--Original published at *Psych 105*

Stress cannot be escaped. While this sounds severe, it is simply a fact of life. Stress is a constant force that can either drive you forward or hold you back. Positive and beneficial stress can result in the ability to push forward and obtain our goals. At the same time, stress has the ability to wear a person down until they crumble. This is where stress management and coping mechanisms come in to ensure that circumstances do not reach that point. Stress management looks different for each person, as we are not all the same and have different stressors that affect us all differently. In this post, we will be looking at three different populations: children, college students, and athletes.

It seems as though children have nothing to be stressed about, and in turn have no stress. This is a naïve observation that downplays the very real stress and anxiety that children can feel in their everyday lives. Home life and school have the potential to provide stress for a child. An influx of stress requires the utilization a stress management technique to maintain high quality mental and physical health, as well as a healthy self-esteem. In article powered by Nemours Children’s Hospital and Dr. D’Arcy Lyness, offers several methods for children to deal with stress. One of the first is talking to a trusted adult about how the child is feeling and taking steps to create a regulated schedule. Reaching out to for outside support employs the technique of emotion-focused coping, as explained on page 419, in Chapter 11 of the textbook. The act of reaching out allows the child to seek support through their stress while accepting that the stress is there at the same time. In the area of scheduling and time management, the child may not have control over their schedule, so this communication is key to minimizing stress. The changes in scheduling allow for problem-focused coping as the issue is faced head-on. The acronym SELF, or sleep, exercise, leisure, and food, is also included in this article. All the activities in SELF have proven to be positive coping mechanisms and can be used throughout the lifespan.

College has the potential to be one of the best, but also one of the most stressful times of a person’s life. A key step to ensuring that the college days do not become too stressful is employing superb time management. An article from the University of Michigan’s Campus Mind Works points out the fact that sometimes stress is good, but when the cons outweigh the pros it’s time to make some changes. Goal setting and healthy scheduling are two ways that a student can alter their external stressors. From an internal perspective, positive self-talk and validating one’s feelings and emotions can provide stress relief. Much like the examples given for the children, seeking outside support from friends or family is a viable option as well. Aerobic exercise can be a positive coping strategy as well. This relates back to what we learned in class about how exercise increases not only physical fitness but also reduces the likelihood of anxiety, depression and even Alzheimer’s disease. Though the age ranges are very different between the children and the college students, there are many similar methods of stress management.

Athletes tend to be individuals that have the ability to perform relatively well when under stress. This does not mean that they are immune to it. On the contrary, athletes must find various ways to relieve stress just like everyone else. Dr. Aaron C. Moffett of California State University, San Bernardino created a list of physiological, behavioral and cognitive coping strategies for the Association for Applied Sports Psychology. These coping strategies can be used for when the stress of sports and everyday life seem like they are becoming too much. Deep breathing is on the top of the list for physiological coping. Deep breathing allows for muscle relaxation and increased amounts of oxygen entering the body. This falls into the category of relaxation and meditation. The use of self-talk and positive affirmations, like the ones recommended for college students, are listed under cognitive coping strategies. Mindfulness meditation is a similar coping mechanism that also utilizes the different cognitive strategies that Dr. Moffett discusses. Mindfulness meditation allows the individual to take in their problems in a nonjudgmental and accepting frame of mind (DeWall, N & Myers, D., 2016, p.429). Behavioral strategies include exercise, goal setting and list making, which allow for the athlete to create realistic standards to achieve. Dr. Moffett also makes a point to speak about negative coping strategies, such as drinking and smoking. These activities can lead to unhealthy habits for any person, especially athletes.

