--Original published at Jenna'sPSY105blog

For my second spotlight post, I chose prompt #2 about stress management. As a college student, as well as an athlete, stress is something I struggle with and I feel that it is important to find ways to manage your stress levels in order to achieve peak performance and to maintain your sanity. I will be discussing ways that different audiences can cope with stressful situations based off of three articles I found.

My first audience is college students. Dear college students, you NEED to sleep. Most college students are so overwhelmed with the amount of school work they have and how little time they have to do it, so they stay up all night working on assignments and sleep a few hours each night during the week and then try to catch up on sleep on the weekends. That is a very unhealthy lifestyle to live all week long every week for an entire school year. As we learned in class, catching up on sleep is simply that-catching up. By the time you’re finally caught up, it’s Monday and you have to start the cycle all over again. You sendup essentially inducing “jet lag” when doing this. Nobody is able to do their best work when they are constantly sleep deprived. Sleep more during the night so that you can feel refreshed when taking on school responsibilities. Another tip is to practice some relaxation techniques when you feel overwhelmed. Whether it be mediation, slowly taking deep breaths and counting to ten, playing with a stress ball, anything that can take your mind off of things and calm you down is beneficial to your overall mental health. Lastly, talk to somebody. Ranting to your roommate or friends or calling your parents and just talk about your problems can be a very good outlet for frustration and make a world of difference. Honestly, talking things through with people can help you figure things out for yourself and how you can take on all of your stress, and if not, most likely your parents or friends can help you come up with a solution or game plan to get through your struggles.

My next audience is athletes. First of all, keeping a positive attitude is key. Sometimes you can be so stressed out from practicing every single day and worrying about winning all the time, but staying positive puts you a completely different head space- and a healthy one! If you have a bad performance or you feel you didn’t do as well as you know you could have, don’t let it discourage you, let it drive you to do better next time. Not only will it be a learning experience, but it will also alleviate so much stress. Another tip is to have time to yourself to have fun. Sports can be very demanding and you can often times feel like your whole life revolves around the sport you play. When you do have free time, use it. Not only will it be a way to get your mind off of your stress, but you can do things that are still keeping you active which may slightly benefit your performance your sport anyway. You can go on a run, lift weights, go hiking, do yoga, or play some video games. Whatever helps you to destress and enjoy yourself will help you in the long run. Lastly, have a strong support system. Your friends, family, trainers, and especially your coach all want to see you succeed as much as possible. They can help you find ways to deal with your stressors, as well as encourage you to push through the hard times. They can also help you remain positive and change your perspective. Surrounding yourself with people who only have your well-being in mind is essential when in stressful situations.

Lastly, I would like to address the parents of teenagers. The teenage years can be the most stressful phase of children growing up that parents have to go through. It can be a very difficult time for teenagers, but parents are just as stressed out as their children, so I would like to give advice for parents that can help their teens and, in turn, alleviate some of their own stress as well. For starters, help your child learn that some things are outside their control. Learning not to stress about the little things will help them worry less and have a clearer mind. Teens deal with a lot of drama, so teach them to stay out of it and show them that the drama is pointless, a waste of time, and won’t matter in the long run. Secondly, limit your teen’s social media use. Kids are constantly glued to their phones, but social media has the potential to completely ruin their self confidence. Nowadays it’s all about editing and posting the most perfect pictures, getting the most likes on a post, having the most followers, and constantly beating themselves down when they don’t achieve those things as well as comparing themselves to others. This can be very detrimental to their mental health and can cause a lot of stress in the household when the parents have to deal with their child going through that. Lastly, come up with some stress relieving distractions for your child. Whether it be hanging out with friends, going on a drive (if they have their license), playing basketball outside, playing an instrument, drawing, shopping, getting ice cream, anything that can be fun and get their mind off of the stress can be so beneficial for your teen.

The three articles I found wrote about these tips more in depth and provided many more ideas to cope with stress. I feel that these tips are very helpful for people dealing with high levels of stress and feel they can’t find any solutions. I definitely plan on keeping some of these tips in mind following my return to college this semester, and hopefully they can help other people too!

Sources:

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

https://nova3labs.com/five-stress-management-tips-athletes/

https://nova3labs.com/five-stress-management-tips-athletes/

--Original published at Loretta Gabrielle

For the second spotlight blog, I picked the second option revolving around stress. Stress management is something I struggle with, as discussed in the blog posts. After learning about stress I evaluated three online resources for stress management. As suggested I am looking at three different target audiences of college students, athletes, and parents.

