Stress

"There is little you can do to prevent stress, but there are many things you can do to manage stress more effectively, such as learning how to relax, taking regular exercise and adopting goodtime-management techniques" (NHS Choices).

Around University, the word ‘Stress’ gets used very often, and it seems to be common knowledge today that students always have a hectic life-style. When somebody says ‘I’m stressed’, it tends to be a small venting mechanism perhaps in search of some comfort or solution to their worries.

In most cases, a person will look for something to de-stress themselves either as a break from whatever it is that is causing the stress, or wait until they have some free time to ‘treat themselves’. The issue is, with the busy schedule of a university student, finding that time can be difficult and some people might even choose to supress those feelings and just continue with their everyday life. I can imagine that after some time of continuously supressing and ignoring the stress and anxiety, this could lead to a much worse state of mind.

"Stress is a Sudden Biological Change. It has become the curse of 21st century and is silent killer in the modern world ... It can disturb any one's physical, mental, emotional and behavioural balance" (Narishma, 2013, p.42).

"Stress has been shown to predispose individuals to cardiovascular disease, to gastrointestinal problems, to muscle-related disorders, to allergic reactions and to decreased productivity"

(Kohn, P. & Frazer, G.).

Stress affects each person differently: What may cause you stress, may not affect me at all. Though, what everyone has in common is how a small dose of stress tends to be beneficial and give us a boost of energy, but the concern is when there is too much pressure, it becomes something negative. How can we judge when to take that next step and look for professional help?

"Stress is a natural feeling, designed to help you cope in challenging situations. In small amounts it’s good, because it pushes you to work hard and do your best" (NHS Choices).

"Stress becomes a problem when instead of helping me perform it actually becomes counter-productive"

(Dr Cohen, A.).

However, a study conducted in Harvard also proves that the thought of worrying about stress is even more detrimental than the stress itself. Students were put through a ‘social stress test’, where they were put under pressure through an ‘interview’ situation and were being analysed by a board of trained examiners. The video How to make stress your friend', presented by psychologist Kelly McGonigal, talks about this analysis:

"You’d probably be a little stressed out. Our heart might be pounding, you may be breathing heavier, and you may be breaking out into a sweat. And normally we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren’t coping very well with the pressure… But what if you view them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge? Now that is exactly what participants were told in a study conducted at Harvard University. Before they went through the social stress test, they were taught to rethink their stress response as helpful. That pounding heart is preparing you for action. If you’re breathing faster, it’s no problem, it’s getting more oxygen to your brain. And participants who learnt to view the stress response as helpful for their performance, well they were less stressed out, less anxious, more confident. But the most fascinating finding to me was how their physical stress response changed. (…) Over a lifetime of stressful experiences, this one biological change could be the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at the age of 50 and living well into your nineties. And this is really what the new science of stress reveals, that how you think about stress matters"

(McGonigal, K., Video: How to make stress your friend).

The message McGonigal was trying to expose in her video, was this idea of looking at stress in a new way, with a positive response. Should this perhaps be the first ‘mantra’ to be passed on to students during difficult times? Imaginably this would help generate that beneficial ‘small dose of stress’ that was mentioned earlier, in the video by Dr. Cohen.

This conclusion that stress can be beneficial, seems to be shared by a number of professionals in the mental health & psychology areas. Jeremy Jamieson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, also conducted this Social Stress Test on a group of students as part of a study on ‘Why some stress can actually be good for you’.

Again, the conclusion here was positive, showing that "people who have the higher stresses or higher amounts of arousal actually do better on their tasks than people who don’t. So when you do need that arousal, when you do need to make some instrumental response, the body’s stress response is actually going to help you make those responses better'"

(Jamieson, J.; Video: Why some stress can actually be good for you).

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