Tests, grades, group activities, texts to read. These are some of the most stressful things in a student’s semester, even more for those who work and have to reconcile study and work times. Sometimes it feels like 24 hours aren’t enough to do everything, so the anxiety and fear of failure grows inside us.
This kind of anxiety, according to what the psychiatrist Ana Beatriz Barbosa says in her book “Anxious minds: our fear and anxiety of everyday”, is caused by the social expectations which we enter in contact very early in our lives. This way, we are afraid of not achieving our so dreamed success, measured by our financial situation and social status. After a short period of time, this fear can lead us to a stressful reaction at the first insignificant mistake.
Feeling stressed out is a common thing, but excessive stress can cause many health problems and hinder our performance during the semester. Knowing about this, we decided to bring up some tips of how to decrease our anxiety this semester. To base our tips, we did a research with 92 students of different courses and ages, mainly from 18 to 25 years, about the issue.
- Organize your studying
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Organization is everything when we’re talking about not to get stressed out with your studying schedule. When you have a lot of tasks to do, putting them on a priority list helps you deal with the feeling that you won’t be able to deal with everything.
With this list done, you can make a plan by distributing the assignments on the days and times to feel more control over then. In order to help you, use a planner or an appointment book to write down everything. If you’re a person more connected to the digital world, you can do this organization using the calendar of your cellphone or apps like Trello and Evernote.
- Don’t wait until the last minute
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Oh, procrastinating, a path with no return! When we have a difficult or demanding task, we tend to let it to do in the last minute left. But, it is the worst choice you could ever do, in reason of the pressure caused by the near deadline that will make you do things in a hurry, and then the work will probably be ill-done.
Also, you will go through unnecessary trouble, demanding a lot of yourself and not getting pleased with the results, something that can both make you feel bad about yourself and hinder the progress of other tasks.
Try to do things as soon as possible and maintain a good rhythm of study, as so to not accumulate tasks in the end of the semester, the most stressing part of it, according to 50% of our interviewed.
- Try to relax when it’s possible
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Doing things that you like when you have free time is essential to relieve the stress of academic activities. Watching a movie, reading a book, listening to some music, playing instruments or going out with your friends were some of the ideas that the interviewers mentioned when asked about what practices that help them to relieve stress.
Playing a sport is also recommended. According to doctor Barbosa “exercising is a important part of the program of anxiety and stress reduction . The discharge of physical and emotional tension that accompanies a vigorous exercise session directly and immediately reduces anxiety and stress.”
But, we know that not everyone that likes exercising, so try to find your own way to relax and go for it, not feeling guilty about it. You need to remember that you’re doing this to maintain your mental health.
- Take care of your feeding
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It can sound like madness, but there are some foods that can make us feel more or less anxious. According to Ana Beatriz Barbosa, it’s related to biochemical properties that can make them calming or stimulating.
Foods with a lot of sugar can be malefic for the anxiety, because they cause a peak of blood glucose and make you feel euphoric, inducting an anxiety crisis. Sadly, the coffee is also on this list, it wakes us up, but also can make us very anxious. “Caffeine (…) triggers anxiety and even panic symptoms, as it directly excites various stimulation mechanisms in the body. It raises the level of norepinephrine in the brain, a neurotransmitter that increases liveliness.” says the doctor, after saying that it stimulates the hormone cortisol, that intensifies the feeling of nervousness and agitation.
This kind of food don’t need to be cut of your feeding, but if you can lower the fees of your consumption would be helpful.
- Don’t overload yourself
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Last but not least, don’t overload yourself. When in college, as students we sometimes catch so many extra things to accomplish the complementary hours. According to the doctor it’s related to the crazy rhythm that we live in the contemporaneity, with all its competitiveness, haste and high demands.
However, we need to think rationally about what we are really capable to do or not. Knowing your limits is essential and turns life much more easy.
An anxious generation
In our research, when we asked if the interviewer has any psychological disorder, 58,7% answered negatively, 33,7% positively and 7,6% prefered not to answer. This rate reflects a reality in which people are becoming stressed earlier.
The fear of unemployment and failure is making people put more pressure to be perfect on themselves. Also the studying system is making children very stressed about good results, making they grow up competitive. Besides of it, the rate of people that seek treatment is lower, taking our research like a representation of the big picture, only 26,4% of the interviewers have psychological support.
The medical support is very important for people that struggle with anxiety or any other psychological problems, because these people are empowered to give the best treatments and solutions so that suffering is lessened.
So, our tips can be very useful, but if you are struggling too much with stress and anxiety, you should search psychological assistance.
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The article above was edited by Gabriela Sartorato.
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