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Everyday Stress
Our daily lives can also cause a decent amount of stress. Whether it be pressure from home, drama between friends, or uncertainty about the future. The following are ways of managing this type of stress:
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Staying Active
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Continuing With Hobbies
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Using Your Phone Productively
Staying Active
When your parents tell you to go on a walk to relieve your stress, it can often be more irritating than helpful. However, some studies show that increased exercise is a great way to relieve stress. You don’t have to start super big to do this, simple breathing techniques and small exercises are a good step to take to start relieving you of your stress. According to research from Harvard, almost any type of exercise is effective, or you could try some of the things below.
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Breathing exercises
Also, see our resources page to find out more about mindfulness apps that can help you do breathing exercises.
Box Breathing, a breathing exercise outlined in the video below, is one of many great exercises to help you stay grounded and relieve some stress.
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Progressive Muscle Relaxation
This has been proven to be incredibly effective not only for relieving stress but also as a way to get more familiar and take care of your body. It essentially involves tensing and releasing different muscles in a particular order while you try to relax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ9kTYOwtks
The video above guides you through the whole process! Or if you prefer to do it yourself, check out these steps outlined in this link.
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Team and Individual Sports
Joining a club or a sports team at school is a great way to stay active. It can always be fun to exercise with friends, and it can become a relaxing social and physical activity. Whether it’s getting together with a few friends to go on a weekly walk or run, or if you’re part of a huge rowing program, this is another great option for using activity to relieve stress.
Build Your Hobbies!
Hobbies
Doing small activities that you enjoy will help you concentrate, and studies suggest that they can help relax the brain by focusing on what you can control and love to do.
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Arts and crafts
Doing the activities that you love and find exciting are often a great way to relieve stress and help you focus on what you enjoy and can control. Some of these hobbies are from the arts and crafts and can help you distract yourself from feeling overwhelmed; through expressing yourself through a creative outlet. A few studies have shown that colouring in or drawing using the imagination can elevate your feeling/mood, and could relieve anxiety felt from workload and time (management). The other positives of this is that you don’t have to be gifted or a professional artist to do these activities such as colouring in or painting, as an artwork can be purely a representation of how one is feeling or a colouring of some sort. As it is a calm and safe activity, it calms the mood and can be a great mindfulness activity. A specific example of a hobby is creating a ‘mandala’. These are circles with patterns and symbols within and can be easily created with just a pen, where many have recommended that it can be used as a therapeutic tool, for anyone.
(Also see our exam stress page for strategies on how to manage stress around lots of tasks!)
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Reading
Many highschool students stop reading during this stressful period, however it is proven to help with relaxation by focusing your mind away from a stressful situation. If you are struggling to start reading again, start by reading the types books you did when you were young (Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, etc.) The focus here is to relax and unwind, so there is no need to read stuff that is really serious or takes a lot of time to understand.
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Nature
Poets and artists have spoken about the power and relaxation of nature for centuries. However, scientists now too agree on nature’s power to relax the body and mind. Removing yourself from the busy environment of day-to-day life can help you relieve stress. Some ways to do this are to go on a walk, hike, or bike on a nice trail. Picnics or just relaxing on the beach are also great ways to get fresh air and slow everything down for a minute.
Using Your Phone Productively
Most research has not been able to uncover a direct link between phone/social media use and mental health problems. That being said, many studies have found a correlation between them, without an explanation as to why. Research tends to agree that there is a direct relationship between phone use and lack of sleep and leans towards a relationship between social media and negative self-image.
It’s easy to say you’re going to reduce your screen time, but that is often easier said than done. So, the following are some tips/apps to use your phone for good and help you reduce your stress.
Reduce Your Screen Time with the Forest App
This application is one of my all-time favorites. It can be used for a variety of different settings, but I often use it to motivate myself to complete homework. When you leave the app open, it will grow trees for you! If you get distracted though, your tree will die. :(
Other similar and also effective apps are Study Bunny, Flora, and Plantie!
Increase Your Shut-Eye with the Sleeptown app!
Sleep is one of the best ways to manage your stress. Your body and mind need to sleep in order to process all of the information you receive constantly throughout the day. Phones can often get in the way of that! Research suggests that the blue light coming from your phone and computer can prevent a quality night’s sleep.
The Sleeptown app functions very similarly to the forest app in that while you sleep, the app builds a house, shop, or small building that can go into a small, very cute town. If you leave the app during the time your building will fall! This app is encouraging and allows you to connect to others and grow large monuments together.
Reach out and talk to other people who are experiencing the same as you.
The phrase, “misery loves company” often has a negative connotation; however, talking to those who are going through the same thing as you can be very beneficial in the case of mental health and stress!