Stress Management Over 40

Revisit Your Own Idealism to Handle Work Stress

Revisiting idealism can help you survive the stresses of a neoliberal world

What are the best ways to handle stress as a baby boomer still dealing with demanding clients, high-pressure days and daily operation in the thick of the rat race? When your kids are grown up, when bar-hopping after work with colleagues is too unhealthy an option, and when retirement is not in your plans any time in the foreseeable future, how do you unwind? The answer may be to revisit who you were at 15 or 20. The seeds of old dreams are still there, sitting in time capsules waiting to be opened and reclaimed. The difference now is that you can actually pursue them.

Dialing Down Stress Means Focusing on Positive Mechanisms

The "fight and flight" instinct that helped you respond so well to emergencies and perform so well at work for so long is actually on a timer. The stress response has an effect on our bodies in a way that can compromise health and well-being in a very big way. According to the American Psychological Association, "the long-term activation of your body's stress response impairs your immune system's ability to fight against disease and increases the risk of physical and mental health problems."

This means it's time to get creative about coming up with ways to transform stress into inspiration. This can involve doing many of the things that never quite fit into our super-practical way of life. It also means dedicating some time, effort and funds to exploring them. For some it's a year of travel, for others it's starting a second career that may not make much money but is fulfilling creatively, intellectually or in terms of its societal value. For still others, it's going back to school while still enjoying one's career. One of the best resources to explore the rekindling of your inner creative is Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book Women Who Run With the Wolves - Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (oh so 80s but still so useful).

Tactics to Handle Stress Better

Aside of aspiring to do things you've always wanted to do and cultivating your own wild creativity, here are some other constructive ways to handle stress:

• meditation - incorporating this into your daily routine can go a long way in managing stress
• exercise - an hour of exercise three or more times a week is recommended, even walking
• yoga - take a class or do it at home with the help of some online classes or guides
• dance classes - contrary to popular belief, you don't have to be a dancer to join a class
• community involvement - engage with anything you are interested in or care about
• diet - you can't go wrong with more fruits and vegetables
• go out - take in sports, culture, or anything outside yourself
• chemicals in food - avoid them wherever possible, even though it's pretty difficult
• pampering - treat yourself to hair appointments, manicures, massages, and spas 
• socialize - make a practice of drawing people you like closer to you

Walking in a Wildlife Sanctuary Across the Lake from a City

A Bird Sanctuary as Well as a Healthy Getaway for City Dwellers

Tommy Thompson Park offers a healthy alternative for wildlife and urbanites alike

Have you ever walked just outside a city's perimeter where the air is so fresh that you feel dizzy? At Leslie Spit/ Tommy Thompson Park on the waters of Lake Ontario, it is possible to completely escape the air pollution of 3-million strong Toronto just a short distance away. You are literally on the water looking into the city from across a lake. The fresh breeze that blows across the lake feels fresh and pollution-free.

Tommy Thompson Park is a former dump site that grew into a wildlife bird sanctuary on an isthmus in Toronto. It is entirely human-made.  As described in its history, "the natural processes that evolved during the long construction and planning of the site had shaped [the park] into a truly "accidental wilderness".   A map from toronto-wildlife.com shows where the park is situated in relation to the City of Toronto.

A map from toronto-wildlife.com shows where Leslie Spit/ Tommy Thompson Park is situated

Leave It For The Birds

Eventually it was decided to leave the park for the birds. Visits to the wildlife sanctuary are allowed during restricted hours.

If you walk the 2+ hours to the end of the Spit, you end up in what feels like the middle of Lake Ontario. Now a popular destination for bird watchers, cyclists and conservationists, the only sounds you can hear as you walk are the chirps and songs of numerous species of birds rarely seen elsewhere.

How to Handle Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

The Effects of Sun Deprivation

Walking the sunlit trails in Earl Bales Park in Toronto is a good antidote to winter sun deprivation

After getting through the -25 C (-13 F) cold spell last week, conversation among a few of us who live in the world's northern hemisphere turned to SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. The effects of sun deprivation in the long winter months can include:

• loss of energy
• decreased desire to socialize
• short-term memory loss
• fatigue
• depression

We don't always need to read an article to know that our energy levels are waning annually around mid February to early March. But Seasonal Affective Disorder is very real for people who experience prolonged depression every winter. Approximately 2-3% of Canadians experience the full effects of SAD, and 15% experience a milder form of it. It is estimated by NHS Choices that SAD affects about 2 million people in the UK, and more than 12 million people across Northern Europe. According to Psych Central, approximately half a million Americans are affected by SAD.

