collegecandy.com: Anxiety has become very common among students nowadays. All the pressure that school comes and the demands of life have taken a toll plus with added things that students these days have to deal with like the forces of social media, the new educational expectations by the country it all has become too much. Anxiety is the top presenting mental illness on students, especially college students. It can be challenging to handle all, here are 5 useful tips on how to manage anxiety while in school. Remember it does get better.
16 comments:
None of these tips for effective ways to handle anxiety are new news to me. However, I think that finding time to do meditation over the piles of work that never ends is a different beast. I don’t want a class on time management, I want there to be a discussion about the amount of hours I spend learning while working on a production versus doing homework for academic centered classes. The fact that I’ve almost spent 200 hours on just Cabaret this semester is really preposterous. I’m also fully aware that this rant is not relevant to this article but I’m not really sure what else to say about the article. It’s pretty right in a lot of ways. I think the distract yourself section could be reworded to be “plan for some down time.” You’re your most productive when you feel relaxed and planning downtime can make you feel more relaxed and less anxious about the work.
While the information in this article is not necessarily novel, it does serve as a reminder to check in with myself and my priorities. I have made a serious effort this semester to achieve balance in all aspects of my life: academic, creative, social, and personal. I think I’m finally starting to understand how much the idea of a “happy medium” is versus an “all or nothing.” Finding stopping points for design projects was really difficult last semester because I felt like I could never be done. This semester, I have been able to evaluate the time I have spent, and whether my effort is sufficient. This article also mentions “meditation,” which I believe for most people with a busy schedule can seem impractical. I usually go to yoga classes twice a week, but meditation does not have to be that traditional. I have found activities like drinking tea and folding laundry to be rehabilitating to my mental wellness.
The crazy amount of people who experience anxiety in college today is really quite staggering. I am sure it is higher than it has been in the past, and it really is a major issue that needs to be continually addressed. It seems like it has almost become the norm to have anxiety while you are in school. Like it is just a part of it. And I really feel like that needs to change. I can not think of any logical reason why anxiety would have to be a part of one’s education when it is such a huge hindererance for it. This article is nice and has good tips, but this is still dealing with the symptoms and not the cause. I do not fully know what it is or how to go about changing it, but there has to be some way to go about it. I feel like the percentage of people who have actual jobs and experience the same levels of anxiety as those people in school is way less, so shouldn’t there be a way to teach students and prepare them for the real world in a way that doesn’t produce anxiety in their lives?
Anxiety is apart of college culture these days. I know talking to my parents and cousins/friends this is something that has manifested in certain universities in a relatively new time period. CMU on the other hand in comparison to other school I find breeds this stress in bunches and talking to my brothers going to competitive high schools is breeding it at younger and younger ages. As Cooper said I don’t think that this should be the norm it’s not something that should just be excepted in todays day and age. This article is great and contains what I’d deem as the basics for what a student needs in the current working environment in college if they want to be serious about their studies. But again that being said it shouldn’t have to be there needs to be a dialogue and a conversation about why this is an issue and schools need to work with students about the problem. And as Ella said that doesn’t mean making a class on time management or organization but looking at what students are doing and accurately adjusting work loads for that.
I know someone who does each of these things to cope with stress and anxiety, so none of these are particularly innovative or new to me. I went to therapy for almost a decade, and it helped me work through a lot of my stress. It also gave me the tools to help myself now that I’m in college and do not go anymore. One of the tools I use now is distracting myself, which usually comes in the form of sleeping, changing the work I’m doing for a few hours, or taking time to watch videos online instead of doing work at all. They all help me reset myself after being in stressful environments for too long. My best friend from home writes novels to help her release all her pent up anxiety onto a page. My brother goes to hit baseballs and work out at the gym. Everyone has a different method that works for them, and hopefully everyone discovers what works best and are willing to try other methods to help themselves cope with whatever mental situation they are in.
) While I have to agree with other people who have commented on this post in the fact that the ideas of meditation, therapy, distraction, exercise, or writing are necessarily new, I do think it is a helpful reminder that even as busy as we are as college students, there are small and simple things that can be done to mitigate anxiety. Personally, out of these that are listed, I find myself writing a lot to try to deal with any of the anxieties that I have experienced while in college. Anxiety is something that is so prevalent on our campus, and other campuses around the country, that at times it almost feels like if you aren’t anxious or stressed out, you aren’t doing college the right way, and that’s just completely false. Also, in addition to these “tips and tricks” to mitigate anxiety, it should also be noted that anxiety is also a clinically recognized disorder, so for some people, you can’t just write or meditate or exercise away all anxieties and it can take more work, but these are generally good practices for overall wellbeing on a college campus.
I had mixed feelings about this article. While the suggestions they had were not particularly revolutionary or anything I hadn’t heard about, I was struck by their inclusion of therapy. I think, even though a lot of people nowadays struggle with anxiety, it is encouraging to me how much more open people are about mental health. Usually, when I read articles on how to handle anxiety, therapy is rarely mentioned. Therapy is slowly becoming more mainstream and acceptable; people tend to no longer have shame about going, which I think is a really positive step. There is a lot more work to be done; mental health is not maintained simply by taking a walk or writing something down, but just talking about the subject will be really beneficial and let people know that they are not alone. I really appreciated how the article mentioned that therapy can really be for anyone and that there is more than one kind. Being more open about the varieties and accessibility of therapy, I think, will really help people and encourage them to seek help.
