College life can be very stressful. Sometimes parents, faculty and others tend to idealize their college experience and remember it as that idyllic time when they had few worries or responsibilities. To students currently attending college, however, the process is often stressful and frustrating. The competition for grades, the need to perform, relationships, career choice, and many other aspects of the college environment cause stress. Before condemning stress outright, we need to understand that stress is only harmful when it is excessive.Warning Signs
- Changes in sleep patterns
- Change in eating patterns
- More frequent headaches than is normal for you
- Shoter temper than is normal for you
- Recurring colds and minor illness
- Frequent muscle ache and/or tightness
- More disorganize than normal for you
- Increase difficulty in task completion
- A greater sense of persistent time pressure
- Increase generalized frustration and anger
Although some stress reactions are part of deeper and more serious emotional problems, many are not, and can be handled with relatively simple counseling and stress-management techniques. You can use the following guidelines to help manage your stress understand your role in stress reactions.
1.Develop a Balance Lifestyle
Stress reaction to varrios situation are also affected by your overall level of health. Someone who is alwas feeling overwhelmed, eat poorly and doesn’tget enought sleep usually has limited ability to cope with stessful event. You need to pay attention to your own well being. The right balance of sleep, food, exercise, work, school and recreation is crucial.
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2. Gain Perspective by Discussing Problems
It is easy to get caught up in a problem or a narrow view of something you are doing, and to lose perspective and feel that a failure or roadblock is a catastrophe. Discussing your problems with a trusted, empathic friend can allow you to gain new perspective and can allow you to move out of what might seem like an isolated and negative internal world. The act of verbalizing your concerns and putting them together will often help give you a sense of control.
3. Learn Specific Relaxation Techniques
Relaxation techniques are extremely valuable tools in stress management. Most of the techniques like meditation, self-hypnosis, and deep muscle relaxation work in a similar fashion. They make it possible for you to spend a short period of time in a state of profound relaxation. In this state both the body and the mind are at rest and the outside world is screened out for a period of time. The practice of one of these techniques on a regular basis can provide a wonderfully calming and relaxing feeling that seems to have a lasting effect for many people. Your energy level and ability to cope with the external world are replenished. Practitioners and researchers have reported many positive life effects from the regular practice of one of these techniques.
4. Clarify Your Values and Develop a Sense of Life Meaning
Stress is often caused by general unhappiness and a sense of aimlessness or lack of purpose. People sometimes wind up making choices and living life styles that really don't fit them. A student may be studying accounting when he or she really wants to be an artist, or he or she may have a wide circle of friends, but not really have the kind of intimate relationships that feel fulfilling.
Source from : http://www.counseling.ufl.edu/cwc/Stress-and-College-Students.aspx
: http://www.ulifeline.org/main/factsheets/78