Sun deprivation is also associated with Vitamin D deficiency and declined serotonin levels. Hormonal Fitness explains that the sun is the main stimulus for serotonin production as well as critical for the production of Vitamin D. It describes further that "discoveries have been made recently about the effects of vitamin D and the consequences of deficiency - particularly in connection with immunity, osteoporosis, heart disease, and cancer. An article at lifestylelaboratory.com even suggests that "lack of sunlight probably kills many thousands more people in this country and others at similar latitudes than skin cancer."

How is SAD Treated?

Skiing in the middle of the city at Earl Bales Park ski hill in Toronto

Treatment for SAD usually includes medication or light therapy. But the Tech Times offers great solutions to dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder and the winter blues that are more natural. Natural remedies that avoid prescriptions or the use of light boxes are:

• taking advantage of the natural light whenever and wherever possible
• getting regular exercise
• opening up the blinds during daylight hours
• going out for a walk during the day
• doing yoga
• embracing the snow and enjoying it

Enjoying Winter

One of the best perspectives on how we really enjoy winter in Canada is a great documentary entitled Life Below Zero.

But stepping out to your local city parks in winter can offer some very interesting surprises. On Family Day 2015 I discovered an uptown urban ski hill that is a mere 20-minute walk from our home. This facility rents ski equipment and has a canteen. It may not be challenging enough for the advanced skier and, while it's true that skiing down it only takes a minute or two, it's a great way to enjoy the city sun in winter months.

Anger and Social Change

Angry Film Characters in Winter Sleep and Corbo Profoundly Affect Those Closest to Them

Haluk Bilginer in the Turkish film 'Winter Sleep' and Tony Nardi in the Canadian film 'Corbo'

In two completely different films produced in different cultures about different political eras, a deep-seated anger spills over to affect and take root in central characters who dominate the story. These two films share the same root element of misplaced anger causing social change that goes wrong. The anger, pain and disappointment in the protagonists slowly move central characters into zones of irrationality, while their own repressed anger causes them to carry on unaware of the effect that they have on people around them. The two films were screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in January 2015.

In Winter Sleep, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and set in a small village in Cappadocia, a failed actor controls others through his education and amassed wealth as a landowner, oblivious to the debilitating poverty around him. He has a particularly suffocating effect on his young wife. In Corbo, directed by Mathieu Denis and set in Montreal, a repressive father who was formerly discriminated against in Canada as an Italian immigrant after Mussolini declared war, cannot understand why his 16-year old son is not appreciative of the wealth and stability he provides the family as a lawyer. (The son, the main character in Corbo, becomes involved in the underground pro-French independence movement and later a radical terrorist in the FLQ).

How Anger Can Cause Things To End Badly          

The people who affect those who move the story along in both films are angry. The films are about a lot of things other than anger, yet without the rigidity and lack of communication engendered by anger these stories would have been very different. The complacence of these characters plays a part in the suffering of others around them, and when enlarged to a view of a whole society, is the very same complacence that provokes the desire for social change. But enacting social change doesn't work very well when inherited, repressed anger from unrelated sources is fueling it.

In Winter Sleep, it is difficult not to surmise that the arrogance of the angry character played by Haluk Bilginer is a direct result of his earlier failure as an actor. One wonders when his openness to ideas and people stopped. He acknowledges that his wife no longer loves him but lacks the flexibility to understand why.

Similarly, the repressed father in Corbo, played by Tony Nardi, actually believes that his sons will absorb his learned Anglophone liberal middle class values without absorbing his anxiety about having suffered at its hand as an Italian immigrant during WWII.

The theme of painful suffering developing into powerful control of others runs as a subtext throughout both Corbo and Winter Sleep, two totally different films produced by different generations and countries. Whether reacting to the dominant English culture in Canada or the crushing poverty of rural Turkey, it is the people affected by repressed anti-heroes who express the truth - a young wife crushed by a self-hating husband, or a young son angry without knowing why. We find out there are no easy answers in their personal stories.

Both films are well worth watching. Corbo is about the search for French identity in Canada. Winter Sleep is about the class struggle in the steppes of the Central Anatolia region of Turkey.