How to Deal with 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
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

The Study Guides and Strategies web site was created and is maintained by Joe Landsberger,
academic web site developer at the University of St. Thomas (UST), St. Paul, Minnesota. It is collaboratively maintained across institutional and national boundaries, and last revised September 04, 2002 .

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