Stress is a situation that triggers a particular biological response. When you perceive a threat or a major challenge, chemicals and hormones surge throughout your body. Stress triggers your fight-or-flight response in order to fight the stressors or run away from it.

There is no end to the things that can cause a person stress because they are as varied as people are:

• Traumatic event, such as a natural disaster, being the victim  of a crime, theft or violence against you or a loved one
• Taking care of an elderly or sick family member with a chronic illness like dementia
• Living with chronic illness, surviving a life-threatening accident or illness
• Experiencing familial stressors such as, an abusive or unhappy relationship, discrimination, hate or abuse
• Living in poverty or being homeless, having responsibilities that you find overwhelming, don’t have enough work, changes in your life
• Worried about something, don’t have much or any control over the outcome of a situation
• Working in a dangerous profession, having little work-life balance, working long hours, or having a job you hate

Top Student Stressors

• School
• Homework
• Extracurricular activities
• Social challenges
• Transitions (example graduating, moving out, living independently)
• Relationships
• Pressure to succeed
• Work

Just as we each have different things that stress us out, our symptoms too can also be different. Although you are unlikely to have them all, there are some things you experience that others do not. Whatever the cause, the effect on the body can be serious if left unmanaged.

• Chronic pain, heaviness in your chest, increased heart rate or chest pain
• Shoulder, neck or back pain; general body aches
• Digestive problems, eating too much or too little
• Sleep problems, Headaches
• Grinding your teeth or clenching your jaw
• Shortness of breath, dizziness, difficulty concentrating and making decisions
• Feeling tired, anxious and depressed
• Emotional problems (depression, anxiety, anger, grief, guilt, low self-esteem)

Our CBT sessions can help you to explore and provide a place for you to be accepted and not be judged. You can work together with our counselor and find specific solution to combat stress.

• Be aware of your stress:  Once you become used to the stress in your life, there are chances you may allow what stresses you out the most, control what you do each day. This stress will rob us of all the things that we love the most in our life. Our sessions can help lower your stress levels by learning stress management strategies. You become aware of your emotional cues and the patterns that you need to follow to regulate your stress. Most importantly you get to understand at which level of stress you are in.
• Learn to manage stress: You get a better understanding and learn to accept what you can change about a situation and what you cannot change. This is the key to learning how to manage stress. Whatever makes that work for you, take the time to do it.

• Better self-understanding: With the help of a therapist, you are able to better understand yourself and find solutions to your problems, leading to an increase in self-confidence.
• Become more engaged at workplace: Talking to a therapist may not fully eliminate stress, it’s proven to drastically reduce it. Thus, people at workplaces find it easier to cope with stress and are also more likely to be happier and more engaged with their colleagues.
• Reduced absences at school as well as work places: When people at work places are less stressed they are unlikely to take extended time off work for mental health reasons. Stress management strategies improve students’ academic performances and their personal relationships with family, friends and peers.
• Healthier life style: Managing stress can help you lead a more balanced, healthier life.
• Feeling happy and joyful: Stress management helps you to deal better with stress and life difficulties, sleep better, control your weight, less muscle tension, better mood and get along better with family and friends.

There are no one-method-that-fits-all; what works for you might not work for others. The key to coping with time anxiety lies in understanding what’s causing it.

Time Stress: We all experience time stress when we end up  worrying about not doing things at the right time or running out of time to complete all our tasks and then worry about it. Time stress can quickly make one feel unhappy, trapped or even hopeless.

It is defined as the planning, organizing, prioritizing and dividing time for specific activities. Managing of time properly enables one to work faster and smarter, not harder.

Instead of waiting till the last minute to complete a project at work or a task at home, if one can manage time wisely, we feel we are in greater control of our time. This will make us feel calmer and overall less stressed. Therefore, stress management and time management go hand in hand.

Common types of stress: Environmental, postural, emotional, dental and nutritional.

The top four sources for stress are: Money, Work, Family and Responsibilities.