After sifting through the various methods of stress management for the three different populations, I can confidently say that I agree with their findings. The websites were written and reviewed by educated individuals from prestigious universities and were made in conjunction with highly rated hospitals. Their findings and recommendations line up with the material discussed in class and the material that is in the textbook. These methods all target potentially positive coping strategies that have beneficial physical, cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Ultimately reduced stress, whether it be in the form of physical activity or a daily inventory of individual stressful thoughts, results in a healthy frame of mind and body. Stress is something that will be with us our entire lives, but with these healthy strategies, we can keep it in its place.

http://www.appliedsportpsych.org/resources/health-fitness-resources/stress-management-tips-for-good-health/

http://campusmindworks.org/students/self_care/managing_stress.asp

https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/stress.html

DeWall, N. & Myers, D. (2016). Exploring psychology. New York, New York: Worth Publishers.

--Original published at Emily's Blog

Stress is the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events that we may appraise as threatening or challenging. It is not the events themselves but how we respond to these events. There are about three main types of stressors: catastrophes, significant life changes, and daily hassles. When faced with these stressors our bodies respond. This may be with raised heart rate, feelings of faintness, raised blood pressure and raised temperature. These symptoms and many others put together result in exhaustion. Overall, prolonged stress can be damaging to your body mentally and physically.

In class, we discussed many different types of stress management tips. Some of these included exercises, meditation, religion, self-disclosure, and gaining social support. These types of stress coping are proven to help people overcome stress. But these coping strategies are personal. Types of stress coping may work for some but not others.

What does the media say about coping with stress? Millions of people deal with stress daily and turn to the internet to provide them with the answers. Specifically, what are the pop-culture articles sharing about children’s stress, adult’s stress, and teenager’s stress?

Children may struggle with stress at a very young age. Developmentally, it is very important for children to not have a ton of strain put on their bodies as their brains are beginning to develop. The article, “Reducing Stress in Kids,” talks about making sure they have time to relax, practicing controlled breathing, and using muscle relaxation to aid with sleep. These are all good tips. Children should have time to calm down in their day especially if they are dealing with a significant life-changing event. In class, we practiced controlled breathing and it was able to help many students relax. I believe it could also work the same way for children. I had troubles sleeping as a child and practiced muscle relaxation. I believe this is good advice for children who may be struggling to fall asleep. The only thing I wish the article would have added is that these strategies are highly individualized and may not work every time for your child. Each parent needs to have a bunch of tools to help deal with their child’s possible stress issues.

The second article entitled, “Stress Management: Using Self-Help Techniques for Dealing with Stress,” is about how adults deal with stress. This article is aimed at adults because it specifically mentions some of the stressors in adult’s daily lives. Including, paying the bills, taking care of family responsibilities, and working at a consistent job. This article believes to reduce stress one must identify the sources of stress in your life, manage your time, make time for relaxation, connect with others, and exercise. These tips are all beneficial in aiding stressed out individuals. The article does an especially good job of talking about “fight or flight response.” The article explains it is natures way of defending yourself. The article does fall short in explaining the depth of each type of stress reliever. It merely skims the surface when addressing each coping strategy. Instead of providing why these strategies work, the article mostly just shares a little about each strategy and provides links to show other websites which can assist with each topic.

The third article is about stress management for teenagers. “For Teens: Creating Your Personal Stress-Management Plan,” is an article which gives a ten-point plan on how to live a less than stressful life. The points include identifying the problem, avoiding stress when possible, let things go, exercise, practice relaxation, eat well, sleep well, practice meditation, release emotional tension, and contribute to the world. The article does an especially good job of explaining meditation. It describes the steps of taking a mental vacation in detail. The article also does a good job of mentioning points the other articles have missed such as letting things go. This can be a huge stressor in people’s lives. It is important to note this intrapersonal part of our lives. These are good points, but the article is missing the purpose of stress relief. This article falls short in the same way as the first article about children. There is not a magic formula which prevents stress for people. It is trial and error and seeing what works best for you in each situation. If there was a magic formula, I feel as though psychologists would have figured it out by now. Alas, people are different and there is not simply one solution to this problem.

https://stressfreekids.com/13654/reducing-stress-in-kids/

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-management.htm?pdf=true

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/emotional-wellness/Building-Resilience/Pages/For-Teens-Creating-Your-Personal-Stress-Management-Plan.aspx

--Original published at Emily Garvin's Psych Blog

STRESS:

We’ve discussed a number of different stress management approaches in class, and now I want you to evaluate online resources for stress management. Specifically, I want you to identify three websites that provide stress management tips and discuss how likely you think the strategies they provide are to be successful. Make sure to explain your rationale using what we’ve learned in class and your textbook. Each of the three websites need to be targeted at a different audience but you may select the audiences you want to use (e.g., college students, athletes, parents, artists). Make sure to include links to the websites as part of your post…..

