Just in time for midterm season, Boston University Student Health Services helped students shatter stress in a discussion with the Wellness and Health Education Department on Tuesday, March 8. The event was part of BU Wellness’ “Good to Know” campaign, which seeks to educate students about health-related issues.
Wellness Coordinator Michelle George explained how to avoid the main causes of stress and how to cope with stress when it does affect you.
“It’s something that everyone deals with in one way or another,” said George. “A lot of things that people experience … aren’t necessarily curable, so we have to learn techniques to prevent them from the get-go.”
She differentiated between acute stress, which is more short term, and chronic stress, which is what most stressed-out college students describe.
The best way to remain calm in a potentially-stressful situation, George said, is to reframe it in a larger context and think of how negative aspects of the situation can be turned into positive ones. She also taught visualization and breathing exercises that help regulate the physiological and mental response our bodies have to stressful situations.
“Our automatic stress response doesn’t fix the problems,” said George. “If stress management was easy, no one would ever be stressed. It’s something you need to practice and work on. It’s about learning how your body reacts to stress so you can lean techniques that work for you”
George said the most important things you can do in your daily schedule to ensure a minimal amount of stress are to eat healthy, get at least eight hours of “down time” a night, and set aside time to do things you enjoy.
“If you engulf yourself in your stressful life and never get out of it, you can’t cope with it,” said George.
Some of the symptoms of stress that George listed were loss of emotional control, loss of focus, forgetfulness, chest pains, back pains, weakened immune and digestion systems, and irregular eating and sleeping patterns. What is assumed by many to be “normal” college student behavior might actually be the culprit of unnecessary stress.
“What happens is you don’t necessarily know you’re stressed until you start responding to these things,” said George. “People can experience a lot of mental health issues related to stress.”
To find out more, visit the BU Wellness blog at blogs.bu.edu/wellness. Hear Michelle George on WTBU’s Wellness Segment every-other Wednesday from 10:30 to 11 a.m. Learn more about avoiding and coping with stress in George’s Stress Management class, which is scheduled for Tuesdays noon to 1:30 p.m. at FitRec for the fall 2011 semester.
The word “Stress” actually relates to wear and tear as when the rubber meets the road on a tire or the brake pads pressing up against the rotor in the wheel. The term as it applies to living organisms was first introduced by Hans Seyle in the 1930’s who defined it as the consequence of the failure of an organism (human or animal) to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined. Thus stress symptoms are the manifestation of a chronic state of responses to stress triggers that are actually benign. Even a thought can set off the same response mechanism that would be in play while standing in front of a hungry lion. Hence, Seyle’s definition still reaches to the heart of stress management; the idea of the response being inappropriate and engaging in a process of altering ones misperception of pending disaster or imminent danger.