Children of permanent-crisis parents: what do you do as an adult to keep stress low?

[SarahAndQuack]

As an adult I've come to realise my parents both experience the world in a very heightened state of stress. They have no coping strategies and very little ability to be flexible or accept changes of plan. Things like late/missed trains, or road closures, are treated as major catastrophes - even if they're not travelling in any great hurry, or there's another train in half an hour, or whatever. If my mum does something minor like accidentally burning the potatoes while cooking dinner, she will become almost hysterical; it will require shouting or crying - she wouldn't, for example, just pop on some pasta and chuck the burned spuds; she'd expect them to be eaten and she would spend the whole meal talking about it.

This is coupled with absolute certainty that the world is populated by idiots, and if someone doesn't do exactly what you want or expect, it is an outrage. The antagonise all their neighbours because they jump on any imagined slight and treat it as a potential legal issue. Every professional they've ever dealt with - lawyers, doctors, architects, whatever - has turned out to be sadly under-informed and they have been forced to do all the leg work to get the right outcome. It is often clear that they don't understand what they've been told, but they are rock-solid in their belief that they are brighter than all these experts and it's completely coincidental that every interaction involves a massive fall-out.

When I was a child obviously I thought this was all just normal: if you missed a train the only thinkable reaction was to panic; if something didn't go your way it was a huge, huge issue.

I worked on my responses and I think these days I'm mostly a fairly calm, laid-back adult and I feel genuinely thankful to be able to do small, stress-saving things. It still feels like a wonderful luxury to be able to say to DD 'oops, we're going to miss our train but we've got an open ticket so let's have a milkshake in the cafe while we wait for the next one'. But I am aware all my underlying conditioning is telling me to stress and panic and make life hard.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? And what are your mental anti-stress 'luxuries' that you value now you're an adult?

This is very familiar! Mine aren’t patronising about experts, but turning everything into a major drama is family. I deal with this by being a very, very positive person. So when they start bitching and whining about something I say things like “oh well I’m sure it’ll be okay” and I will never ever allow myself to be drawn into slagging off perfectly nice people. At most I’ll say “oh really?” but I’m more likely to say “I’ve always quite liked Janet”. I fine being positive and slight disinterested pours cold water on the drama faster.

Ooh, yes, that is a good one! It's very freeing not to join in with the general negativity.

Love this. Really good advice.

One parent is like this, when things go awry in any way it ruins their week and they 'cannot help' ruining everyone else's week with their black cloud mood. We dont get on.

Other parent thankfully isnt like this except they really stress over travel, despite being incredibly seasoned - more seasoned than the majority of people you'd meet! I was a very anxious child but have chilled out massively since learning a few things about myself and a few methods to manage anxiety.

First parent has the thing about experts and I do as a previous poster, relentless positivity. Or less maturely, 'Didn't realise you had trained as a Doctor!' And 'You're the expert' if im really fed up with it....

I totally understand what you mean about stress saving luxuries!! I think its brilliant you are bringing that to your DD. My stress saving luxuries mostly involve me reminding myself that I dont HAVE to cram 20 million tasks or activities into a day, and actually not planning to do so means im a lot less stressed! Can only fit in x y and z activity? Thats fine, we can do A some other time. My travel parent packs lots into a day, which is great, but it means there's more room for things to go wrong due to timings... so I just decide to do less. And I actually ENJOY it more! Im also not struggling to enjoy myself out of tiredness at the end of the day either!