Stress is something that everyone will encounter in their lifetime. Some people allow stress to break them, while others are resilient and fight back against stress using various coping strategies. Nowadays, stress management techniques are easily accessible and quite simple to apply. There are a plethora of strategies offered on reputable websites. You can even specify the cause of your stress when searching for stress management approaches. Most often, you will be directed to an organization’s website where coping strategies and stress management tips are given. I examined three different websites that were designed for different groups of people (college students, athletes, and stress in the workplace).

The first website I analyzed was from http://www.everydayhealth.com regarding the stress management of college students. They offer a total of eleven suggestions that have the potential to reduce the stress of a college student. Actually, we discussed some of the strategies in class when we learned about additional coping strategies. There is a combination of what a college student can do and what they should avoid. College students exercise regularly, establish social support, get a substantial amount of sleep, breathing exercises, and get a massage College students should avoid overloading workload and other activities, alcohol, and energy boosters such as drinking too much caffeine, breathing exercises. According to evidence-based research, completing these tasks along with the others mentioned on the every day health website will result in less stress suffered by the average college student.

Athletes are under an immense amount of stress. They are expected to perform at high levels which requires hours of hard work on their own time. The website I analyzed, www.appliedsportpsych.com, recommended to determine the source and type of stress, meaning is the stress good or bad for you, and then listed physiological, behavioral, and cognitive coping strategies. For example, a behavioral strategy could be releasing pent up anger by acting out in some way like punching a pillow or a punching bag. This behavioral strategy would be considered a physical release. Releasing pent up anger is also associated with Freud’s concept of catharsis. Catharsis essentially means that releasing pent up emotions will be healing. This strategy has been proven successful for athletes.

Lastly, stress often stems from many peoples’ professions. Work stress could be caused by the environment, coworkers, or workload. Whatever the cause of stress, the website www.saxonsgroup.com offers five simple ways to manage work stress. The first is exercise, an additional coping resource we discussed in class, this strategy can focus an employee’s attention away from work and ultimately, reduce their stress level. The website also suggested communication exercises and activities that would cultivate a healthy and beneficial workplace culture. These two suggestions could also be considered an additional coping resource because the goal of the exercises and activities is to strengthen social support within the work place through more effective communication.

Coping with stress is not an easy task for a population of individuals. Everyone has different stressors in their life and alternate ways of coping with them. The strategies provided from the websites I discussed are all chosen for a certain population of people; however, many of the strategies overlap with one another or provide similar stress relief for the different populations. For instance, exercise was the first suggestion for college students and for people who experience stress from work. The suggestions provided are all considered to be adaptive strategies, because they should decrease stress without complications, but this can vary from person to person since strategies tend to be highly individualized.

Links:

https://www.everydayhealth.com/college-health/college-life-10-ways-to-reduce-stress.aspx

http://www.appliedsportpsych.org/resources/health-fitness-resources/stress-management-tips-for-good-health/

http://www.saxonsgroup.com.au/blog/human-resources/5-simple-ways-manage-workplace-stress/

--Original published at Sarah's Blog

In class we learned about stress and how to manage it in different situations. Stress can really take a toll on a person’s mental and physical state, and it is helpful to have some tips on how to manage it. Looking online for resources can also be helpful in finding stress management tips, as long as they are reliable and useful.

