STRESS!!!!!!

This pretty much explains college life…

Stress is a part of life. Things come at us that we’re not expecting, (maybe we were expecting it...), and it can leave us feeling stressed and utterly exhausted and drained. During midterms and finals time we can see a lot of memes [a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users for those older folk who might not know what a meme is ;o) ]  that expresses students stress about school and life in general.

We all experience stress and while stress is, well, stressful, it can actually benefit us in the long run. Yeah, we might not like the stress, but stress is actually an essential part of our lives.

Exercise is (so I’ve been told) a good thing. You go to the gym, or workout at home, and you exercise. When exercising you strengthen your muscles by either walking, running, lifting weights, or other exercise types of things. (personally, I exercise my mind by reading…) When you work out, you break down your muscles and build them up again which causes you to become stronger. Stress does the same thing. When something stressful comes along, it’s like breaking down our muscle. When we deal with the stressful situation, we build that muscle back up. Then, when another stressful situation comes along, our “stress muscle” is stronger and will keep getting stronger as we deal with stress that comes our way.

Stress or stressful situations can often bring people together. In families, a lot of stressful situations can come your way. Money, job, housing, relatives, kids, someone not rinsing off their dishes before putting them in the already full sink, these all can bring stress. When a major stressful situation hits your family, job loss or perhaps the death of a loved one, it brings some major stress. But in those times, your family can become closer than it was before. Yes, this isn’t the situation for everyone, sometimes events like these drive people and families apart. It’s incredibly heartbreaking when it does, but it happens. But in these same situations, families can also become much closer because they come together to figure out how to solve the problem.

Stressful situations can also change how you look at things. It can make the little stress inducers in your life, like the kids arguing over a t.v show or a homework assignment that due, it makes it seem like not so big of a deal.

Which leads me into thoughts. Most of the time what we think is how we feel. Try an experiment with me, say out loud “I am so stressed right now” three times with feeling. Did you do it? If you did, you probably feel a little more stressed right now. What we think leads to how we actually feel. Now say out loud, “I am calm and relaxed” three times. If you did it, you probably feel a little better.

What is important to remember is that you are in control of how you respond to a situation.

Yes, when something bad happens, or even many bad things happen, we want to feel a little justification for being angry at that situation. You had a bad day at work, you come home and you find that the kids tied up their babysitter and colored on every single wall, your sister calls and wants to know if you’ll babysit her 6 kids for the night, and you haven’t even thought about what to have about dinner yet. Maybe it’s that situation (though a tad out there) or maybe it’s something else smaller or bigger. We feel justified to be angry or stressed with our situation, but if we harbor those negative emotions, it hurts not only ourselves but the people around us.

You probably have noticed in your own families that if one person in the family isn’t happy, those negative feelings spread to other people in the family like wildfire. Older sister failed a test, she lashes out at a younger sibling who wants their attention, that younger sibling takes it out on mom by yelling they don’t want a stupid casserole for dinner and mom takes it out on dad when he gets home by complaining about the leaky faucet, that until that point wasn’t bothering her until she was yelled at by her own child.

And it goes on and on and on and on until just one person decides to put it to a stop, by instead of lashing out with anger, they reach out in love. Anyone of the people in the scenario could have put a stop to the negative emotions and prevented it from spreading. Mom could have taken a breath and asked her younger child why he didn’t want a casserole and asked if something was the matter. The younger sibling could have asked mom for help with dealing with the older sister and what they could do to make her feel better. The older sibling could have taken a breath and calmly told her annoying younger sibling that she didn’t want to play but they could later if they leave her alone for a while. Any number of different responses could have prevented the stress and the negative emotions from spreading to other people.

Feeling justified because bad things happen to us never solves any problems and instead creates more for ourselves. Now I’m not saying that with every bad thing that happens that we need to be super cheerful and happy, and, well, fake, about it. ‘Oh! I broke my arm and can see the bone? That’s great! Oh, I lost my job? Fantastic! My daughter colored on the walls and broke my extremely valuable vase? Amazing! Today is the best day ever and no matter what else happens will just make it even better! Wait, the dryer exploded? . . . Wow! I can’t believe my day got even better!’ Yeah, if you were able to read that without even a hint of sarcasm, you can see how unrealistic that can be, not to mention annoying. But that doesn’t mean we should be super negative either. There is a middle ground and is honestly much healthier.

Acknowledge that something bad happened. Then look for a way to turn it around into something less gloomy. ‘I lost my job. . . but now I can look for something that I really would enjoy.’ ‘My house is gone. . . at least now I can find a house with three bathrooms.’ By trying to find a little bit of positivity in a bad situation, we can begin to feel a little better and then can begin to look for resources and solutions to solve the problem. No, it’s not easy, but it is worth it in the end.

One last thing before I end. Sometimes we create our own stress. Stressed about a test that you didn’t study for? Have a paper due in an hour that you haven’t started but was told about weeks before? Stressed that the bay won’t stop crying but won’t accept help from the people around you? Do you see where I’m going with this? Sometimes the stress we have, we bring on ourselves. Not all of it, but there are some that could probably be prevented.

Life is supposed to have its ups and downs. Life isn’t supposed to be easy. If life was easy and only good things happened to us, it would be extremely boring. Stress helps us to become better at dealing with problems and with other stress that will come our way. But if we allow ourselves to only think about the stress we’re under, we won’t grow. Well, we’ll probably grow more stressed, but we won’t grow as people. That why we should count our blessings, not our problems.

Stress isn’t fun, but it is beneficial to us.