Overwhelmed by stress

Towards the end of February 2021 I moved from the Netherlands back in with my parents for one month before moving to Bavaria in order to pursue my internship. All of this was overwheling and stressful, since I had to go through every single item I had with me and decide whether I want to take it with me, donate it, or throw it away.

Throughout my life I have learned that I get easily overwhelmed and stressed. So for this particular situation I planned on starting early enough, like 10 days before the actual moving day, with sorting and organizing everything that was in my apartment. I quickly realized that I had so many things accumulated over those three years that I lived in the Netherlands, which was quite a shock to me, since I was not really aware of this. So I slowly started to put things I wanted to keep into cartons or things I wanted to get rid of in bags which I then would bring to their designated places. The overall progress I made over those first couple days was what I thought at that time rather small, which created pressure and stress. Eventually, I had most of the things packed, however two nights before moving I had a seizure that night. Since I never had one like that before it was quite scary and because it lasted for almost one hour I was even more scared and did not really know what to do. I was alone in my apartment and I could not contact anyone at that time because my jaw and both hands were locked so I could not open my mouth now use my hands to operate my phone. At some point my body calmed down and I fell asleep. The next morning I talked to my parents and they said that I should take it slow with packing the rest and even if I do not get everything done it is also fine since there is no need to rush and health always comes first.

Once I was back at my parents house, this whole medical procedure started where I went to different types of doctors who made various tests, with the end result of “we can’t find anything out of the ordinary. Those seizures might have just been caused by stress.”. I already thought that those were caused by stress because I felt fine the whole time before it happened the first time. I was also told to learn how to deal with stress and to sleep enough. I always had problems with sleeping. I have tried different things and medication but nothing ever really helped. So how can I actually accomplish reducing stress and getting enough sleep?

Between February 28 2021 and April 04 2021, I have had five seizures. I definitely know that I was extremely stressed right before the first one happened, but the other ones? I did not feel stressed at all and I was rather happy at that time. One happened during riding my horse. I feel happy, relaxed, and safe when I am with her so why did I have that seizure? The last one I had happened four days after moving to Bavaria and I know that I was overworking my body and I barely got some sleep with two to six hours a night for multiple nights in a row. So, I also understand why the last seizure happened.

I feel like the stress I am often times feeling, is coming from something that I cannot influence such as relocating or starting a new job/internship. When I first moved to Bavaria I was really happy because I was excited for the internship and that I was living in such a great location with a lot of nature around and necessary stores close by. So from I experienced, I was not stressed but rather satisfied with the choices I made.

How can I focus on reducing my stress levels when I am not recognizing them as such? This question is also stressing me because so far I do not have the answer and it does not seem to be close either. It is easy to say to take things slow and to not do too many things at once, but in the moment I feel perfectly fine and think I can handle these things, especially because I do not feel like it is too much. For example, I do a 15 km bike ride in the morning, go for a 3-5 km relaxing walk through the forest in the evening, and in between I do art which I really enjoy and calms me down. So why is my body all of a sudden overwhelmed with these two to three things I did the past few days, when in the past months and years I did so much more and was more active during one day?