Let's face it, while college has many amazing opportunities, and memorable experiences being in a new city and exploring with new friends, we will often find ourselves experiencing late night fatigue, stress and anxiety. THIS IS COMPLETELY NORMAL!! Many people, including myself, think that being overly stressed is uncommon; no one can relate to me or understands what I'm going through; I feel like I'm the only one who feels this way.
Well, that's where you're wrong!! Feeling stressed in today's society is pretty much inevitable. For a freshman in college, stress is among the norm: we are adjusting to living in a new environment, hundreds even thousands of miles away from home and what is familiar, the different workload and teaching styles of various teachers, midterms and registering for classes. That's enough to give someone a major headache, am I right??
Stress is a normal, automatic response also called the "fight or flight response" (applying psychology, thanks LoPresto!!), in which our body becomes alert and immediately responds when we sense we are being threatened by something or someone. Physically our heart rate and blood pressure increases, we might find it difficult to breathe as our diaphragm tightens, sweaty hands and a paranoid look in our eyes.
In short, stress is defined as "the body's way of responding to any kind of demand or threat". When you repeatedly experience stress, it can lead to serious health problems and concerns, such as fatigue, and a weaker immune system, making one more prone or susceptible to getting sick. Our flight or flight response is the sympathetic nervous system reacting to a stressful event. We are constantly sizing up every situation that confronts us in life, deciding whether something is a threat and how we are going to respond to that situation.
Stress and anxiety is all too common for me, and if you know me, you'll know that I do this all too often. I'm a perfectionist at heart, in almost every aspect of my life, from the cleanliness of my bedroom (now college dorm room), to the outfits that I wear, to my hair and makeup, but especially when it comes to academics and my grades and being organized. The way my mind is wired, everything has to be planned out in advance, WAY in advance, and sometimes that's a good thing, but when it consumes my social life and relationships with friends and loved ones, then it becomes obsessive compulsive.
When high school rolled around, I was full of jitters and excitement for high school to come, and the exciting journey ahead of me. I couldn't wait to meet new friends, and start on a clean slate with a lot more freedom and independence than I had experienced in middle school. I was quickly hit with the reality of a much larger workload, and began to experience severe anxiety. It slowly progressed. I would isolate myself and avoid social events because I was too stressed out or "didn't have time" to go out with friends and be engaged in social situations on the weekends. Unfortunately, my anxiety developed into extended periods of sadness: ones that didn't just last for a few hours or a day, but for several days, sometimes weeks. I would wake up everyday stressed and upset, and end the day feeling the same.
I struggled constantly to drag myself out of bed and function in school. Although my grades didn't suffer, my relationships with my friends and family, who mean the world to me, began to crumble at the seams. I felt muted and alone, and knew if I kept up this pattern of behavior, I would continue to wallow in my stress, and be stuck in an endless circle of anxiety, stress, sadness and hopelessness. The same thing happened when I arrived at Loyola: I found myself, once again, growing increasingly anxious and uneasy.
I became increasingly worried about myself, unsure why I was feeling the way I was, especially because during the day I was having fun and making memories with my messina group and my amazing evergreen Anna. But that's when I decided to do something about it, and regain control of my life. For the past few weeks I haven't been myself; I've been experiencing severe panic attacks, and have become increasingly quiet in classes and around friends, especially with my messina group during class and enrichment hour, distancing and isolating myself from the ones who love me. This past weekend, I went home, and it gave me time to reflect on everything I was feeling.
What are my stressors? What kinds of emotions do I experience when I'm stressed? What types of things should I do when I get stressed? Go for a walk? Talk with friends? Take a break from my homework, or go to the gym? All of this was running through my head. Everyone endures hardships, and they may be disheartening, discouraging ordeals that often times we struggle to pick ourselves up when we fall down. I would be lying if I didn't tell you that there were days when I fell just a little too hard, feeling hopeless and fighting to mend the pieces.
Creating this blog and reaching out for support at college was how I chose to reclaim my life. The coordination and courage isn't easy, since I had become accustomed to bottling up my stress and emotions, not wanting to burden others with my problems, thinking "I could handle this on my own, I'm fine".
I'm fine... I'm fine. Those were the words I would respond with whenever anyone would ask me how I was doing, or if anything was wrong. "Yeah, I'M FINE." But recently, I was tired of being "just fine", I deserved to be more than "fine", and everyone deserves that. If I've learned anything my 2 months here at Loyola it's that in order to surmount my treacherous setbacks and kick stress in the butt, I have to take the first step and ask for help, which may seem insignificant at first, but internally and emotionally, it makes a huge difference.
I was inspired to write this blog post during enrichment hour, when my evergreen mentor Anna, gave a presentation on stress and anxiety. Hesitant, I was extremely shy and not my usual bubbly, outgoing self, not knowing if anyone else in the room would be going through similar experiences as I was feeling. To my surprise, I was wrong; EVERYONE could relate. Anna talked about common stressors, the biggest being college transitional life, in which we had to adjust to living independently, without the easy access to our parents as resources. By the end of the session, I became more at ease and eager to participate in conversation, and later that day, thanked her for giving a presentation that we could all relate to, especially at a really stressful, low point in my life.
