Stress Management

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The Skills of Effective Stress Management

Exams, studying, money, bills, professors, competition, grades, friends, research, family, writing, internships…“Whoa, I’m feeling stressed!” University life can be very stressful. Yet, doing well in college isn't solely dependent on hard work, creativity or intelligence. A key factor in success is how well you cope with stress.

Stress isn’t all-bad, though. Much of the stress that we experience is helpful and stimulating. In fact, too little stress can also affect performance. The Yerkes-Dodson Law is an empirically sound principal that relates arousal to performance. Performance increases with cognitive arousal until an optimal point. Performance decreases as arousal becomes too high. Athletes, public speakers and high performing individuals often calm themselves down before performance to match their optimal level of arousal. You can too.

Stress causes problems when it is excessive .Excessive stress can cause or exacerbate health problems, emotional distress and poor interpersonal relationships. In addition, ineffective coping can result in overeating, substance abuse, withdrawing from others, depression, anxiety, etc.

Everyone has a bad day, but when stress chronically or significantly impacts your way of life, you may want to change your approach.

The good news is that stress management is a skill that can be learned, practiced and refined. The following outline reviews some of the important skills involved in effective stress management.

Managing stress combines knowing, doing, thinking and feeling.

Knowing the causes of stress,
Doing things to eliminate or reduce stress,
Managing stress-inducing thoughts, and
Paying attention to and reducing negative emotions.

Step 1: Identify what is stressful

Stressors are the external factors that can cause feelings of stress - these include deadlines, bills, life events, daily hassles, certain people, etc. Make a list of the things that cause you stress.

Step 2: Eliminate or reduce stressors

Review your list for stressors that you can eliminate. Maybe you are taking on too many projects or your time is being wasted on interruptions, e-mail, tv, mindless websurfing, etc… Maybe there are people, jobs, or situations that repeatedly cause you stress. Make a conscious decision to eliminate or reduce these stressors from your life. Many stressors cannot be eliminated. The next step is to find ways to cope with these stressors and the impact they have on you.

Step 3: Manage emotional distress

Relaxation skills such as meditation, tai chi, deep breathing, yoga, etc. can directly impact the stress that you feel.
In addition, regular exercise reliably improves mood and increase resiliency.
Healthy eating habits and regular sleep are buffers against stress.
Finally, friendship and social support helps to buffer you against the difficulties of life.
We all are unique; know yourself and what helps you cope.

Step 4: Manage stress inducing thoughts

Our physical and emotional health is intimately connected with our patterns of thinking about ourselves, the world and other people. In addition, stress is buffered by how we interpret events. Certain extreme patterns of thinking can predispose one towards depression or anxiety, and can increase subjective stress.

The top 8 negative thinking patterns or cognitive distortions:

Jumping to Conclusions is making a negative assumption even though there are no clear facts supporting the conclusion.
Personalizing is assuming external events are automatically being caused by or directed at you when in fact they are not.
Selective Attention is ignoring accomplishments and positive experiences and focusing only on negative events and perceived failures.
Catastrophizing is exaggerating the significance of an unpleasant event or events.
Predicting Doom is deciding that failure is imminent before the task is even begun.
Shoulds and Musts are punitive self-statements. They are based on the faulty belief that you are inherently bad or worthless. Therefore, the only way to motivate yourself or succeed in life is to beat and whip yourself into shape
Dualistic Thinking is perceiving situations and people, including yourself, as either all good or all bad with no room in between. If your performance is less than perfect, you feel you must be a failure.
Labeling is taking one or two instances of your own or other's behavior and over-generalizing by attaching an exaggerated label.

Once you have identified any negative thought patterns, you can start to replace them with more logical thinking, and feel more in control! Using rational thinking and positive self-statements to deal with external stress will help you feel more in control of your emotions, more positive about yourself, and better able to handle situations. You may still feel disappointed, but you won't feel devastated; annoyed but not enraged; nervous but not incapacitated with anxiety. You may or may not be able to change the external situation, but you can always change how much it affects you by regaining your perspective.

The top 6 antidotes to cognitive distortions:

Do this instead of (this):

Focus on the Present (Don't jump to conclusions);
Stay With the Facts (Beware of ‘catastrophizing’);
Be Realistic and Objective (Avoid personalizing);
Be Optimistic (Try not to predict doom);
Be kind to yourself (Don't "Should" on yourself and don’t ‘musterbate’);
Retain your perspective (Watch out for negative labels).

Step 5: Cope effectively with stressors

How do you cope with stress? Effective coping includes time management, getting support from others, taking care of your body with exercise and healthy eating, relaxing and taking time to rest, minimizing self-destructive thinking, clarifying your values, and developing a sense of life purpose and/or your spiritual self. You probably employ a variety of effective coping methods already. Make a list of your coping strategies. From these you can build on what is effective, reduce what is ineffective, and add to your repertoire of coping strategies.

What next?

You aren’t alone. UCSD has many resources to help you cope with stress. RIMAC, Mission Bay Aquatic Center, Student Health Services are all helpful resources. In addition, Psychological and Counseling Services provides confidential individual, couples and group counseling to all undergraduate, graduate and medical students at UCSD who have paid their student registration fees for the current quarter. Call (858) 534-3755 to set up an initial appointment.

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