When it comes to managing stress, it’s important to remember that our well-being is what matters most and that there are strategies we can use to help find the way through challenging times. Below are five tips to help you, or someone you know, support mental health and wellness:
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Practice Self-Awareness. When we are stressed, it’s not uncommon to feel disconnected from ourselves and our bodies as we try to power through and keep up with demands on our time and energy. Get purposeful about taking a few moments throughout each day for mindful check-ins to help you feel more grounded. Check out this brief practice.
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Prioritize the Basics. When you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, you tend to neglect your basic self-care activities. In order to help your body and mind function at their best and manage stress, it’s important to take care of yourself first and meet those basic needs for sleep, hydration, exercise, and nutrition.
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Create a Coping Plan. Be proactive and develop a coping plan that you can use to help you bring in the right support when you need it most. Know your stress signals, keep strategies that helped before close by, and reach out for support when you feel that you can’t do it alone.
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Soothe Your Nervous System. During stress, our sympathetic nervous system starts sending out chemical messengers like adrenaline and cortisol to activate responses in our bodies that help us manage stressors and survive threats (our fight/flight/freeze response). Use coping strategies such as slow, deep breathing, humming/singing, meditation/yoga, or connecting with others, to help you shift your body from stress to calm.
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Meet Yourself With Kindness. We tend to be hard on ourselves and trying to cope with stressors while dealing with self-criticism can be exhausting. Shift your inner dialogue away from self-criticism by practicing self-compassion and respond to your emotions and needs with gentleness, kindness, and understanding.
Student Health, Counselling and Wellness Services launched the Lancers Care Onward Together: Connecting and Coping through Uncertainty and Change campaign that focuses on pandemic mental health needs of the campus community. Visit Lancers Care Week 2022 website for the list of activities offered this week.
