I was once asked by my psychologist to think of a metaphor for my stress. This took a lot of thought, as I had never really tried to use an object to describe my stress. After weeks of contemplation, I came up with something, and it was a lot more unique than I think anyone, even myself, could have imagined.
Have you ever been so stressed out you just don't know what to do any more? Have you tried desperately to explain it somebody else (your stress level I mean), but you just don't feel like they understand? Do you feel like every time you try and explain to them, you get more and more stressed out because they're not understanding? All the feelings and/or thoughts that I just described, have at one point or another been a part of my world. Even before my psychologist asked me to come up with a way to describe my feelings, I knew I needed to do something, and I needed to to do it quickly.
Picture a bucket. When you wake up in the morning, hopefully the bucket is completely empty, because at that point, you have had no stress. As your day progresses, the little things that happen i.e. your hair not fixing the way you want it to, your little brother driving you crazy with "I want cereal", your dog at your feet barking for attention, your coworkers not doing their jobs, and so on, cause you stress. With each incident, a drop gets put in your bucket. Now, some people have very large buckets, while others are very small. It all depends on you as an individual. One thing, is for certain though: every healthy human being's bucket will eventually overflow if their stress level is not taken care of somehow.
How do you take care of it, you ask. Well, that is also up to the individual, but I knew I needed to find a way to let the people around me know that I needed their help. That may have been for them to listen, give me their advice or just give me a really big hug. Whenever I needed, this is how I let them know that I needed something. I will use a phrase like "I need to take a second, and drink from the bottle until I am in a calmer state of mind." Now, when I say "bottle" I'm referring to a baby bottle. Why? Well, the answer to that, at least in my head, is very simple: a great number of times the best way to get a baby to calm down is to give them a bottle, or something to suck on, because the sucking motion is comforting. Again, just like the bucket, the bottle is a metaphor for me needing something.
Next time you're stressed out to the max, and everyone you try and tell just doesn't seem to understand, maybe it would be helpful for you to to come up with a metaphor to express to the people around you just how you're feeling. My greatest advice you would be this: don't let that stress build up, because if you do, and you explode, chances are it's going to be directed at the wrong person, or people. I've been there, and when I take it out of the wrong person or people, it just makes me feel worse.