The Stress-Detector Test (rebuild)

1. You're having friends over for dinner and the house is a mess. Do you…

• Leave the house as is or spend a few minutes cleaning it up, figuring you friends won't mind a bit of chaos.
• Spend a couple of hours decluttering.
• Take the day off from work and scrub the house from top to bottom.
• Clean all day and then get a migraine right before the guests arrive.

2. How well do you keep up with responsibilities at home?

• Each day you do a few chores so tasks won't accumulate.
• Once a week you tackle whatever needs doing.
• You've been known to wear dirty clothes to work because there's no clean laundry. You pay bills once a month, usually right before their due dates.
• Who has a chance to pay bills?

3. What's the food situation at home?

• You make relatively healthy meals and occasionally order takeout for a break.
• You shop and cook for the weekend to stock the freezer for a week.
• Cooking is a chore you don't have time for.
• You make so many trips to McDonald's, the kids think vegetable is French—and fried.
• Your family can't remember the last time everyone sat down together for a meal that didn't come out of a wrapper.

4.  Is money a sore subject?

• It's just about killing you. You're buried in a financial hole, and you don't know how to dig yourself out.
• You sometimes struggle to pay minimum balances on credit cards and are chronically short on cash.
• You often forgo purchases because there isn't enough money, and you owe more than you'd like to.
• You can cover your bills.
• You aren't Bill Gates, but you have enough to provide for your family and pay for emergencies.

5. How are you feeling about your love life?

• If you're in a relationship: You're really happy with your partner. There's lots of give-amd-take in your relationship. You say "I love you" frequently—and mean it.
  If you're single: You feel totally fulfilled. You have lots of time for your friends, sole rule of the remote control, and no restrictions on when you get home at night.
• If you're in a relationship: You're having more spats than you used to, you've gone to bed mad at times, but you always make up eventually and are glad to be together.
  If you're single: It would be great if you met someone. But your work, interests, and friends keep you too busy to feel lonely.
• If you're in a relationship: Most of the time you're annoyed at your partner. You wish you had time to see a marriage counselor, though every now and then you have a moment that reminds you of the old magic.
  If you're single: Practically everyone in the solar system knows you're in the market for a partner. You're now trying out different online dating sites.
• If you're in a relationship: If the right person walked into your life, you'd have an affair in a minute. In fact, you'd leave now but are afraid of ending up alone.
  If you're single: You're totally panicking. You hang out at bars. You go on every blind date that comes your way (so what if he thinks King Lear is a new kind of jumbo jet). You even play singles bingo, just in case there's an eligible guy under 85.

6. How stressful is your relationship with your parents?

• One of your parents is very ill and requires round-the-clock care. The other is deceased or very needy. You often abandon your own family to care care of them.
• Your parents are asking for more time than you can give, and you are beginning to resent their demands.
• They're getting older, but they try hard not to be a burden.
• Your parents are a great source of support. They help out with the kids and are good company.

7. How do you feel about children?

• Your kids are perfectly normal, or you have no kids and are happy about it.
• One of your children is a real concern and you spend a lot of time dealing with their issues.
• Your difficult child is getting to be a real big problem, and you and your partner argue over him and how to help him. Or you want to have a child and are struggling to get pregnant.
• You are so upset about your kids that you lie in bed at night questioning your ability to parent.

8. Do you have friends?

• Not really. To be honest, you have no one to confide in and it's terribly lonely.
• You have one or two real friends, but they never call you. You spend most of your time by yourself.
• Your close friends are so emotionally demanding, they treat you more like a therapist than a friend.
• You have less in common with your old friends these days, but when difficulties arise, you know you can count on them.
• You have a gang of close buddies that you see and talk to often and who are totally there for you whenever times are rough.

9. How do you like your job?

• You hate it. Your coworkers are backstabbers and your boss is sour and demanding. You become increasingly tense throughout the weekend, and by Sunday night you're miserable.
• You wish you could quit, but you're afraid you couldn't get another job, at least not one that pays as well.
• You are self-employed and struggling to bring in enough work. Or, you're unemployed and anxious about finding a job.
• It's not what you dreamed it would be, but you're relatively fulfilled.
• You love your job—whether you're getting paid or not.

10. How secure do you feel at work?

• Very. The company is doing well; the boss seems happy with you.
• Your job is pretty secure, although you are slightly insecure when you hear about layoffs.
• You've always felt safe, but lately you've become a little nervous—maybe there are widespread job cuts or your boss is a bit more critical of your work.
• You fear that any day you could get fired.

11. What are your coworkers like?

• Awful. They sabotage your work, spread rumors about you, and bad-mouth you to your boss.
• You don't like them at all, and you avoid them whenever possible.
• You wouldn't choose them as friends, but they're okay to hang out with at work.
• You're like Mary, Lou and Murray on The Mary Tyler Moore Show—best friends in and out of the office.

12. What do you say to yourself when you look in the mirror?

• "I love what I see."
• "Some things look great, and some things, well, not so great, but that's who I am."
• "Oh my God. When did that happen?"
• "How could anyone ever be attracted to me?"
• You never look in the mirror because it upsets you so much.

13. What do you order when you go to dinner with your girlfriends?

• A salad, no dressing—but you eat only half. (You tell everyone you're stuffed—even though you skipped lunch)
• A salad. And if your friends clean their plates, so do you.
• A light entrée, no matter what your friends order, and you eat it all.
• First, you check out what everyone else is getting. If they're choosing light foods, you do, too. But if they're pigging out, so do you.
• Whatever you feel like eating—sometimes a sandwich, sometimes a cardiac arrest on a plate.

14. Why do you exercise?

• It makes you feel good.
• You feel fat and unhealthy if you don't exercise frequently.
• You feel bad about yourself every time you skip a workout.
• You hate yourself when you don't. In fact, you wouldn't miss a day, even if you were sick.
• You never exercise.

15. How much time do you take to do something relaxing and enjoyable? (reading a novel, listening to music)?

• At least a half hour, most days.
• A half-hour a day when you're not busy with other things.
• Fifteen or 20 minutes a day, but you feel guilty about it.
• Hardly ever, because you'd feel like you were taking time away from all your other responsibilities.
• Never. It wouldn't cross your mind to waste time like that when there's so much that needs to get done.

16. You deal with major stress by…

• Going through your repertoire of self-nurturing activities: calling a friend, going for a walk, getting a massage…
• Cutting yourself some slack, maybe having a Krispy Kreme doughnut or skipping your daily workout.
• Going drinking with your friends to blow off some serious steam.
• Loading up at the nearest convenience store. Cookies. Candy. Ice cream.