In the first article I found, there are tips directed towards college students. The author of this article from EverydayHealth, Jennifer Acosta Scott, says that “stress occurs when your tension level exceeds your energy level, resulting in an overloaded feeling” (3). Some of the tips that she gives to help control stress in college are getting enough sleep, eating well, and exercising. Some other tips are possibly going to counseling/talking to a close friend and trying not to overload yourself with too many things. Exercise and self-disclosure are two specific coping resources that we talked about in class, so those are good ways to manage stress. I believe that getting enough sleep and eating well are also important because a person has to take care of him or herself physically to be able to manage his or her stress.

In the second article, the tips are directed towards musicians. I thought this would be an interesting topic because I am going into the music field and it would be helpful to know some tips on managing stress as a current and future musician. The author of this article talks about how small stress can be useful for a musician in a performance or recording, but chronic stress can be very bad for a musician’s health. Stress can also lead to decreased ability to play an instrument due to overuse/overworking the muscles and higher blood pressure. Some tips that this website has to manage stress were exercise, taking breaks between practicing, and having a strong support group of friends. I know practicing challenging music can be very stressful, so I believe that is a good tip to reiterate to any musician. Another tip that the website states is practicing self-appreciation, which I believe is an adaptive strategy to managing performance anxiety and stress. This is one tip that I would like to continue to work on because from personal experience performing is a big stress inducer.

The last article I found was for parents helping their child manage stress. It is important that children learn how to manage stress early on so it does not affect them as much as the children get older and obtain more responsibilities. Some tips that this article shared were to not overschedule the child and make sure that they have time to play. Doing something that the child is interested in just for fun is a good way for the child to have time to de-stress and not worry about a competition or a goal. Another important tip is that the parent should manage their own stress along with helping the child manage theirs. This is important because children will notice when the parent is stressed and it will make them stressed as a result.

All of these articles discussed the main ways that a person can manage their stress levels. Each article used the general ways and made them more specific to each population. Reading these articles have helped me have a better understanding of specific ways to manage stress, especially being a college student and a musician.

Sources

https://www.everydayhealth.com/college-health/college-life-10-ways-to-reduce-stress.aspx

https://internationalmusician.org/dont-sweat-it-your-guide-to-managing-stress/

https://psychcentral.com/lib/7-tips-for-helping-your-child-manage-stress/

--Original published at Sierra's College Blog

How do you manage or cope with different levels of stress. It seems almost everyone in the world experiences stress in some way or another. It does not matter how old someone is or even one’s occupation. Since there are multiple people with stress occurring each and every day, some psychologists have given ways and examples to manage the stress. Now I am going to take a look at three different sources, each specifically written for a certain audience, to determine whether or not the stress management tips seem to be successful based on my previous background knowledge.

The first website I have viewed explains stress management advice for sports and athletes. This website’s article, “Stress Management Techniques for Sports,” is written by Christie Morton. Morton explains how athletes can be under much stress due to how well they perform. This stress can be caused from multiple different variables, including coaches, teammates, parents, and one’s own self. By examining research from a 2003 study, Morton suggests three helpful tips for stress management. She believes cognitive restructuring, visualization, and guided relaxation can be beneficial. For cognitive restructuring, Morton explains the significance for athletes in finding a balance between the stressful events and the not so stressful ones. After a game or practice, athletes can write down the pros and cons. They are able to then make a plan for the future to work on the imperfections. She describes how this has been beneficial for athletes in the Olympics of 1988. Next, she discusses the importance of visualization, which allows athletes to imagine themselves performing and accomplishing their goals. This allows athletes to have higher self-confidence. Lastly, she explains how guided relaxation can lower cortisol levels and work on the focusing of one’s breathing.

After viewing Morton’s suggestions, I am able to see whether or not they will be successful for athletes. I believe all three of the techniques provided will be successful for athletes. Cognitive restructuring is important, and relates to cognitive responses to stress we have talked about in class. Here an athlete is able to realize he or she can get past the stress and move forward. In chapter eleven of our textbook and class lectures, visualization and relaxation is also described to help lower stress. These two steps involve imagery and mindfulness meditation. The athletes imagine themselves crossing the finish line, completing a new skill, or even getting the winning point. With relaxation, an athlete is able to improve his or her health. As chapter eleven explains stress, a state of mindfulness can focus an athlete’s attention, regulate his or her emotions, and allow calmness in difficult situations. Relaxation is beneficial and helps decrease depressive outlooks on life. I believe all three techniques will be successful for athletes.

