Dealing With Stress

Have you ever woken up with no energy, even after a nightlong rest? Or maybe you have trouble with falling asleep, focusing on one thing during the day, and studying for exams? If you’ve gone through some of these things, chances are you’re probably stressed from the burdens of being a highschooler (If you haven’t, I guarantee you will at least once in the future). Stress is completely normal at this time of our lives; it’s a natural response our bodies have when we take on challenges and face hardships in life, so don’t be alarmed. 

But while we may feel stressed by nature, it is crucial that we understand why we are stressed and what we can do to combat it so that we don’t act based on it. Stress may cause you to lash out at other peers and loved ones, keep you from pursuing certain interests, and cause you to have anxiety which can all hinder your daily life while breaking the relationships you have with others. It has many other unfavorable outcomes such as damage to your mental and physical health, so managing it is key.

The first step you may want to take is recognizing what is causing you to feel stressed. Is it that math exam that’s coming up? What about that essay which is due by the end of the week? Or maybe a certain teacher (that also happens to teach math and wears a durag) has been pulling your strings recently and you’ve finally had enough. There are a plethora of reasons at school why you may feel stressed, but the root of the problem might be at home as well. Contemplate for a while, and regardless of what they are, if thinking about it drains every ounce of life you have, it’s probably the source of your dilemma.

Now that you’ve identified it, the next step will be to address it to the best of your abilities in order to reduce how much stress you feel. If it’s something you can control, then take action. For instance, deadlines for assignments or upcoming tests. Don’t procrastinate and put them off for later, that will only add more fuel to the fire that is stress and may cause you to do poorly on them. Manage your time so that you won’t have to pay the price later when it could have been easily avoided with a change of mindset. I know it may seem hard, wanting to use personal time for other activities, but finding a balance between that and your school life is an effective way to help you.

Moving on, stressful things that you can’t control/don’t have the power to change, perhaps global events or small things that hinder your life, can be hard to deal with. It is not like you can do anything immediately or change your mindset like in the previous example as you had no part to play in what causes your stress. All hope is not lost however, as to relieve stress you can’t control, there are many solutions that you can choose from. One is meditating which helps clear the mind of worries and has been known to have benefits, another could be fidget toys which keep your brain occupied in stressful times.

There's other fun options like rage rooms which are specially designed with fragile objects that you can pay to enter and blow off some steam by breaking things with all that pent up stress. They’re known to help really well, so you can always try them out when finding your ideal solution for your stress. In fact, there’s rage rooms in San Jose which means you don’t have to travel that far to find one.

No matter what you choose, make sure to remember again that being stressed is completely fine, but acting negatively along the lines of your stress is not. Finding the problem of your stress might be challenging and take a long time, but in the end, if you’re able to realize what needs to be fixed and can relieve your stress based on it, you are sure to see positive results in your daily life. Be encouraged to do so as it becomes more stressful in school, plus in the future, and make sure to stay as stress-free as possible.