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        My nerves are shot. I cannot take it anymore. What does everyone expect of me? Sound familiar? It is obvious that stress is taking charge of someone life when they are screaming these words in the air. Turn it around and tell your self I will not allow stress to control my life. No one expects me to do more than I can do. I am expecting more of my self than anyone else is expecting. My nerves are in a rumble, so I need to relax so I can calm down. Sound better? It is true you can be saying all these possible words and stop stress from taking charge of your life. We all were born with survival skills, which include the ability to continue living even when times are bad. We hear stories about the different stress management techniques and how they can help us cope with stress. We also hear stories about stressors and how to avoid them. The stressors include common problems in life. However, we need to expand on stressors since we are all different and handle stress differently. When you feel stress do you head to the local liquor store telling your self that after all you have been through you deserve a good drunk. Maybe you do not have an alcohol problem, but on occasions, you reach for the bottle to relieve your stress. Some so-called experts would claim an alcohol problem is existing while others that are less judgmental can see that sometimes this person decides to relieve stress by subduing the problems. we are all subject to be titled alcoholics since the criminal justice system and mental health experts all have their own ideas as to who is a drunk and who is not. We may have full control of our life a make a couple of bad decisions down the road and called an irresponsible drunk by the so-called experts that believe they have all the answers. When in fact they too head off to the bar after work and drink, and many of them will drive home after drinking a few alcohol beverages. Wow! No wonder we are all stressed? I will tell you a short story about a woman that was arrested for DUI and later drink alcohol at a local tavern with the prosecutor. Talk about a stressor and stress increase potential. Moving on…you may not have an alcohol problem but you do have a failure in your stress management scheme. Something is lacking so you need to review your life and study your problems carefully to see if any problems are removable. Pull up all your resources and examine them carefully to determine if any one resource can prove benefit to eliminating your problem. You can start by asking your self what is my problem. Ok, so what if you do not resort to alcohol when stress occurs? What if you find a partner and engage in unprotected self-believing this will eliminate your stress? If this is you then you better sit down, think about the consequences of your behaviors, and accept that you have a problem and a failure in your stress management scheme. Maybe you prefer to eat uncontrollably when stress is overwhelming. Binge eating is nearly as bad as having unprotected sex or drinking excessively. Now we see that we have three stressors to review, alcohol, stress and food. Ok, the first guy decides to get drunk when stress is overwhelming. Has he decided to skip alcohol and take control of his life? Now he put his problems on temporary hold. The second person has also put her life on temporary hold, while the third person is binging hoping that the food terminates the suffering. All three are similar in contrast. Not all three of these people have a stress management scheme that will hold them up when disaster hits and are more likely to claim their nerves are shot when stress hits and they cannot take it anymore. It is time to take control of stress and take charge of your life. Stress is good, bad and ugly! When stress controls your life, it can produce very ugly results.