The second website provides helpful ways to decrease stress for students. “Student Guide to Surviving Stress and Anxiety in College & Beyond” is written by Melissa Cohen. She discusses how stress can be both positive and negative, depending on the certain situation and the extent in which it is expressed. She gives plenty of resources for college students to use, and she even allows you to rate your own stress. Moving away from home, the heavy work load, finances, and future aspirations are all reasons for why college students may stress. With these factors in mind, college students can decrease some anxiety by getting sleep, thinking positively, having a stress free space, relaxing, and talking to others. Sleep is important and can help get students through the next day, and positive reinforcement will create less depressive thoughts or feelings. Cohen describes how relaxation is beneficial, and even meditation can be productive. Lastly, she explains how talking to another person and sharing one’s feelings can decrease stress.

I am able to determine which of the stress management techniques are going to be beneficial, based off my previous knowledge of stress. The first step for students is to get enough sleep. I think this is very crucial because we continue to emphasize this point in lectures and through class. Getting an adequate amount of sleep will decrease negative moods and strengthen the body. It also will help people feel reenergized and alert, instead of having fatigue. Thinking positively is also beneficial, as seen in the textbook. People who act and see life in a happy view, will also likely have a positive view of the world. As stated earlier, relaxing and finding a space where one can be free from stress will result in a decrease of anxiety. Also, I believe the last strategy for students is great because it allows someone to have social support. It is healthy to vent your feelings to someone and get stressful things off your chest. A social support system can encourage a student to persevere and tackle any problem in the future.

Lastly, the third website suggests stress management tips for parents who want a healthy family.  The American Psychological Association (APA) has published this article, and they explain how many parents feel stress each day due to their responsibilities. This stress is then passed on to their children, who follow in the same paths. APA suggests parents take a couple steps to improve their lives and decrease the stress levels. This website encourages parents to evaluate their lifestyles, talk about their stress, create a healthy home, focus on one’s self, and change one habit at a time. By evaluating the lifestyle, a parent can see whether or not he or she responds to stress negatively or positively. Open communication allows a family to share thoughts and feelings. A neat and organized home decreases stress levels as well. It is important to create a healthy self by eating right, getting enough sleep, and exercising. Lastly, it is crucial to take one step at a time, so this plan does not become too stressful.

These suggestions to stress seem useful and helpful for parents. If parents evaluate their lifestyles, it can mean new or old habits can be incorporated for the family. A bad habit, such as eating junk food, is more likely to occur when one is feeling depressed. This example involves exercising, which is able to decrease stress when done regularly. It can be beneficial mentally and physically for a parent. By having positive emotions, a parent will be more inclined to make healthier food. Open communication is also a beneficial technique because it involves coping with a social network. This social network can make stress a little easier by discussing problems and finding solutions. If a parent focuses on himself or herself first, he or she will be able to have more self-esteem and confidence. This will then allow the parents to focus more time with their children. Lastly, I believe taking one step at a time is great too because you do not want to add additional stress on top of the stress you already have. Gradually adding steps to decrease the stress will be the most beneficial.

Overall, there are multiple ways to handle and lower stress levels for different scenarios. Many of the tips and suggestions from these three websites give a great overview of some beneficial ways to work on decreasing stress levels for different audiences. Two other examples for coping with stress includes self-indulgence (to a degree) and finding a religious network. There are numerous other sites which also provide suggestions to help manage the anxiety through life. I believe looking at these websites, as well as our textbook, has given me numerous options to decrease my own stress levels.

Links:

https://www.livestrong.com/article/371195-stress-management-techniques-for-sports/

https://www.learnpsychology.org/student-stress-anxiety-guide/

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/managing-stress.aspx