My Red Flags

    I feel that I have a few red flags but I am also good at hiding my feelings and emotions so it is not very apparent. I used to have bad anger problems and would often leash out at my family and friends but over the past 1-2 years I think I have learned to keep my anger inside. This is both good and bad because it is bad to keep too much emotion bottled up but it also hurts less people. For example, I used to not get along with my mom very well because I was rude to her and was not patient. I would have a lot of feelings built up and was too young to understand how to deal with them. But I have matured and now we hardly ever fight and our relationship is stronger and we hang out much more. I also have very bad stress and I think that I always will. I do not think that my stress has gotten any better over the years but I hope this is something that I learn to cope with better. I tend to get really stressed during the school year because I am constantly busy and I like to have free time to relax. So when I am too busy and can not relax I start going crazy. However, the stress does work sometimes because when I am stressed about school I usually lock in and get all of it done one way or another. Another bad side effect of stress is my eating habits. I have noticed a pattern in my eating habits when I am overwhelmed. When I am dealing with academic stress I tend to binge eat and eat unhealthy because I feel so caught up and this is a time I can relax. But when it is personal or emotional stress I usually eat very little. Personal stress and academic stress are very different internal feelings. Academic stress has my mind racing and my body having adrenaline to get everything done and this is why I have such an appetite. But when I feel stressed on a personal level that has nothing to do with school I usually feel empty and have no motivation to go out or leave my bed. My appetite is low in these stressful times and it is hard to pull myself out of these. When I feel both of these stress factors combined it usually results in me slacking in school work. This is definitely one of my biggest red flags because high stress runs in my family and it is not very easy to fix. Although these red flags may not be hard to see at first they will always be a part of me that I compress and keep to myself until it is uncontrollable.