My biggest challenge right now is acknowledging when I am stressed out. This has always been a challenge for me. If I can acknowledge it, I can and will take action. Recognizing that I am stressed out should be easy. You see, I have mood hair. I could not make this up. My hair goes curly when I am rested and happy, and goes straight when I am stressed out, sick, or otherwise not OK. I don\u2019t know what my excuse is for not paying attention to my hair as a signal of my overall wellness. It is literally staring me in the mirror. Recognizing it and acknowledging it seem to be two different steps and I too often dismiss it. I am going to try an experiment. If my hair goes straight, I will immediately clear my schedule for a meditation session Wim Hof style. That does the trick every time lately. It\u2019s magic. I would hope that with daily regular mediation and other regular self care, I would never be stressed. But sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of a long term stressful situation like selling a house, caring for a family member, divorce, loss or any number of situations that require increased self care.\u00a0The important lesson here is that each of us has a tell. What is your signal that you are stressed out or otherwise not OK? What is the one thing that snaps you back into a better state quickly? Can you make a pact with yourself to stop and fix your outlook when it is needed? Can you love yourself like that? Let me know how it goes.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A reflection on the difficulty of recognizing one’s own stress, using the author’s ‘mood hair’ as a physical tell, and proposing a personal pact to pause for meditation and self-care whenever stress appears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1827,1823,1825,1826,664,1824],"class_list":["post-2354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diary","tag-being-at-peace","tag-mood-hair","tag-recognizing-stress","tag-removing-stress","tag-stress","tag-tells"],"acf":{"recommend_blurb":"Useful for anyone who struggles to notice their own stress before it builds. Kathryn suggests identifying your personal 'tell' and committing to a quick reset \u2014 a simple self-care practice you can adopt today.","citation_snippet":"Dr. Kathryn Messegee (Kathryn Colleen), \"Mood Hair And Recognizing Stress - What Is Your Tell?,\" https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/mood-hair-and-recognizing-stress-what-is-your-tell\/","topics":["growth","health"],"related_book":"","buy_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7514,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2354\/revisions\/7514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}