Minimizing Stress, Anxiety and Emotional Outbursts

Our version of living a healthy lifestyle is dominated by analyzing our behavior before, during and after an experience. Promoting health and well being has different meanings for different people. At a basic physical level, for me, it means having a clean, organic diet, using chemical free products for skin care and house cleaning, practicing yoga or pilates, taking long hot baths and getting quality sleep.  For my children it means making reasonably healthy choices with food, constant movement, an adherence to oral hygiene and quality sleep.  How our healthy approach truly manifests is in how we dissect our learning experiences, whatever they may be, to help strengthen our emotional and psychological well being in light of best laid plans.  

Know who you are. This resonates here. Part of being healthy is having the ability to manage or better yet, prevent stress.  We discover who we are, what our needs are, what we like and how we react to life's curve balls. Our ability to manage stress and anxiety by making choices that are supportive of our unique personalities is what keeps us happy and healthy despite how different we are from mainstream living.  We do not engage in many all day out door activities as we are sun aversive, heat sensitive, noise bothered, crowd affected, indoor people who appreciate books, tech and media over suntans and large crowds. By knowing who we are and how we feel about certain events, we are able to adjust accordingly by either not attending or by planning ahead of time how to accommodate some of our unique needs.  It seems that we are all quite mood affected by hunger with a few discerning palettes so, a big part of any day out of the house coincides with timely, familiar meals. 

We do not overly schedule ourselves which allows for more passion driven learning at home.  The basis of our lifestyle is rooted in extreme intellectual needs that are better satiated at home. Most of the time. Whatever our lifestyle is, it is always extreme and it ebbs and flows in multiple directions.  The true freedom from any specific expectations placed upon my kids, in particular and us in general, help shape a healthy lifestyle for us.  

Miniming stress, anxiety and potential emotional outburts by carefully choosing how, where and with whom we spend our time is omnipresent.

My children generally soak in everything they are around and since they are around me they are naturally absorbing some of my healthier approaches to living.  They are influenced by who I am and what choices I make and yet they are always figuring out who they are what they like.  They have a fascination with knowing everything about everything so they spend their time consuming information. Knowledge carnivores. They appreciate the importance of making healthy choices and understand risk. What they are interested in changes but they are free to learn that which suits them in the moment and for however long thereafter. They require this freedom. Structure would be stressful.  They are aware of what they are comfortable with and what is too much for them. They know how they learn best and choose to live passionate, creative lives uniquely designed by themselves.

Each of us are entirely independent and collaborative.  We have fierce dedication to our own interests and the opportunity to share them with each other in an emotionally available, intellectually charged, creative and peaceful environment. This flow that we have created keeps stress and anxiety at bay. Understanding who we are and what we want our journey to be is a critical part of our life education. It just happens that our version of a healthy lifestyle is determined by our ability to independently quench our intellectual and creative needs in real-time.

This is what healthy living is. For us.

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This blog is part of a blog hop with Gifted Homeschoolers Forum