Porter, LS, Fish, L, and Steinhauser, K. "The elephant in the room: Facilitating illness-related communication among couples with advanced cancer". In When "We" are Stressed: A Dyadic Approach to Coping with Stressful Events, 163-182.
We already know that we are stressed.
Clearly, we are stressed and we hate it.
If you think of people, when we are stressed we often do crazy things".
When we are stressed and tired, we tend to act habitually.
If we are stressed, our sympathetic nervous system or "flight or fight" response is working.
We are stressed, we struggle financially, we're not great at masking our feelings on certain days.
As we all know, it's especially difficult to take other people's point of view, feel what they're feeling, and act on those feelings when we are stressed ourselves.
Sometimes when we are stressed or depressed, we isolate ourselves from others, thinking we aren't in the mood for socializing, feel ashamed, or don't want to burden others.
The perceived lack of time becomes real: We are not stressed because we have no time, but rather, we have no time because we are stressed.
We know if we are stressed that we have a hard time sleeping and if we sleep poorly we can wake up grouchy and in a fog.