College Student

Stress itself is when the body reacts to a new change and pressure. In the first article, discussed tips and reasoning for stress in college and how to survive it. Acute stress is the reaction of possible challenges. An example can be, receiving a grade back from a class, a test, or traveling somewhere new. Most of these episodes do not last long and can be both negative and positive. Most college students face episodic acute stress which is acute stress more often. Normally college students face these challenges often in school as there are several different tasks to overcome with classes, living away from home, additional responsibility, and the financial deficit loans bring. Something many students struggle with is test anxiety and stress. The tips which the article provided were studying efficiently and effectively, use practice tests, study to learn not to pass, tricks such as a stress ball or ways to calm and center you, eating well which can include reducing coffee as it may contribute to anxiety and stress, rest, realizing tension through exercising, and being punctual the day of the test. Other additional tips the article provided on reducing stress for college students was thinking positive which can be used as positive affirmations. In other words, rather than saying ‘I can’t do this’ you change it to ‘I can do this’ which can bring a positive outcome. Similarly to this meditation and relaxation strategies benefit in reducing stress. Using the resources many colleges provide such as tutoring and talking to someone which can be a friend or school counselor. Lastly, being able to have an outlet from your stress whether that is a club, sport, or staying inside and relaxing, whatever creates less stress will benefit a college student as a whole.

Parent

The second article I found related to stress parents face and the buildup tension. The article described this as their body using fight or flight mode which we learned in class. The article discussed constant tension which is also referred to as chronic tension. A way to minimize this is through practicing relaxation rather being in constant tension form fight or flight. The article discussed progressive relaxation through one’s whole body and working on releasing the tension through physical activity. A way which the article described was yoga and relaxing one’s muscles through untensing each body part.  Another suggestion was using deep breathing as it the article suggests it causes more energy to be produced throughout the body. This can also be seen as another form of meditation. Taking a mental vacation can help by thinking of a relaxing place from a memory such as a beach, the sun, baked cookies, and anything to take you away from the moment which is causing stress. The article later suggested hobbies as a way to relax and provide relief.

Athlete 

The article regarding athletes and stress management provided what the difference between an athlete with a large stress load and one without. An athlete with a lot of stress will constantly get injured, lack a competitive edge, and have trouble sleeping. Although most of the information when talking about stress relates to the negative impact, with athletes it could also have a positive outlook. Say an athlete was in a critical part of the game and they have three people from the other team coming at them, evidently causing stress. Rather than shutting down and freezing, the stress and adrenaline boost from the release of the stress hormone in our body, can work in using our fight-or-flight response. In any case, this can happen regardless of being an athlete or not. To use the stress one is enduring and fighting through the challenge. The negative impact from athletes enduring stress, is the continuation after the game ends. For managing stress when training is using breaks rather than training harder. When it revolves stress around preforming, using good scores and success in playing will increase the athletes confidence until the stress resides. With the emotional stress components which can become ignored with athletes, it is important to recognize whether the training is helpful or harmful. If the component of the sport are causing more pain than taking away it is negatively impacting the person. Exercise is an important way to reduce stress but too much can have a negative effect. Lastly, addressing proper eating and sleeping schedules will help manage the stress level in an athlete.

All three articles addressed the negative impacts of stress learned in class along with similarly healthy ways to improve overall stress levels for college students, parents, and athletes.