Causes of stress over time: Some areas can lead to work-related stress if they are not managed properly. These are: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change.

Causes of stress in students: Homework, social life, perceived parental pressure, university applications and never-ending workloads; all these factors generate stress. Although a moderate amount of stress can be beneficial and act as a motivator for students to do well, too much stress can impact their overall well-being.

For students or adults in addition to stress in school or work there is also stress brought about another way-the stress that comes from not managing your time which can affect anyone regardless of their chosen career.

Some of these problems are: 

• Rushing: Always rushing indicates you have not allowed sufficient time to complete your task. When you realize the time, you bolt out of bed, heart pounding, already stressing about lost time and wondering how to catch up —in reality you may not have to do anything. This means you have less personal and family time and meet expectations.
• Always being late-Poor punctuality:  Often working overtime to get work finished. This negativity impacts the quality of your relationships with your peers and family. Thereby, ruining your professional reputation leading to low productivity and poor quality of work.
• Lack of energy from having too much on your plate: It can make you constantly fall behind and having to work harder to catch up. This will make you tired, lead to burnout and even affect your health.
• Procrastination is the direct result of poor time management: Procrastination is caused by poor self-care (example, not enough sleep, poor diet, no exercise).You end up believing you’ve missed out on certain opportunities.
• Poor performance: Putting off what you need to do leads to missing deadlines, productivity decline and backlog.
• Impatience caused by poorly defined goals: Time anxiety can also affect your mood. If you do show up a few minutes late, you might feel irritated or angry, even when your lateness doesn’t matter all that much. Prioritizing is a must to ensure you complete tasks.
• Perfectionism: Doing everything yourself. Tasks that can be delegated, automated or outsourced needs to be identified and taken from your workload. Taking too much time to prepare, you either fail or tasks take too long to be achieved.
• Indecisiveness: You spend an excessive amount of time considering all the options which result in little being done.
• Saying “yes” to everything: If you are constantly doing things for others, you don’t have time to do things for yourself.

The connection between time and stress management is learning how to manage your time properly to be more productive, effective and avoid feeling stressed. Mindscape’s expert counselor helps you to learn time management techniques to stay healthy, happy and productive even when you are experiencing a lot of stress.

• Time to think: Most effective time management strategy is planning your schedule to focus on achieving your goals. So that, you have more time to work on your biggest priorities. Waiting until the last minute to finish an important task will only make you very anxious. Stressors like this can be avoided if you learn how to manage your time properly.

• Organize your space: In order to be productive every day, you learn to organize your space so you can think clearly and don’t waste time panicking or looking for whatever you need. 
• Learn to delegate your tasks: You learn and understand that for better time management, organizing is important. It leads to better habits and greater productivity. It makes you more intentional about how to invest your time, work smarter not harder and plan your day efficiently.

• Less stress: Taking control of your time ensures more productivity, prioritization and you have a clearer mind on how to invest your time. This in turn increases your confidence and also reduces stress and anxiety.
• Gets rid of burn out and more time freedom: Better time management creates a good balance between your professional life and personal life.  When you spend long hours at work, you risk burn out and being tired all the time.
• Improves focus and productivity: When you manage your time, you have a greater focus on your most productive activities. This helps build positive habits.
• Less procrastination: When you don’t manage your time properly, procrastination happens. People who aren’t clear and focused on their goals, it leads to distraction and procrastination. Time management techniques will help you to be in control of your workload.
• Effective time management skills make things simple and easy: Having good time management ensures you feel clear and confident about how to use your time. As a result, you stop feeling overwhelmed, stressed and frustrated, and instead you feel more confident and capable.
• Eliminates unnecessary distraction: Effective time management eliminates distractions and boosts concentration. It increases focus and limits distractions.   
• Increased energy: Without proper time management you end up working longer, harder and your energy levels drop and you feel tired all the time. You learn the importance of taking small breaks throughout the day and that helps to increase productivity.

There are no one-method that-fits-all; what works for you might not work for others. “The key to coping with time anxiety lies in understanding what’s causing it."