It’s important to identify stress. In small chunks, it can be easy to dismiss – but it builds up and can have a real effect on you. Symptoms of stress can include things like finding it hard to sleep at night or sleeping really badly, being quick to snap, finding yourself feeling very overemotional or even feeling drained of emotion altogether. It can also be caused by anxiety and depression, which also need to be understood and looked after. Ignoring them could easily impact your life.
Anxiety and depression can be hard topics to approach, but they’re both very common – especially in uni. There’s a good chance you or your friends have experienced the pressure of having a lot of work or got down about whether this is even the right thing to do, or perhaps you’re still adjusting to life here and trying to deal with being away from home. Whatever it is, you’re definitely not alone – and there’s plenty of people who can help.
Firstly, there’s our very own student support services. The waiting list can be quite long, but from professional counsellors to people who can just listen, there are a lot of people to talk to. They’re also good for any concerns you have, whether internal or external, that effect your uni work, and equally as helpful with financial worries. You never realise how many options are available to you until you seek them out!
If you’re looking for some more in depth help, or the university’s counselling team are fully booked, there are some external sources to help you, too. I can personally recommended BeMe, and their Stress Less programme. It’s a 4 week long programme that looks at different aspects of stress, from how to identify the physical symptoms, to action plans on sorting the stresses in your life out, to sleep and panic attacks, and as long as you put each thing you learn into action you will see results on your wellbeing. But if this seems a little too mechanical to you, there are always the one to one counselling options, which offer a space for you to talk about what is effecting you and they can work you through the situation. And all of these things can be done in person or over the phone, so they don’t have to take too much time out of your day.
But it doesn’t all have to be counselling sessions and people you don’t know. There are a lot of creative outlets going around now that encourage mindfulness, which allows us to take our minds away from the worries and instead bring us to a soft focused state. You’ve probably seen a colouring book or two knocking around, but even things like crochet or baking can promote the same effects. And if you’re not a very artsy time, exercise is a great way to release endorphins and get the stress levels down – even something like a power walk for 20 minutes can help this.
You are not alone. If you’re feeling stressed, whether it’s a little bit or it’s having a huge impact on your life, the most important thing is to reach out to your friends. We feel this way because there is so much for us to be dealing with in our modern lives, and it can all build up in our own personal bubbles to the point it feels like you could implode – so it’s so important to talk to someone. Even speaking it out loud could make you realise the problems are more manageable than you originally thought, and getting another point of view will have you seeing it from a different angle. And just remember – whatever’s happening in your life now, is most likely going to be different in a week, a month, or even a year… It’s not going to be the same way forever. You can definitely get through this!