Stress is a national epidemic and self-care is critical. When stress is left untreated, it can have a serious impact on the quality of life. Deaf people are even more vulnerable to stress because of the long-term impact of chronic oppression, or audism. In addition to including self-care practices such as healthy eating, sleeping and exercising, going to counseling or therapy can be a helpful way to manage stress and improve the quality of life.

Sharon Duchesneau: All of us have different types of stress in our lives. Work stress, family stress, financial stress, sickness stress and so on. We all deal with variable amounts of stress. Imagine this is your life in the glass (picks up glass one quarter filled with blue water with left hand). The blue represents a relatively low level of stress that is pretty manageable (puts glass down). Now over here is a container full of different stressors that can show up in your life (points to full measuring cup). Let’s add them to your life (pours water into glass, filling it to the rim). Now your stress level is almost maxed out. Then one day something happens – it could be something minor or it could be a major incident (adds more water to the glass until it overflows) – It’s overwhelming and so stressful that you can’t handle it anymore. So how are we supposed to manage stress? Self-care! This can be done through exercising, eating right, sleeping right, socializing… and even talking privately with a counselor/therapist. All of these help to reduce stress. Using self-care to manage stress looks like this (pours water from glass back into measuring cup until glass is less than half full, then puts glass down): Now with a reduced level of stress, you are able to breathe easier and manage any stress that shows up in your life.

Deaf Counseling Center provides therapy to Deaf clients on a national basis.