When to slow down, when to stop

I have found that, depending on personality, environment and events it can takes just one more significant trauma, shock, stressor or one heavy dose of caregiving, combined with a general lack of support to find yourself, all too suddenly in dissociation, total shutdown or worse. The shutdowns were stress responses pushed to the limit, literally to a survival state.

The last thing a psychologist I saw, years ago, said at the end of our sessions, which I realise, retrospectively were about stress and anxiety, was not to wait so long to get help. At that point I was suffering, I see now from anxiety that caused severe symptoms but not shutdown.

Later, I didn't act on that advice, because experience taught me getting help was not straightforward and could cause more problems than it solved. But I didn't forget the lesson. It's important to slow down, not to ignore or push past symptoms of severe anxiety, stress or exhaustion.

Sometimes slowing down is enough but if you've left it too long without listening to your body you may just have to call a stop, or your body will eventually, one way or another, do just that.

When the stalker turned up and wouldn't leave I had continuous chest pains. I went to hospital 24 hours later. My numbers showed a suspected heart attack. It turned out I hadn't had one. The previous year I'd had tests that showed my heart was that of someone twenty odd years younger. I credit that possibly with my survival. But I made the decision there and then to stop everything - my stressful course, and hiding the stalker harassment from mutual friends. I have never regretted it. I was warned in hospital about reducing stress. They said they saw people in there all the time with stress related heart attacks. I know people who have stress induced heart attacks. I have known people who have died from heart attacks in their forties and fifties. If you've reached those decades, very likely you do too.