Mind, body and spirit: Top five ways to handle school stress

By Shaela Foster
Special to the AFRO

As the holidays inch closer, the load for students of all ages can become heavier. With a full course load comes greater stress and shorter deadlines. These high pressure situations can cause some students to become depressed and burnt out, sometimes leading to a sense of dread completing schoolwork.

Experts say there are multiple ways to destress while pursuing a diploma, GED or degree.

Photo: Unsplash/ element5-digital

If you are someone who has been stressed out due to school, here are a few tips for you to better combat this problem.

Use lists

Create a brain dump for the day and write down your top three prioritizations. This will help declutter the planning process in your mind.

“If I write it down, I can visually see it. It’s more likely to get done,” said Brande Remy, licensed clinical professional counselor and owner of Cultivate Wellness Counseling.

Writing lists helps get all the things stored in the brain onto a sheet of paper, allowing one to clearly see the things that need to be done and the order of importance.

“Once you start something, you feel motivated, and once you complete it, you feel even more ,” she said.

Remy states she uses Post-it notes due to their ability to be put anywhere in her office. This way, the prioritized items are the first thing she sees as she begins and goes about her day.

Create small attainable goals

Receiving your syllabi at the beginning of each school year can seem daunting with all the assignments listed and their tentative deadlines.

Creating small attainable goals can help break up what seems like a large task into smaller digestible pieces that can be completed over the course of the school year.

“Break it down so it’s not as big as it may appear in your mind,” said therapist Jamaal Simmons. “Sometimes your mind will play tricks on you and think ‘this is a huge project, a huge undertaking’ but when you break it down into small pieces, it’s not, it’s just doing piece by piece.”

Small attainable goals include writing out a to-do list and giving weekly due dates to knock out multi-step assignments. For example, writing 500 words a week for a 1,000 word paper due later in the month is a way to cut down a major task.

Self- awareness

Recognizing when you’ve become overwhelmed and what your triggers are can be key in getting a grip on your stress levels, according to Cortina and Jeremy Darden, licensed social workers and co-owners of Intentional Healing Space. Getting to know yourself and the resources available is crucial.

“We are much more resourced than we are aware of,” said Jeremy Darden. “It helps to know what our strengths are. It helps to know our gifts and abilities to cultivate esteem, confidence, self awareness and self agency.”

Exercise

Whether it be walking around the neighborhood, going to the park or making laps around the track, movement is the perfect way to relieve stress, according to Cortina Darden.

Exercising is a task you could do with others or by yourself, helping to promote community with friends and family.

Stress and high irritability, lack of physical energy and low motivation could all be improved by adding movement to the daily routine.

Take breaks

Stepping back from the things that induce stress is valuable, as it gives time to recenter and regroup.

Preventing burnout is the ultimate goal, but experiencing burnout often isn’t the first indication of stress.

According to Oluwatofunmi Oni, clinical psychologist and owner of a private practice called Adorn Therapy Services, burnout is further down in the process of mishandling stress,

“After passing all the warnings without responding to them —then you get to burnout,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do at this point except take a complete break, but hopefully one can catch it before it gets to that point.”

Taking mental health days allows space for regrouping and clarifying values. At times, college students get so caught up in their educational achievements that they lose track of themselves and what brought them to their school.

Oni states you should put the values for your wellbeing at the top of your life. If you cannot properly function then you won’t be able to complete assignments confidently.

Remy says it comes down to one question:

“Do you want to survive or do you want to thrive? Thriving looks like prioritizing, checking in with yourself and standing in all things that are important to you, you are the most important thing.”