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

https://childdevelopmentinfo.com/family-living/stress/#.W3HzJCOZM_U

https://www.moneyinstructor.com/doc/stressmanage.asp

--Original published at CatherinesCollegeBlog

I chose the second option about stress for this post. I found three websites that provide stress management tips to various groups of people, including college students, athletes, and parents. The article from Verywell Mind, a website providing information from mental health professionals, is targeted to college students and first suggests to become more organized. When college students transition from having regular discipline from their parents to being the own sources of their discipline, these new responsibilities of keeping track of their own schedules and living spaces can add stress. If they apply a problem-focused coping strategy to the situation, perhaps by creating a more organized schedule of when assignments are due and a more organized living space that allows for better concentration, this stress may fade. Regular exercise is another suggestion, even when it is incorporated in small ways. Living on campus makes it easy for college students to walk or bike to class, and there are many opportunities to participate in fitness classes with other students. Consistent exercise will relieve the stress of college life by releasing endorphins, helping students feel physically and psychologically better. College students need to be careful about using self-indulgence as a coping strategy. Again, without parents right there to enforce healthy habits of eating clean and getting enough rest, students may fall into a pattern of eating unhealthy foods and staying up late because these are more fun and rebellious things to do. Although indulging in fast food and ice cream every night is more enjoyable and relieves stress for a moment, this habit can harm overall health and lead to more stress later on. A final tip involves social support systems offered to college students. Most schools have resources such as counseling services or support groups where students go to release their stress and seek advice on how to cope in other ways. It is also important to join clubs and branch out to meet new people who potentially will help relieve stress. Self-disclosure can be effective if the people are good listeners who are willing to offer help. These can develop into great friendships and apply to other coping strategies, like exercising regularly with the new friends these students make.

Another article I chose from Livestrong.com provides tips tailored to athletes who are trying to cope with stress. This website publishes articles for the public each day with new ways to develop a healthier lifestyle, in terms of physical and mental health improvements. The first suggestion is to apply a cognitive response to stress that restructures how to approach a similar conflict again. This method emphasizes emotion-focused coping, as the athletes are told to document the stressful situation and identify the feelings they experienced that contributed to any stressful thoughts. By writing this information out, athletes can identify which feelings and thoughts are causing stress and aim coping efforts specifically at times when they begin to experience those same feelings. Another tip is for athletes to actually picture themselves achieving their goal, whether it is scoring the winning goal in a soccer game or crossing the finish line first in an 800 meter race. This method relies on imagery to create as real of an experience as possible. Athletes should try incorporating as many senses as they can when picturing this moment of success, including sights, sounds, smells, textures, and motion. If the visualization is done effectively, it can create a sense of ease for athletes as they can finally see themselves achieving their goals without worrying about stress. The realistic nature of visualization makes these goals seem more attainable and less daunting, which will relieve the pressure and stress of actually getting there. The last recommendation for athletes is to cope with stress using guided relaxation. This method has been found to reduce the levels of cortisol in the human body, which is a hormone released in response to stress. Guided recordings relieve stress physically and psychologically, as they focus on controlled breathing and muscle relaxation to calm the body and mind when athletic pressures become too stressful.

The final article I chose from Huffington Post is specific to parents and the best ways for them to manage their stress. Being a parent is tough because kids will always scrutinize every little thing their parents do. When children see their parents handling stress in destructive ways, it makes it seem acceptable for children to react in the same manner. This article first mentions how parents need to avoid using the physical release of lashing out too often. It is true that releasing emotions is healing, whether the release is psychological by screaming at the top of your lungs or physical by punching a pillow; however, these reactions can get out of control quickly and lead to others being put in harm’s way. A better way for parents to handle stress and anger is to not take things too personally and remember to just breathe. When kids disobey their parents, the parents may feel incapable of the responsibility they have to raise them. Parents must remember that kids are supposed to go against what their parents believe sometimes, as it is part of learning and growing up. This incorporates the mindfulness-based stress reduction strategy, which emphasizes staying in the present with nonjudgemental awareness. Just as we are taught to not judge others, parents have to avoid judging themselves too harshly. As the article suggests, it is better to aim for imperfection and eliminate both external and internal pressures as much as possible. Parents are constantly told by others how they should be acting and raising their kids, whether it is their own parents telling them, their children telling them, or other parents who think they know better. Imperfection allows for mistakes and lessons learned without excessive pressure or stress. The article also advises that parents focus on one task at a time, especially if it is causing any stress. Immediately aiming constructive efforts at the problem will help identify the stressor in the future, and parents will not get overwhelmed if they deal with these one at a time. Parents should still be able to “play” too, as the article mentions. These small self-indulgences of dancing or going to see a movie are critical to maintaining a happy, balanced, low-stress life. Exercise and sleep are important for parents just as they are for everyone else dealing with stress. It can be especially difficult for new parents to find enough time to exercise regularly and get enough sleep, as they deal with the life change of having a baby. They have to stay positive and remember that this stage in their lives of sleep deprivation and limited personal time is not a chronic negative situation, and that they will eventually be able to devote more time to themselves again.

https://www.verywellmind.com/college-life-how-to-reduce-stress-3145176

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

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/nine-steps-to-stress-free-parenting_n_1403209.html