Stress and Stress Management
What is Stress?
Stress is the wear and tear our bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment; it has physical and emotional effects on us and can create positive or negative feelings. As a positive influence, stress can help compel us to action; it can result in a new awareness and an exciting new perspective. As a negative influence, it can result in feelings of distrust, rejection, anger, and depression, which in turn can lead to health problems such as headaches, upset stomach, rashes, insomnia, ulcers, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. With the death of a loved one, the birth of a child, a job promotion, or a new relationship, we experience stress as we re-adjust our lives. In so adjusting to different circumstances, stress will help or hinder us depending on how we react to it.
How Can I Eliminate Stress from My Life?
As we have seen, positive stress adds anticipation and excitement to life, and we all thrive under a certain amount of stress. Deadlines, competitions, confrontations, and even our frustrations and sorrows add depth and enrichment to our lives. Our goal is not to eliminate stress but to learn how to manage it and how to use it to help us. Insufficient stress acts as a depressant and may leave us feeling bored or dejected; on the other hand, excessive stress may leave us feeling tied up in knots. What we need to do is find the optimal level of stress which will individually motivate but not overwhelm each of us.
How Can I Tell What is Optimal Stress for Me?
There is no single level of stress that is optimal for all people. We are all individual creatures with unique requirements. As such, what is distressing to one may be a joy to another. And even when we agree that a particular event is distressing, we are likely to differ in our physiological and psychological responses to it.
The person who loves to arbitrate disputes and moves from job site to job site would be stressed in a job which was stable and routine, whereas the person who thrives under stable conditions would very likely be stressed on a job where duties were highly varied. Also, our personal stress requirements and the amount which we can tolerate before we become distressed changes with our ages.
It has been found that most illness is related to unrelieved stress. If you are experiencing stress symptoms, you have gone beyond your optimal stress level; you need to reduce the stress in your life and/or improve your ability to manage it.
How Can I Manage Stress Better?
Identifying unrelieved stress and being aware of its effect on our lives is not sufficient for reducing its harmful effects. Just as there are many sources of stress, there are many possibilities for its management. However, all require effort toward change: changing the source of stress and/or changing your reaction to it. How do you proceed?
Become aware of your stressors and your emotional and physical reactions.
- Notice your distress. Don't ignore it. Don't gloss over your problems.
- Determine what events distress you. What are you telling yourself about meaning of these events?
- Determine how your body responds to the stress. Do you become nervous or physically upset? If so, in what specific ways?
Recognize what you can change.
- Can you change your stressors by avoiding or eliminating them completely?
- Can you reduce their intensity (manage them over a period of time instead of on a daily or weekly basis)?
- Can you shorten your exposure to stress (take a break, leave the physical premises)?
- Can you devote the time and energy necessary to making a change (goal setting, time management techniques, and delayed gratification strategies may be helpful here)?
Reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions to stress.
* The stress reaction is triggered by your perception of danger...physical danger and/or emotional danger. Are you viewing your stressors in exaggerated terms and/or taking a difficult situation and making it a disaster?
* Are you expecting to please everyone?
* Are you overreacting and viewing things as absolutely critical and urgent? Do you feel you must always prevail in every situation?
* Work at adopting more moderate views; try to see the stress as something you can cope with rather than something that overpowers you.
* Try to temper your excess emotions. Put the situation in perspective. Do not labor on the negative aspects and the “what if's.”
Learn to moderate your physical reactions to stress.
- Slow, deep breathing will bring your heart rate and respiration back to normal.
- Relaxation techniques can reduce muscle tension. Electronic biofeedback can help you gain voluntary control over such things as muscle tension, heart reate, and blood pressure.
- Medications, when prescribed by a physician, can help in the short term in moderating your physical reactions. However, they alone are not the answer. Learning to moderate these reactions on your own is a preferable long-term solution.
Build your physical reserves.
- Exercise for cardiovascular fitness three to four times a week (moderate, prolonged rythmic exercise is best, such as walking, swimming, cycling, or jogging).
- Eat well-balanced, nutritious meals.
- Maintain your ideal weight.
- Avoid nicotine, excessive caffeine, and other stimulants.
- Mix leisure with work. Take breaks and get away when you can.
- Get enough sleep. Be as consistent with your sleep schedule as possible.
Maintain your emotional reserves.
- Develop some mutually supportive friendships/relationships.
- Pursue realistic goals which are meaningful to you, rather than goals others have for you that you do not share.
- Expect some frustrations, failures, and sorrows.
- Always be kind and gentle with yourself--be a friend to yourself.
Special thanks to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who developed this content.
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Stress Periods For Students
Sometimes students experience similar issues with stress around the same time of year. Below are some common stress issues and emotional reactions relating to each month of the academic year.
September
Homesickness; especially for first year students.
- Values crises; students are confronted with questions of conscience over value conflict areas of race, drugs, and alcohol experimentation, morality, religion, and social expectations.
- Feelings of inadequacy and inferiority develop because of the discrepancy between high school status and grades and initial college performance.
- "In Loco Parentis" blues; students feel depressed because of real or perceived restrictive sense of confusion, vulnerability, and lack of any advocate in power positions.
October
New or returning students begin to realize that life at college is not as perfect as they were led to believe by parents, teachers, and admissions staff.
- Grief develops because of inadequate skills for finding a group or not being selected by one.
- Mid-term work-load pressures are followed by feelings of failure and loss of self-esteem.
- Pregnancies from summer relationships begin to show. Dilemma of what to do.
- Non-dating students sense a loss of esteem because so much value is placed upon dates.
- Job panic for mid-year graduates.
November
Academic pressure is beginning to mount because of procrastination, difficulty of work, and lack of ability.
- Depression and anxiety increase because of feelings that one should have adjusted to the college environment by now.
- Homecoming blues develop because of no date and/or lack of ability to participate in activities.
- Economic anxiety; funds from parents and summer earnings begin to run out; loans come due.
- Some students have ceased to make attempts at establishing new friendships beyond two or three parasitic relationships.
December
Extracurricular time strain; seasonal parties, concerts, social service projects, religious activities drain student energies.
- Anxiety, fear, and guilt increase as final examinations approach and papers are due.
- Pre-Christmas depression; especially for those who have concerns for family, those who have no home to visit, and for those who prefer not to go home because of family conflicts.
- Financial strain because of Christmas gifts and travel costs.
- Relationship conflicts increase because of the approach of vacation and extended separation.
January
Post-Christmas depression due to being away from the security of home.
February
Many students experience optimism because second semester is perceived as being ‘over the hump’.
- Vocational choice causes anxiety and depression.
- Couples begin to establish stronger ties or experience weakening of established ones.
- Depression increases for those students who have failed to establish social relationships or achieve a moderate amount of recognition.
- Social calendar is non-active.
March
Drug and alcohol use increases
- Depression begins due to anticipation of separation from friends and loved ones at college.
- Academic pressures increase.
- Existential crisis for seniors; Must I leave school? Is my education worth anything? Was my major a mistake? Why go on? Where is God? Why am I not making it?
- Spring Break anticipation and blues
April
Academic pressures continue to increase because of mid-terms.
- Frustration and confusion develop because of decisions necessary for pre-registration.
- Summer job pressures.
- Selection of a major.
- Papers and exams are piling up.
- The mounting academic pressures force some students to temporarily give up.
- Social pressures; everybody is bidding for your participation at trips, banquets, and picnics.
- Job recruitment panic.
May
Anxiety develops because of the realization that the year is ending.
- Senior panic about jobs (lack of them).
- Depression over leaving friends and facing conflicts at home.
- Finals pressure and anxiety.
Adapted From: NASPA Journal