Parents are some of the most stressed out people out there. We even stress about how stressed out we are. Stressception.

Y’know, there’s that whole saying about how when you have a kid “your heart forever walks around outside your body.” Let’s go a little further. Imagine you literally had a heart that beat outside you, somehow, in some science-fictiony jar or something, and that jar was given to a kid to take care of it. A kid that’s shoes on the wrong feet. Pretty dang stressful, right? Yup.

We could all do with some useful tips to relieve stress, but you’re probably not gonna find those here! Well. Laughter is a kind of de-stresser! Yeah, well don’t set your hopes too high, okay.

1) Go on a get-away-cation!

Because we can all afford a vacation, time off, and babysitting, right? Hah! But hey, it doesn’t have to be a long trip on a private jet to an exotic island resort, it can be anywhere that’s just… alone and… away. So, get in your car and floor it until you run out of gas.

Don’t worry! It’s not like you’ll have a growing sense of anxiety about being elsewhere and things going wrong, or not getting done, or things happening that you don’t want to miss. All good.

2) Give a relaxation app a try.

They’ve got sounds of roaring waves that might possibly drown out the mad yapping of your kids. Some of them even have peaceful videos of beautiful places you can gaze at “” the apps, not the kids “” even though you’d probably settle for looking at security cam footage of a parking lot, as long as your kids weren’t in it.

3) Tea?

Chamomile tea is basically dried up flowers boiled in watery, long lost dreams. But hey, it’s all kinda metaphorical, right? Even if soothing tea doesn’t quite wind up as the elephant tranquilizers you were hope for. You could always chase a cup with an entire turkey to induce a tryptophan coma.

4) Maybe try not drinking twice as much coffee as you did yesterday for once.

Coffee keeps us from passing out, but it can also be like jitter-induing fuel to the bonfire of stress. Also, the mind-bending caffeine headache you may inflict upon yourself by cutting back could also serve as a distraction from anything else that’s stressing you out. I guess. I’m not a stress whisperer if you haven’t noticed yet.

5) Maybe give Yoga a whirl!

Okaaaaaay maybe not. You’re probably going to do it wrong and pull a hip or torque a muscle, I don’t know. The most I know about yoga is how to spell it. Namaste? NOmaste going on over here probably, right? [awkwarly thumb-stabs my chest]

6) Print out something and just burn it!

Okay. Definitely not, probably. We’re at the end of this list and probably our limits. It’s revenge time, or vengeance, I don’t want to Google which it should be. You get the idea. What is it? Taxes? The PTA? Health worries? Politics? Print out a symbol of whatever it is that’s continually making your eyebrows cage fight in a frown, and then just light that sh*t on fire!
““

The suggestions in this post are probably a bit like petting a wild animal. They’ll go one of two ways, you’ll walk away from the experience unharmed and filled with amazing panic-induced endorphins; or you’ll be wheeled away on a gurney to an ambulance but your attention will thankfully be firmly fixed on something other than the things were stressing you out. So… win-win, right?

Please don’t try to pet a wild animal. Or any of these ideas, really.