NOW TO THE GOOD PART: How on earth do we kick stress in the ass?!?!?! While I'm no expert on all things stress and anxiety emotional support, let me try to shed some light on personal experiences and strategies that have helped me, through the eyes of a college student.
1. Go for a walk or run: This is one of my favorite stress relievers, and yes it's sometimes hard to find the internal motivation for such an endeavor, but I promise if you take even 30 minutes to go for a nature walk or run, it will make all the difference. Part of what makes this effective is the mentality that "yeah I know I don't want to do this, but I have to force myself to do things that I may not 'want' to do as it will benefit my stress levels in the long run". Physically activity is one of the most effective forms of stress relief, as it produces endorphins which are chemical messengers that act as natural painkillers for the brain, and also improves the ability to sleep. In general, when your body feels better, in turn your mind feels better as a result. Nothing beats the feeling than after a 2-3 mile run, the warmth of my muscles, and the exhaustion but satisfaction I feel after accomplishing something I set my mind to.
2. Watch Tv or a Movie: If you ever find yourself feeling stressed while doing school work, another way to relieve stress (while this may not be effective for everyone, it has been for me) is distracting your mind with some mindless television or movies. Better yet, do this with friends, because nothing relieves my stress more than being surrounded by my closest friends who never fail to make me laugh or put a well needed smile on my face. During stressful times, it's important to never be alone because the longer you're allow and wallow in your distress and sadness, the longer those stressful periods will last.
3. Reach out to friends: Going off of what I mentioned before, friends are an invaluable resource for all things communication. Whenever I feel myself getting anxious and uneasy, I know I have a solid foundational base of friends who I know I could reach out to for anything at anytime, and reciprocate that in return. During my first weekend of school here at Loyola, before I became close with my friends and messina group, my evergreen proved to be such an amazing resource for support. Anna knew exactly what to say, giving me valuable pieces of advice, coming from someone who had just gone through freshman year the previous year. She showed me the various programs and resources that Loyola has to offer, and I seized the opportunity. This brings me to to my next point:
4. Join clubs and activities: Whether you're in college, high school, middle school, etc there are so many opportunities for activities and service organizations. Since being at Loyola, I've actively participated in Relay for Life, as this was a huge part of my life back home in NJ and my senior year running the event with 3 of my best friends. In addition, I'm currently training to become a Loyola tour guide (almost done!!), and am so excited to apply to become an evergreen, which is a program of upperclassmen mentors, who act as valuable resources to incoming freshman and participate in the first year messina program. Since we had a similar program at Ramsey High School, in which I was an active participant and later coordinator of the leadership program, I hope I can get the position so I can do the kind of work that Anna and so many other amazing evergreen leaders do to help first year students assimilate and adjust to college life and make the transition as successful and smooth as possible.
5. Write: This is my last tidbit of advice, and to be honest, you may not agree with me, but give it a try. It's almost therapeutic and a great way to take you mind off the stress and fast pace life of college to set aside even just 30 minutes to write. Writing has been that safe outlet for me, where I can reflect on everything I'm feeling and have experienced during the day, and simply write it all down. It's a way to get all that negative and unwanted energy out of your system, rather than keep it bottled up inside and simply loom in your mind. You can do this with coloring too, yes adult coloring books are actually fun!!! They are a means of personal expression, and forces you to focus on one thing at a time, choosing the perfect color and coloring in one area at a time, which will help develop a lifestyle mindset. In life you can't look at tasks and assignment as a whole (I'm guilty of this), but rather, jot down a list of assignments that need to get done, and take each subject one at a time. Once you're done with one subject's homework, cross it off your list and move on to the next assignment. By forcing your mind to focus on one thing at a time (since it's scientifically and psychologically proven that humans CANNOT multitask well!!), you are less likely to experience stress than if you look at all 5 subjects and their assignments all at once.
Hopefully there's something for everyone to take out of this post. College is stressful, and that's the truth, but it's important to understand and realize that it's a normal aspect of the transition process. When the going gets tough, use it as fuel to get through that bad day, because good days are coming. Everyone's going to have a bad day, but know it's only temporary if you choose not to let it affect you. The more you wallow in your sorrows, the longer and more painful your experience will be. Be active and force yourself to do more productive things, because life will go on if you take an hour or more each day for self pleasure and enjoyment if you don't do that one homework assignment. If there's one thing I remember from my evergreen Anna is that the most important thing is to take care of yourself. Whenever you feel yourself getting anxious or worked up, put down the work and take some time to relax, watch tv or talk to some friends, because the worst thing you can do is overwork yourself. My mom sent me this quote today via text message, wishing me a good day at school, and I thought this was perfect timing, with the theme of this week's blog post, and I really needed the small pick me up, which will go a long way. Stay positive, because happiness is around the corner, you just have to give it time!
xoxo kaitlyn zwerling
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