5 Enemies to Emotional Stamina

When things get hard in life, how do you handle them?  When the kids fall apart and have tantrum after tantrum, how does it impact you?  When your spouse is angry, how do you cope?  When you get bad news from the doctor, what happens to your emotions? When that vacation you’d been looking forward to for months gets canceled due to the global pandemic, how do you respond emotionally?

We are emotional beings, and when things happen in our lives that are unpleasant, unforeseen, tragic, or frustrating, it can be hard to cope.  Like many of you, I have had my world altered because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  None of us will escape this time without being touched.  

I have found that there are 5 big enemies to emotional stamina, and I wanted to share them with you.  

In uncertain times, when the challenges are real, how do we deal with our emotions? I’m writing this upstairs in my room, because it has been a difficult day today.  The emotional swirl in the household is real.  One of my sons is having a rough day. He has been volatile and angry with certain situations with his school, and also with us.  Couple that with the fact that I am in my most fragile time of the month with regard to my emotions and it is a recipe for an explosion.

How do we handle days like these?  

Very carefully….

I’d like to introduce you to the concept of emotional stamina.  I’m sure you are familiar with physical stamina.  There are athletes who run marathons, do triathlons, or compete in Iron Man competitions.  These athletes have extraordinary physical stamina.  How did they develop this stamina?  They didn’t just wake up one day with the ability to run a marathon. 

My husband has completed seven full marathons.  I have completed zero, but I am great at cheering for him!!

 Before he committed to those races, he put his training schedule on the calendar. 

I got tired just looking at that calendar!

He had a goal of a certain number of miles to run each week.  His training was divided up into shorter runs on the weekdays, followed by a long run on Saturdays.  Each week he would gradually increase the length of his long runs, until he was capable of getting close to the full marathon length.  Then, as the race drew close, he would taper his mileage so as to preserve his energy for the race.  

I learned a lot about physical stamina by watching his dedication to the training.  While I have never wanted to do a marathon myself, I can see how his training benefitted him physically and mentally.  He drew great strength from being able to complete a marathon.  

Emotional stamina is a skill that we can learn to improve over time, so that we can better cope with the challenges of life.

 5 Enemies to Emotional Stamina

Today, we’re going to identify 5 enemies to our emotional stamina.  It is important we are aware of these so that we can be better prepared for the swirl of emotions when they arrive.

1. Fatigue

This is by far the biggest enemy to our emotional stamina.  I wrote about our need for sleep in this post, so check it out if you haven’t read it yet.  

Just because we are adults, it does not mean that we are impervious to fatigue.  When a toddler misses a nap, what happens?  Usually it is a full blown tantrum because she is overtired.  When a kindergartner comes home from a full day of school and has a meltdown, are we surprised?  Not at all.  The child has had too much and can no long control her emotions.  We put the exhausted little one down for a nap, and usually the problem resolves itself.

So, why do we treat ourselves differently?  Instead of respecting our need for sleep and rest, we wear our sleep deprivation like a badge of honor. Have you ever heard people talk about how they can function on just a few hours of sleep?  It is as if they have won a prize because they only need 5 hours of sleep a night.

I have news for you.  These individuals are deluding themselves.  Decades of sleep research has shown that the majority of adults need between 7-9 hours of sleep a night.  When we don’t get that amount of sleep, we are cognitively impaired and we lose our ability to manage our emotions.

Please, my friend, get your rest.  Establish a reasonable bedtime and stick to it. If you have a baby in the house who wakes up in the middle of the night, then plan to take an afternoon nap when your baby rests. Fatigue is a huge enemy to our emotional stamina.

2. Hunger

If you are not eating nutritious food on a regular basis, you can expect that your emotional stamina will go out the window.  There are many times I have snapped at my family members because they did something that irritated me, only to realize after my outburst that I was really just hungry for a snack. 

Our nutritional needs vary greatly throughout our lifetime.  Additionally, many of us struggle with weight issues.  My husband has had to manage his food intake during his weight loss to eat just enough calories to maintain his mood, while not overeating to gain the weight back.  It is a balancing act.

If you are struggling with when to eat, or how much to eat, I would highly recommend you track your food intake for a few days along with your mood.  Notice when your mood dips.  Is it right before meal time?  Do you need an afternoon snack before you start cooking dinner?

I’m not advocating that we eat every time we are angry or sad.  That will set up unhealthy patterns in your life.  But, letting yourself get too hungry can be a recipe for an emotional blow up. We can’t maintain our emotional stamina when we are hungry.

3.  Interpersonal Conflict

When we have conflict with our children, our spouse, or even our work colleagues, it can really impact our emotional stamina.  Especially if the person we are having the disagreement with becomes angry, loud, frustrated, or intense.  This is a really difficult area for me.  I tend to want to fix everyone around me, and I also take people’s emotions very personally.  When my son is angry about a school grade, I have been known to “catch” the anger from him and end up just as angry.  That is not helpful at all!

As we are dealing with the people in our lives, it is important to recognize that conflict is going to happen.  We are all different, and each of us brings a different perspective to life.  If we can head into conflict with that perspective, it can help us maintain our emotional center, even when the emotions get heated. 

When things get heated in a conversation, it can be helpful to take a few breaths, say a prayer asking for help, and think of a Bible verse or a positive saying that will help you mind your words before you say something you might regret.  

4.  Unmet Expectations

We make our plans, we get excited for the future, and then something changes.  Suddenly, that thing we were looking forward to for months doesn’t happen.  We expected that vacation to happen, and now we can’t go.  Or perhaps, it isn’t quite that dramatic.  Maybe we made a nice dinner for the family, and we hoped they would love it.  But, they hated it. 

These unmet expectations can really impact our emotional stamina. It can be hard to change gears and adjust to a new reality.  We have all been dealing with this as a world society during the Covid-19 pandemic.  There have been graduations that will never happen, vacations canceled, jobs lost, and lives lost.  We had one vision for the future, and now that has been shattered.  

Coping with our unmet expectations can really challenge us.  One way I have tried to cope is by acknowledging the loss of the experience, and then focusing on something different.  For example, we had our anniversary trip to France canceled due to the pandemic.  I had to mourn the loss of that experience, while trying to make the most of the family time we now have because my husband isn’t traveling for business.  I can try to cherish the time we get together at home, rather than mourning a trip that didn’t happen.

5.  Hormonal Fluctuations

These can really take a toll on our emotional center.  We can experience these fluctuations throughout the month as a part of our normal menstrual cycle.  Also, as we get pregnant and have children, our hormones can wreak havoc on us.  Additionally, as we head into peri-menopause our hormones can go haywire.  

Personally, I have been experiencing a wide range of emotional challenges due to the medicine I am on after having breast cancer.  I am taking Tamoxifen, which will reduce the risk of recurrence, but is an estrogen reducer.  So, I am now dealing with a consistent lack of estrogen in my body.  It has made it challenging to deal with my emotions.

One of the difficult things about these hormonal fluctuations is that they can seem to come out of nowhere.  We are having a fine day, and then someone says something which irritates us, and bam, we get angry.  Keeping track of your monthly cycle using an app can help you.  If you notate which day of the month you get irritated, then you can be aware that three days before your period starts is a challenging for you.  What I did was to have my app notify me three days before my predicted period start.  That way I could know that the PMS was coming.  Just knowing I might have a little more difficulty on certain days allowed me to better temper my emotions.

As you read through these 5 enemies to your emotional stamina, do any of them resonate with you?  Can you think of other ones I didn’t write about? Share your ideas in the comments, as well as any ideas you might have to help maintain your emotional stamina on tough days.