stress management

      Controlling stress is one of my weaknesses. When stressful situation happens, I don’t know what do to, don’t speak, and cry all day. My freshman year in college is remembered as a stressful life to me. College life is so different with high school life. Although college life is busy, I have to manage time and do everything by myself. Most of all, I have to control my reaction. When I was depressed and sad in high school, I could talk with my parents and advisor. However, I can’t do that in college. I realize that as a college student, I have to control myself. Although it is still difficult to me, I am trying my best. So, stress management will be a practical and valuable learning to me. Through this assignment, I want to learn how to manage stress.




      Every people get stress. However, stress management involves controlling their reaction to stressful situations. That means, we can control our stresses. If we change our reactions to that situation, then we minimize their effects and reduce the stresses. To minimize stress, we need to understand the causes of our stresses, learn how to relax, and organize our surroundings and responsibilities. Among some of stress reduction strategies, I chose stress diagram (cause), 10-Minute vacation (relax), and organization (organize).

     Stress diagram can help me prioritize the causes for my stress and help me identify the issues I need to address first. First, I wrote down the list of the sources of stress that I am currently experiencing. My current stresses are relationship, grade, father’s health, future career, and course registration. Then, I divided the pie chart into the number of sections that corresponds to the number of stresses. Each section of the pie represents the relative amount of stress it is in my life. I labeled each section with the source of stress. Through the stress diagram, I could realize the priority of the causes for my stress. Now, I can understand the causes of my stress clearly.

     The 10-minute vacation helps me get away from the work I am doing for specific amount of time. Initially, I thought 10-minute is too long time. However, it is not a long time, but it is enough to help get me reenergized. I visited the “vacation spots.” Among them, I like youtube.com and pinkisthenewblog.com. The websites are good to relax for 10-minutes. Through this strategy, I learned how to use break time wisely.

   
     Finally, I organized my surroundings and responsibilities. On the chart of page 271, I identified the stress reducers I implement in the categories.


     Actually, I face stressful situations every day. However, the important thing is how to control the stresses. It is absolutely important to learn the reaction to the stress in my life. Although sometimes I have stresses that are more severe than others, knowing how to handle the stress in my life can help me to control my responsibilities efficiently.