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Study Guide & Strategies
Managing Stress
First, you must
learn to recognize stress:
Stress symptoms include
mental, social, and physical manifestations. These include
exhaustion, loss of/increased appetite, headaches, crying,
sleeplessness, and oversleeping. Escape through alcohol, drugs, or
other compulsive behavior are often indications. Feelings of alarm,
frustration, or apathy may accompany stress.
If you feel that stress is
affecting your studies,
a first option is to seek help through your educational counseling
center.
Stress
Management is the ability to maintain control when
situations, people, and events make excessive demands.
What you can do to manage your stress? What are some
strategies?
Look around
See if there really is something you can change
or control in the situation |
Learn how to best relax yourself
Meditation and breathing exercises have
been proven to be very effective in controlling stress.
Practice clearing your mind of disturbing thoughts. |
Remove yourself from the stressful situation
Give yourself a break if only for a few
moments daily |
Set realistic goals for yourself
Reduce the number of events going on in
your life and you may reduce the circuit overload |
Don't sweat the small stuff
Try to prioritize a few truly important things
and let the rest slide |
Don't overwhelm yourself
by fretting about your entire workload.
Handle each task as it comes, or selectively deal with matters
in some priority |
Selectively change the way you react,
but not too much at one time. Focus on one
troublesome thing and manage your reactions to it/him/her |
Change the way you see things
Learn to recognize stress for what it is.
Increase your body's feedback and make stress self-regulating |
Avoid extreme reactions;
Why hate when a little dislike will do? Why
generate anxiety when you can be nervous? Why rage when anger
will do the job? Why be depressed when you can just be sad? |
Do something for others
to help get your mind off your self |
Get enough sleep
Lack of rest just aggravates stress |
Work off stress
with physical activity, whether it's
jogging, tennis, gardening |
Avoid self-medication or escape
Alcohol and drugs can mask stress. They don't
help deal with the problems |
Develop a thick skin
The bottom line of stress management is "I upset
myself" |
Try to "use" stress
If you can't fight what's bothering you and you
can't flee from it,
flow with it and try to use it in a productive
way |
Try to be positive
Give yourself messages as to how well you can
cope rather than how horrible everything is going to be.
"Stress can actually help memory, provided it is short-term
and not too severe. Stress causes more glucose to be
delivered to the brain, which makes more energy available to
neurons. This, in turn, enhances memory formation and
retrieval. On the other hand, if stress is prolonged, it can
impede the glucose delivery and disrupt memory."
All Stressed Up,
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Dispatch, p. 8B, Monday, November 30, 1998
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Most importantly, if stress is
putting you in an unmanageable state or interfering with your
schoolwork, social and/or work life, seek professional
help at your school counseling center |
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