How to Deal with Stress

What is going on with me?

I have known all of you in this class for at least four years and so I feel that it would be only fair to give you this warning! If you see me behaving this way and I have a certain look in my eyes --- don't worry! I am not about attack you and intimidate you with my height, I might burst into tears and need a shoulder to lean on but otherwise if you do find yourself in that awkward predicament I have nothing against you, I'm just most probably stressed!

The stressors that I deal with are mainly due to environmental circumstances, behaviours and cognitive activities. All that means is we live in a fast pace society, that involves strict deadlines, managing our time effectively so that we will be able to hand in our assignments on time. This fast pace sensation creates a certain degree of stress on most tasks that are due.

In order for me to restore balance in my life, I need structure! I will arrange Diagrammatic representations in the form of charts and tick lists which record my daily schedules. At the moment the walls in my room are occupied by my whiteboard that documents my tick lists and on the opposite wall I have my blue pin - up board that allows me to pin up all my weekly and monthly events throughout the year; such as a calendar, cycle test roster and my personal activity chart that records all the activities that I have for the month. I will refer to these boards throughout my day and complete the tasks at hand!

This is just my way of dealing with stress. If I am unable to my parents fear that if stress takes over my life I may "burn out" - exhausted myself. Managing my time and work is important to me as it allows me to lead a healthy lifestyle, if I am unable to conform to this structure unfortunately I fear that my healthy lifestyle cycle will break and may "burn out"

On the one hand, to a certain degree stress is healthy and displays positive effects on a person, this is termed as Eustress. Two scientists have uncovered a new benefit to positive stress. They say that short periods of positive stress can actually have a benefit for our immune system. As the chemicals such as endorphins, serotonin and dopamine makes one feel relaxed. Further studies indicated that the advantage of Eustress includes the ability to perform problem solving which forms a link to many scientific discoveries; technological advances and creative designs. At moments when I experience Eustress my energy and excitement levels increase.

Whereas distress is the term coined for negative stresses. Distress is formed when an overload of adrenaline is produced. To put it simply, Rajni Sharma a motivational speaker on stress describes stress to be like a guitar string... if you have the right amount of tension you can play beautiful music, but if the strings are too tight they can snap.

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