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Your Guide to Meditation for Anxiety

October 8, 2018 by Admin

Anxiety is one of the most common disorders of mental health. Year to year, depression and anxiety combined, affect a massive 40% of the world’s population suffering from a disability. (World Health Organization, 2002).

Anxiety doesn’t only target those with existing mental health conditions, according to academic research into anxiety disorders, 13% of the adult population will develop a specific form of anxiety known as a “phobia” at some point in their life.

Introduction to Anxiety

There are many types of anxiety, seven of them are documented here, that affect people every single day. Anxiety affects people of all ages making it a condition that doesn’t discriminate. Anxiety is brought on by many different things, the most common are; stress, physical factors, environment, biochemical imbalances and in some cases genetic conditions.

Anxiety is a normal condition and something the majority of people come across as they go about their day. In work and life situations, anxiety can prove useful to our goals, but not in its chronic form. Anxiety is a treatable condition, thanks to a range of therapy, meditation and self-care. One of the most accessible treatments right now is mindfulness.

Mindfulness helps us to practice relaxation techniques that help slow breathing, rewire your thinking and bring down symptoms of anxiety. Meditation is one of the most popular anxiety relievers and becoming more and more recommended as time goes on.

Uncovering anxiety remedies is important. And meditation is one of those.

Benefits of Meditation

Since the 1960s, the US has been an advocate of meditation. Adopted by millions as a daily habit, meditation has grown and evolved in the western world since its humble beginnings in Asia

There are countless reported benefits of meditation that can extend to treating your anxiety, here are a few of those benefits:

Reduces stress levels
Produces higher levels of concentration
Endorses healthy eating
Reduces blood pressure

There are plenty of scientific benefits of mindfulness and meditation that scientists are still uncovering, even that meditation has age-reversing effects.

Meditation is used as an element of treatment for anxiety can be very effective. The research points to short sessions on a regular basis to reducing many of the psychological effects of anxiety as well as improving your condition.

For those suffering from chronic stress or anxiety, meditation alone might not treat the condition. Alongside the likes of therapy, medical treatment and other self-care practices, meditation stands as a strong resource to adopt. For students, in particular, time management stress can cause huge amounts of anxiety and if untreated can lead to more intense anxiety issues, depression or even contemplation of suicide.

Before we explore how to use meditation to tackle your anxiety, let’s explore the rise of meditation resources in the space right now.

The Rise of Meditation Resources

Within the last 2 years, the mindfulness space has risen dramatically.

Self-care applications are on the rise. There are now 1,000s of applications on both major App Stores to choose from. Meditation applications have been one of the biggest options.

It’s not just meditation applications. There is content coming from YouTube, podcasts, online courses on Skillshare and other such platforms that you can choose from. The reason why we recommend meditation applications is thanks to the structure of the lessons, the portability of the resource and the option of using the tools offline (if you’ve downloaded the right classes beforehand).

Podcasts, YouTube channels and applications are all in the hunt for helping you get started on meditation. Naturally, all of them working well to help you with a meditation session. One of our recommendations is to not commit immediately to one of these methods.

Thanks to the countless options, you have a choice of resources at your fingertips. There’s a new meditation application uploaded every single day and the majority of them are paid resources, so making sure you understand what you need before you commit to paying for the resources is important.

Meditation applications we’d recommend:

Headspace
Stop, Think, Breathe
Calm
Oak Meditation
Waking Up by Sam Harris

The majority of these meditation applications have both guided and non-guided meditation options included, this is something we’ll uncover in the next section.

How to Use Meditation to Tackle Anxiety

Let’s get started with your first meditation.

Meditation will take time to master. And equally, tackling your anxiety demands patience. There are endless ways that anxiety affects daily routine that can have a damaging effect, so introducing healthy practices will beat your chances of success.

Start by Finding a Quiet Space

Your environment will help you to get comfortable with your meditation. Whether that’s a spare office at work or your lounge sofa, you need to begin by sitting comfortably.

Some people sit on a cushion on the floor as a way to start their practice. It’s up to you.

Start Your Session With No Interruptions

Sessions should be personal to you. No interruptions. Across your first few sessions, your number one interruption will be you.

As you meditate for the first time, you are bound to get uncomfortable. So avoid anyone interrupting you. Let your colleagues know and keep everyone out of the room from walking around.

Commence Your App/Podcast/Music

Whatever you go with, begin your session. There are two traditional methods to choose from, guided and unguided meditation. Guided is a good starting point. Guided will be a spoken meditation and help you to begin your first session with a focus. As you understand and get more comfortable, you can add unguided.

Session length doesn’t have to be too long. 5-minutes or 10-minutes is suitable for your first time. The goal is to try and get into a healthy routine not make it a daunting 30-minute intense meditation. As you grow your practice, you can add length to sessions, only if you see value in this additional time.

Pause and Relax

Post-meditation you don’t have to spring up and head straight back to your laptop or iPhone. No. You can just pause and relax after a session. This will allow you to reflect on how well you did, or what thoughts distracted you during your initial session.

Tips For Your First Few Meditations

Perfect Meditations

The goal is consistency. There’s no such thing as a perfect meditation for everyone. Our recommendation is to make your practice your own. Create the ideal time length, use the tools you feel most suitable with and review what could make each session better each time.

