Rachel’s Room🛋️

Happy Wednesday. Cadre crew. Hello. Excuse me. I just chugged some Diet Coke today. Okay, Rach, today was taxes day. So we're gonna talk about coping with. Coping with stress, but also coping with adulting and doing things that we need to do as adults that are. We need to do that are things that we have to be responsible for but are really hard. And oftentimes, if you're like me, you procrastinate on and avoid because they're hard or they force us to face things in our life that sometimes we don't like to face or look at.

For me, money is one of those things. I have a really hard time with budgeting. I have a really hard time with saving money. I. I just typically get really, really anxious looking at my bank account or trying to calculate, you know, how much money I'm making in a certain period of time and then using that to understand how I'm going to be able to afford regular things like my rent or my car payments, all these things. It's very, very difficult for me to look at it. It just causes a lot of anxiety.

So things like taxes bring up a lot of anxiety for me and a lot of feelings of inadequacy because I'm also forced to look at my entire year of not only spending, but income, and I have to take an honest look at all of these things while doing my taxes and then also discovering what I owe the government. So it's really stressful. And I don't think I'm the only person that gets stressed out doing these kinds of things. And so I just want to talk about what I did today. If you haven't done your taxes yet, or if you're someone who also experiences stress around these kinds of, like, adulting, responsibility, things, like things that might go to this category would be things like applying for a job or calling a doctor's office to make an appointment, or calling a pharmacy or applying for an apartment.

There are a lot of different things that bring up a lot of anxiety for a lot of different people that kind of, like, fall into this umbrella. And I just want to talk about what I did today that was super, super, super helpful. And I think that this can be applied to a lot of those different areas. So my best friend and I both work in creative fields, so we do a lot of freelancing, a lot of contract work, which means that we don't have, like, a very typical, like, singular salary that then gets taxed, like, on a, you know, on a singular basis with each paycheck.

Because we're both in a creative world. We get lot lots of different income from lots of different places. Our expenses are not necessarily or inherently as clear sometimes. And so just it's a lot of different moving parts. So we agreed to set aside a day that we deemed Turbo Wednesday, where we would get together and we would make a whole day of doing our taxes. And what we did is we talked about supplying snacks, supplying beverages, music, giving ourselves times to work, then break times, and then a reward for finishing.

So we incorporated a lot of different tools to facilitate a supportive place for us to move through a stressful experience. The first one being doing it with another person. So we have support, we have co regulation. By physically having another human being next to you, you immediately feel regulated because your brain and your nervous system go, oh, oh, I'm not alone. Therefore, if something were to go go wrong, I have someone I can rely on. So there's this survival thing that kicks in when we're around other people that makes us feel safer.

So already there's co regulation happening because we're doing this together in the presence of one another. Not only that, it's someone who I trust, someone who I love, and someone who I know I can be silly with, freak out with, ask questions of. And so it really facilitates the safe container to go through a stressful experience and feel like I'm not doing it alone. Then we made sure that we had something enjoyable to pair with this unenjoyable experience. So she brought things for a charcuterie board.

We're both big Diet Coke lovers, so I bought us a whole 12 pack of diet Coke, put on a playlist with some of our favorite tunes, specifically a lot of Abba, which got us through. We decided to start at a specific time and at an hour we would take a break. And at that break we would. We had a little dance party, a little movement, got outside, made sure that we were taking a breather away from whatever was stressful, and we finished it in two and a half hours, which for me is unheard of. Like, it usually takes me days to do my taxes because a, I feel like I don't know what I'm doing.

I start to panic. I call my mom or my dad and then they explain things in a way that doesn't make sense to me, or I avoid looking at certain things, or I don't know how to do some things and then I put it off and procrastinate it because I'm anxious about trying to figure out how to do it. And and being able to do this with somebody else with. But while also adding in pleasure of, like, a pleasurable experience at the same time to counterbalance, helped us move through it really quickly. And then we made sure to have a reward at the end, so, like, something to look forward to and say, okay, I've done this thing that's hard.

I've done this thing that's stressful. What's my little reward gonna be? So for me, my little reward was an apartment viewing that I've been wanting to go see. I made sure to set it up for after, like, a later time today so that when I was done, I could have something to look forward to. So this might seem like, very simple and silly and oftentimes, like, the best coping skills are, which I find hilarious because they're usually the ones that I don't use because they seem too easy or too good to be true.

But the thing is, having a human being to do something hard with and also allowing ourselves something joyful or pleasurable or. Or including something like a reward when we have to do something hard might feel like we don't deserve that or like it's not something worth a treat. But that's a really. It's really good for us to give ourselves that kind of a gift. And it also, like, we also get to have a little bit of play and silliness. Like, we were both like. Like, hunched over our laptops, like, gremlin mode.

Like, what. Like, what is happening? Like, making silly voices. Like, we got to move through the experience with some humor, which is also an excellent coping mechanism. Did I like what I saw at the end of filing my taxes? No, I did not. But that's okay. We did it. We got through it, and we did it well. We did it correctly. And it was just. It was a lovely reminder for me today that, you know, we don't have to. We don't have to do these kinds of things alone, but also, like, things that stress us out.

We can. We can provide, like, a nice cushion or ample, like, a safe environment and safe things and gentle things to make it feel a little bit easier. So I'm going to try and keep doing this for myself when I have to do things that are. That feel hard. Like, for me, like, applying for an apartment is going to kind of bring up that same anxiety. So trying to do that with a friend near me, having a little reward or a little treat when I'm done making. Making it an event in a way that feels more fun and play rather than just this awful, dreadful thing that I have to go through.

So that's my little tip for today. I also didn't have therapy today. I have it tomorrow. So I don't have any tips or tricks from my therapy session. But hopefully I'll have some next week to share with you. I hope that you all have a lovely rest of your day and your week, and I will see you same time, same place next week. Toodle oo. Take care of yourself. Make sure you stay healthy.