Frankly I feel that these are relatively condescending “tips” and are very easily realized by anyone who has anxiety. I believe that schools need to focus more on providing students tools to cope with anxiety and depression, and attempt to deemphasize stress culture overall. In general, I think that Carnegie Mellon could be doing a better job with both of these things. Carnegie’s main scapegoat for psychological issues is CAPS, who is not open long enough for Drama students to utilize. I also think that in some ways, the school ends up encouraging students to promote stress culture. I believe that the School of Drama has gotten better about this, but not necessarily the school as a whole. Especially what I have heard about the school of Architecture, not only ignores stress culture, but actively encourages it, under the obviously fake guise of “preparing” their students for the real world.
When I first started reading this article I was annoyed that it seemed to be conflating a person who experiences anxiety surrounding school with a person who has an anxiety disorder. Being anxious due to school doesn’t mean you have a mental illness, it means you are a college student. Of course, plenty of college students do have actual anxiety disorders, but in those circumstances an online article is going to be completely inadequate for addressing the problem. I became less annoyed when I was the first suggestion was therapy. From there the entire article was pretty cliche. See a therapist, meditate, distract yourself, exercise, and keep a journal. I feel like anyone who is struggling with anxiety has already had enough people tell them to go for a jog, do yoga, or watch a movie. I think all of these suggestions are good, and so for someone who hasn’t considered them before this article could be useful, I just don’t like that the intro to the article implied that everyday anxiety and mental illness are comparable.
As soon as I saw this article title I knew I needed to read it. Getting to college has most definitely increased my anxiety by 200% and I’m struggling to keep it under wraps. However, this information isn’t new to me and isn’t that effective. The only one that helps a little is writing it down, and even then, it’s a short term solution that only causes the anxiety to build up even more. I think the article should have talked more about actual strategies to use to help deal with anxiety. I personally find that identifying stressors and then making a plan to tackle them is the best method. But for the anxiety stressors that are beyond my control, I have no idea how to deal with them besides completely ignoring them through these methods. I don’t find these tips helpful, but hopefully some other people might be able to utilize these methods to calm anxiety.
These are all wonderful ways to deal with anxiety and I guess I do these without even thinking of them as direct treatments for anxiety. Saturdays are my anxiety detox days. I both go to the gym and then walk to church in the evening. By going to Church I am praying and “meditating” on God during Mass. Then I have my one on one therapy in the Confessional where I tell a stranger all my faults and sins knowing that he would die before revealing them to anyone else. Then on Sundays I talk to my parents in the evening on Facetime and we discuss how our weeks went and what was super stressful about them. I do not think I have particularly bad anxiety but if it crops up I just tell myself three things: you are not the only one going through this, somewhere right now is going through something much worse and more life altering, and lastly that it will get better.
Even though this article is very broad with its statements, like most people have commented, it is a nice reminder that there are methods to helping your anxiety. Even just reading down the comments and having classes with people, it is astonishing how many people I know that suffer from anxiety. Even my friends back home, seeing how it affects them is honestly heartbreaking. Even though none of the proposed helping mechanisms are groundbreaking news, they have helped me in one way or another. I’ve been to therapy, wrote a lot of poetry, and still continue my favorite way coping, dancing. Dancing through my life has given me a place of safety and a place to forget about my depression, anxiety, and everything that is weighing down on my shoulders every day. So again, even though this article is very general, I would never take any of these options for granted because they help the lives of so many people.
The article speaks to me as I often feel anxiety and depression as a grad student. In addition to being faced with the pressure of living and earning a master's degree abroad, my self-expectation and desire to build up a supporting network have always been an issue as well. I found meditation and doing exercise quite helpful, but sometimes I need to be careful not to indulge myself too much in these relieving process to get back to my tasks.
I really hoped, when I opened this article, that I would come across new suggestions and ideas to cope with the anxiety that college inevitably subjects students to. And as has been already acknowledged by others, unfortunately this article has nothing to offer to me.
I have heard the same things about handling anxiety since the past four years and as unfortunate as that is, not a lot of them have worked for me. Maybe because my mind has a set of things that it likes to do or engage in that are different than the conventional methods, which I do not have any issues with.
But I did still want to get more information about handling this and even though the article does a good job in being concise while conveying its thoughts, it all just seems to repetitive.
There is a need now to come up with more different ways of handling anxiety than the ones that have already been put to use because new methods might be -helpful too.
I was so happy to see Julian's comment because I think a major issue that people have in general, not just on college campuses, is saying they have anxiety or depression when really they are anxious or feeling down for a day. This article definitely conflates being anxious or stressed with having a mental illness. Now I am not trying to negate that the mental illness of anxiety is a major problem on college campuses, I am just pointing to the fact that there is a major difference. I have definitely said that something gives me anxiety, which is just an inaccurate statement. Mental illness and feeling are two very different things that need to be separated. Though I would never tell someone that what they actually mean is that they are feeling anxious, it is something that people have to look at when speaking. These tips are great for dealing with stress. As someone who doesn’t have anxiety (the mental illness), I use these tips all the time to keep my stress in check. I think a better title for this article could have been five ways to manage stress in college.
This article was ridiculously unhelpful. Like pretty much everyone else who’s commented on this article and has dealt with anxiety, we’ve looked up many different ways of coping and none of the ones presented in the article are anything below surface level. I was hoping for something that would make me think a little bit more, or mention something that wasn’t inherently obvious. One thing that I’ve found that helps get my mind off things for a while is exercising, which lets me release some energy and keeps my mind from overthinking for a short bit. Distraction in general may help cope with anxiety but it can very easily become dangerous if taken too far. Especially because it can lead to just avoiding problems and ultimately making situations worse. DIstractions are what I use a lot, and they only momentarily postpone the thoughts and anxieties. These little things could help short term but these problems are most likely going to keep increasing and spreading if school workloads and expectations continue the way they are.
Post a Comment