The antidote to stress isn't relaxation. It's play
How we lie to ourselves to cover up our blind spots
“I’m not stressed!” I’d yell to my mum.
Whenever I was revising for exams or in difficult moments in my life, I’d get eczema on my hands.
It was horrible.
It was unsightly and itchy and it made me so self-conscious. I’d hide my hands, dreading if I had to do activities with other kids in case they noticed.
My mum took me to a food intolerance tester. We tried homeopathy, acupuncture, and avoided chemicals in cleaning products. But it didn’t go away.
“Maybe it’s the dog?” she said once.
I cried… it couldn’t be him! I refused to believe it.
And so the mystery continued. Eczema would pop up seemingly out of nowhere and then disappear for weeks or months and then I would be lulled into a state of forgetting.
Mum kept saying that it could be stress. That I was putting so much pressure on myself to succeed at school and that I should relax.
But I refused to believe it.
I didn’t ‘feel’ stressed, I told myself.
But really, I didn’t want to ‘be’ stressed.
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