Confusion + Frustration = Stress

Signing up for Twitter this morning, I learned something important.

I thought stress was stress but it's not. Or, rather, it is only we give one thing a bunch of different names - and then we don't know that its ALL just stress.

I started the day by being extremely frustrated by the help squad over at MSN Live Spaces who have deleted the account you need in order to get into the live space associated with it and now tell me to log into an account that doesn't exist. Ping-ponging backwards and forwards between numerous people and departments with no avail made my "frustration" levels rise - until I realised that I was getting EXTREMELY STRESSED.

The thing with "frustration" the little brother of anger and second cousin to RAGE is that it really is just stress!

The minute I realised this I took myself in hand and made myself go out into the garden and take pictures of snowy bamboo and bird tracks.

It was a bit of a struggle. I had to drag myself out by my own hair. But I know how bad stress is for me and I'm not into collecting more psychosomatics now so I did go out, and I did de-stress in the fresh air and being fascinated by the images I was dealing with.

When I got back in I remembered the "frustration" and I also understood that in the past, I thought that getting angry and fed up with people was something different, something JUSTIFIED - who wouldn't get angry at support antics?

You're RIGHT to be angry!

Sure, sure. Sure!

But it's stress!

And who am I hurting with this frustration?

ME!

Not MSN!

I found it a lot easier to let go of the "just stress" than I would have found it to let go of the "righteous indignation" of anger and frustration, and that was interesting too.

Not much later, I got terribly confused.

Trying to make a Twitter account and not getting anywhere and getting progressively more upset, freaked out, confused - ahem, yes, when it got bad enough, I recognised our good friend stress in fancy costume YET AGAIN.

Now, we've heard about letting go of stress, and of anger, but can you actually physically let go of confusion?!

I decided to re-label the confusion and helplessness to "stress" and do something to de-stress myself - phone a friend before I burst a blood vessel.

As it happened, the friend in question already knew about Twitter and practically sorted me out which was great - confusion alleviated!

• I came away from all of that thinking how much easier life is going to be if I stop worrying about confusion and frustration and anger and helplessness and all that jazz and simply concentrate on my rising stress levels, and do something as soon as I notice, without prejudice, without fail.

Seems like a plan ... :-)

An iconic image from the winter garden ...