teardown started on Monday, and that week, I worked from home, a few feet away from the noise of the tile and backer boards being torn down, the floor being torn up, and then the walls being rebuilt. I wasn’t doing any manual labor, yet working through that noise was draining.

I had made decisions so quickly and realized I had often forgotten details I needed to consider (such as whether a valve with shutoffs was needed). I jumped into researching my options, and of course, each had pros and cons. I wanted to choose what would be beneficial going forward and reduce risks.

I started second-guessing my choices. I was worn out from making decisions and couldn’t wait to be done. Finally, I thought I had selected everything only to have something new crop up (for example, the tile for the niche arrived, but in the wrong shade, I read reviews on the shower faucet I selected and discovered it was prone to leaking, etc.).

I was making decisions in a state of stress and at a faster pace than I prefer. I was reacting rather than planning. As new things cropped up, my stress responses were higher than they would have been under normal conditions. (As I write this, I feel my stress growing).

It’s Saturday. We’re five days into the project. The drain pan and frame of the shower have been rebuilt, and the waterproofing is in place. The contractor is ready to start tiling on Monday. I head out for a run, I pray, “Please keep my thoughts away from tile and the shower. I want to turn my thoughts to other things I need to think about.”

It reminded me of a time when I was in the wrong relationship. I didn’t realize how much it affected me until after it was over and I went for a run. As I ran, new ideas came to me about other areas of my life. It wasn’t until these new thoughts came that I realized, in the previous months, I’d been preoccupied trying to fix the relationship, and it was all I thought about. My thoughts had been consumed trying to figure out what was “off”, what I could say to help Smith understand how I felt, and how to bring our relationship back to how it felt in the beginning.

Running is therapeutic to me. I don’t listen to anything but the noise outside. My thoughts wander, moving from one thing to the next. Sometimes, I work through something I’ve been working on. When I let go of the relationship and new thoughts came, I felt lighter. I felt good. I felt like myself.

It wasn’t until I pulled back from the relationship and took time to evaluate how I felt in it that I began to see it wasn’t the relationship for me. The further I got away from the relationship, the more I was able to see the unhealthy character traits. It’s kind of like the old saying, You can’t see the forest when you’re in the middle of the trees.

While in the relationship, I was standing in the middle of the trees, I was preoccupied trying to figure out what felt “off” and how to get the good part back.  

Once I stepped away, I got clarity. I was able to see the relationship as a whole. I began to see what was really going on – the unhealthy behaviors he used, such as manipulation, dismissing my thoughts and feelings, and guilt-tripping me.

During my recent run, as I reflected on the stress I felt while rebuilding my shower and how it influenced my decision-making, I realized how the stress of being in a harmful relationship can cloud our judgment. Just as the stress of making quick decisions led to second-guessing myself, stress from a harmful relationship also leads to self-doubt.

The key is learning to tune into ourselves so that when we begin to feel “off,” we can pause to consider what’s going on and what we need to do to bring ourselves back to a healthy state. Stay tuned next week for more on how to do that.