We all live in stress most of the time, in fact all the time. Sometimes it is work related stress and at times it is due to personal issues. If not handled well, both of them eventually lead to mental fatigue which is worst. It becomes even worse when it starts taking a toll on our health. I have gone through this bad phase of my life which is like a nightmare when I look back. But the best way to come out of it is to not run away from it but face it. I am working as a designer since a long time now and have to work under a lot of stress to meet the deadlines and also to keep my performance up to the mark. The new job that I had taken was totally competitive and demanded high performance. I had to also cope with my family demands and my responsibilities towards my child. And I wanted to do all that without compromising on quality. I wanted to balance everything even if I had to self-sacrifice at times. In short, in my husband’s words, I wanted to be a superwoman. It was a real challenge to juggle my time between all this. My mind used to be so occupied thinking about doing one thing after another that I had become totally absent minded. A physical stress can be overcome after a sound sleep. But mental fatigue kept me awake and gave sleepless nights. Whatever sleep I managed to grab would also not be sound. My office colleague who was also my competitor was unmarried, hence could devote more time to work. She was quite a beautiful lady and looked very confident. Not just the work but also her flawless complexion would bother me. There were times when I saw failure due my complexes which held me back from performing. I developed a complex that in addition to my colleague’s performance in work, her flawless fair complex is adding a value to her success. I have a healthy skin though it is not flawless and just perfect. But I was not contended and started criticizing myself. I realized this when suddenly I had an outburst of acne at this middle age. Initially I thought that it was only due to some reaction of those fancy ranges of products that I used to confuse my sensitive skin with. I further tried another range of product to get rid of them but all my efforts went down the drain. My husband warned me a number of times that I am mixing too many things/issues at a time and making a khichdi of all. He asked me to relax and deal with one thing at a time. I ignored thinking that it is always very easy to advice from the other end but very difficult to follow. Finally my husband lost his patience with me and told me one day that he would fix an appointment with a skin doctor and asked me to take a day off to make it on time. I did not agree with him and to convince me he made me read some articles in Times of India by Dr. Pranjal Shamsher, a skin doctor on stress and problems related to stress. Please find a link to one of a similar article of the doctor that I recently discovered on the net: https://consumerexpress.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/stress-triggers-your-acne-says-dr-pranjal-shamsher/

Initially hesitant but then I read a couple of articles and made up my mind to visit the doctor. I had to undergo a treatment for my acne which did pretty well. The doctor gave me a lot of info about a proper skin care and towards the end of the treatment I could not resist myself asking the doctor the secret behind her flawless complexion and she said that it does not matter if you have a flawless complexion or not, what is more important is that you need to have a healthy skin and if you have one you need to feel blessed. Since all of us go through a lot of stress and pressure in our daily life, from my experience all I want to share with you is that we need to try and overcome it on time and let it not take a toll on us. Work is important but not more than our health. I have seen people with serious skin diseases and I thank God now that I could save myself from being one among them. We need to be happy and contended with what we have and always thank God for the same or it will be too late when we lose it. Times are bad, times are tough but we need to be optimistic. After all we are responsible for our own happiness. We need to sort out our priorities and live life happily. Never be over critical and judgmental about yourself. Be your best friend. If anyone of you feels that to be the best employee, wife and a mother we need to over compromise and self sacrifice all the time, change your perspective. Always remember, to take care of others we need to first take care of ourselves. We first need to feel healthy and strongest in our body before we take a step ahead to embrace additional pressures.