I was just reading the lastest from The Friendly Driver and the annoyances of his job. I commented, and decided to turn my comment into a post over here. (Thanks for the inspiration, dougie g!)
What do you do mentally when you're coping with something stressful?
I think I might be weird. Here's what I do, and I've done it for as long as I can remember. I imagine the situation written as a story in a book.
Is that weird? Probably. (Not that I'm going to change this behaviour - it seems to work for me.)
Right in the middle of all kinds of craziness, my brain tidies it all up and writes it as a very interesting, exciting, suspenseful story. My amateur analysis of this says it probably helps me realize that this situation is just one situation, not all of life; and it probably helps me behave myself, since theoretically I am the main character in the story. Do I want to be the hero or the villain? Definitely the hero! It's probably also a result of reading scads of books throughout childhood and onward. I think in terms of storytelling.
I think the first time I actually realized I do this was just after we got married. Our first year was a year of unexpected crises, and I remember thinking, "OK, if someone writes an article on how we coped with this, what would I like it to say?" It helped me stay sane. ("sane" being open to definition, of course!)
I think it's pretty healthy behaviour, if I do say so myself.
