What causes you the most stress? Family, work, partner, children, friends or other?

[upandleftthenright]

For me it’s persistently work. I wonder how different my life would be if I didn’t have to work.

what about you?

Children, mostly the 6yo with ADHD. We get stuck in a very reactive cycle with each other.

I am fortunate to not have to work at the moment but do get a bit down on myself feeling like I don't do anything "important".

I think it’s children - work is full on and stressful but they can survive without us all at the end of the day. When I had a few years not working I felt overwhelmed with the children. I do look forward to escaping on a Monday to work after the weekend. Children are demanding all waking hours but maybe that’s just mine. Lack of downtime after work commute and sorting kids / clearing up is jarring. I have just sat down and up 5am. Repeat!

Combination of work and children/teens.

Not work. Autistic child.

Health
Abusive ex who I have to communicate with for our DC sake

Family. I don’t mean DH and DC. I mean by immediate family and in laws. I find them all very demanding.

A combination. But what makes everything so much worse is how fu*king crowded this country has become. It makes life so much harder and so much more stressful. Just driving to Tesco these days is a flippin ordeal.

Life has always been stressful. But in the past, the world was so much quieter, calmer and emptier. If you’d suffered a bereavement, for example, you could surround yourself with silence and nature and slowly heal. Today that’s almost impossible. Go on YouTube and watch home movies of the U.K. from the 1960s. The sense of space and peace is incredible - empty streets, children playing in the road, the odd car crawling along, etc. Today, I am often woken up by the screeching and exploding sound of boy racer idiots. And don’t get me started on the endless house building. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for two giant new estates, and now they are going to build on the fields in the centre of the village as well. But even that won’t be enough. It never is. There are too many houses, too many cars, and too many people. There is also too much noise. It’s totally unnatural and it’s driving us all insane.

For me it's the fact my dad is terminally ill. I'm also dealing with an extremely autistic and a level above ADHD 18 year old. This should be top level stress. The pair of them sat together, ate cake and geeked out today for my dad's probably last birthday looking at flight radar. I don't know whether to laugh or cry

Children without a doubt. I have zero stress in the other areas.

Partner

All jostle for top spot. This year has been a shit show. At the moment it’s

elderly parents, dm with dementia
money
autistic dc
work with threats of redundancies
depressed out of work Dh
house falling apart, no time or money to fix
study (pt MA)
health (peri meno)

friends and cats bring nothing but joy.

Partner

My mum. Followed by my disabled child. Well not him, he’s fab, but advocating for him and getting him the support he needs is a massive source of stress.
My other 2 children don’t cause me much stress at all.
ETA no stress from my husband either, he significantly reduces my stress.

Defo work, my husband, kids and family don't stress me out at all.

Work

Definitely work.

I live far away from family.

I don’t have children.

My friends are great.

DP is really easygoing.

Yes, it’s always a moveable feast

I could have written this myself.
Also have SEN teens, work full-time and a large family, so our home needs constant cleaning and washing basket is overflowing and cupboards often seem bare
It's the combination of EVERYTHING, individually it's all doable but when you are trying to do it all together that's when problems hit.
Sometimes it's navigating SEN education and health care that causes the most stress. Othertimes it's work.
Often its sheer overwhelm of everything that needs doing that I am responsible for.

100% work - it's crazily stressful (clinical manager NHS)
Dh is amazing and calms me
DC are lovely and sensible
Finances are OK.

Work consumes me and keeps me awake most nights

My elderly parents.

For the last 5 years I've been helping to care for my mum who has Alzheimer's. She lives with dad who is a stubborn sod at the best of times which makes things a million times more stressful than it needs be.

Those two are definitely the main source of my daily stress and anxiety.

I currently don't work because the stress from caring for mum exacerbated my chronic health issues. Something had to give and that was work.

Teens kids are a bit stressful at times but mainly ok thank goodness.

DH is my salvation, he grounds me.

Partner atm unfortunately, he's being quite a prick and is unpredictable. Also I have given up drinking and he hasn't and I now fully appreciate how annoying drunk people are when you are sober!
Money (taxes).
Health (chronic back pain).

Children are great although I don't see as much of the older ones as I would like.

Sending hugs, it’s hard work

Elderly unreasonable selfish parent
A partner with very high expectations
Ferrying DC around, and their GCSE/A’levels
Keeping on top of household chores and the endless cooking
Work stress
Extra things on top of this including; a car crash, studying, injury, work on the house (no hot water for 4 days)
Trying to maintain the level of fitness I’ve achieved but which is dwindling due to all of the above

Not in any particular order, and not major catastrophes, but it all adds up to feeling overwhelmed. Someone told me the other day that my life is too busy, but I can’t really see how I can reduce it down.

I totally agree. I didn’t live in the uk for a long time and I now describe living here as very overstimulating. It’s like having the TV blasting out, the radio on, a baby crying, dog barking, kettle whistling and someone dragging their nails down a blackboard….all at the same time.

Work.

It's not even stressful. It ticks every box I'd want it to - great team, lovely manager, hybrid, I never work late. But my whole life I've had anxiety around work and thoughts of "I'm not good enough" (imposter syndrome).

When work is out of the picture, I feel deeply calm.