It’s Valentine’s Day! Are you joyful, stressed, or perhaps a bit of both?
In real life, Valentine’s can be quite stressful. Society norms and relentless consumer forces tell us how we should feel on certain occasions which are widely accepted as joyful life cycle events (e.g. Christmas should be nothing but merry, weddings are a romantic dream come true, mothers of newborns are the most self fulfilled persons on earth etc). But in real life, things are much more complex. Things that come in `happy packages’ can actually flood our system with unhealthy amounts of adrenaline and Cortisol (AKA “the Stress hormone”).
So where am I going with this? Well, the main point is that we need to be weary of buying too much into societal conventions and prepare for the fact that not all that we are told about these supposedly happy experiences is true. Furthermore, we need to become fierce guardians of our own resilience and protect ourselves from excessive stress wherever possible. Happy Valentine’s!