One of the best ways to improve your practice brings it up as a discussion with friends or family. Thanks to the wave of meditation in the west, you’ll be surprised who uses it without the goal of curing anxiety.

Incorporating Journals

Using your journal can be a useful way to extend your practice and kill two birds with one stone. The journal will help to reduce stress and express what you felt during your meditation session. A short journal session added to your meditation will help to reduce feelings of anxiety and express some of your most stressful feelings in a peaceful setting.

First timer to journaling?! Here are 50 journal prompts to get you started!

Attending Classes

Local classes can be a good way to get started. Avoiding the 21st-century route of applications or podcasts, you can head to your local Buddhist centre for a session. You can find many sessions listed online or on your local community boards. Sessions like these can help you get started and help you meet people like-minded using meditation as an anxiety reducer.

How Long Will It Take to See Results?

Results can take anywhere between one meditation to one hundred meditations. Meditation is a unique journey. Those suffering anxiety will need to use it alongside other healthy self-care practices and therapy sessions.

The best way to find out is trying it yourself. There are stories of people using it for 3-4 weeks and not needing any more treatment thanks to the refreshing benefits of meditation for your anxiety. Others have taken longer to adopt and embed into their routine. But once used in a routine fashion have fallen in love with meditation as a way to get a much-needed break.

Let us know in the comments whether you’ve used meditation to curb your anxiety and how you’ve gone about approaching meditation. Do you use any apps? Do you have any podcast recommendations? Let us know below.

5 Fun Group Therapy Activities to Try with Friends to Improve Your Mental Health

October 3, 2018 by Admin

According to the World Health Organisation in 2001, one in four people suffer from a mental health condition, with extended insights showing over 450 million people suffer from conditions worldwide. Since 2001, many researchers believe these figures to have risen dramatically.

Despite the rise in mental health conditions, thanks to a host of tools such as campaigns, social media and face-to-face support, the stigma around mental health have been slowly breaking down. Schools, workplaces and factories across the globe are embracing healthier practices to reduce stress and anxiety and the conversation is much more open than it was 10 years ago thanks to the damaging effects on our society so far.

The art of speaking about mental health is one that is not yet mastered in all of us. A tricky subject to kickstart and one that leaves many on edge.

What is Group Therapy?

Group therapy activities have been an interactive way to kickstart healthy conversations around mental health. In this article, we’ll discuss the nature of group therapy, the benefits, and how to use group therapy activities to positively talk about mental health with friends, family members or colleagues.

Group therapy has been used many times to bridge the gap between those suffering from mental health and those who are not. Traditionally, group therapy is coordinated between the sufferer and a therapist or a licensed counsellor.

However, there are various ways you can embrace group therapy activities in your daily routine, we’ve shortlisted some fun, interactive games and icebreakers to use with your friends and those suffering from the condition to help warm up the conversation and bring support to sufferers close to us.

The Benefits of Group Therapy Activities

There are many benefits to using group talk therapy. Group therapy can teach you about yourself and provide you with a strong dose of social skills.

Here are just some of those benefits:

Less Intense – One to one therapy can be very invasive for those new to therapy. The intensity of one to one interaction with a therapist might feel daunting, whilst the inviting circle of friends and family could be a more welcomed starting point.
Safe Environment – Friends and family can sometimes be the best people to help tackle your condition. They know you best. Allowing them to be involved will also help them come to terms with your struggles and needs.
Cost-Effective – Paying for a therapist upfront can be a big investment for many, without the test run of group therapy activities with friends, you might not know whether this is able to help reduce your conditions symptoms. Please note, this is only advice and does not extend as medical advice.
Icebreakers – For new friends that could have a stigma around mental health, these activities can be a great icebreaker. Getting to know people and helping them to understand what your facing will only make things easier for all parties.

These are just some of the benefits that embracing group therapy has helped. There are plenty of stories of friendships that have support mental health with happy endings.

Why Therapy Activities Can Help Young People?

The world of social media has connected us with over 2bn other people around the globe. From Calcutta to Edinburgh, the internet opens up the conversation, but for many young people, they feel more alone than ever.

With all this noise and constant competition to keep relevant, they feel out of the loop and many lack social communication skills that can help them tackle conditions such as anxiety and stress. The therapy activities help to break down complex feelings and emotions and to discuss them amongst a group that you feel safe with.

All of the group therapy activities recommended below are for all ages. These activities can be extremely useful for young people looking to take part in more social challenges and tackle their own concerns and mental health.

Try Therapy Activities On Your Own

Not sure who to recruit first or super eager to get started?! That’s awesome. We’d like to recommend an activity tool you can use on your own.

Our app, Therachat helps thousands of people on a daily basis to uncover their mental health condition with a range of helpful therapy worksheets. Worksheets are an insightful way to build your personal practices and make progress.

They range from understanding your self-confidence, exploring your emotions, taming your anger, amping your assertiveness and embracing self-compassion. Try it out for free today on iOS and Android!

Our 10 Group Therapy Activities To Try With Friends

Two Truths and a Lie

Very similar to the UK TV programme, “Would I Lie To You” this group therapy activity is fun for a small group of friends or even family members (although, it could be easier with friends). The goal is to create three facts about yourself, with one being a lie and the other two truthful.

The team have to guess which facts are correct and which are false as they go around the circle.

This activity is fun and will get you laughing for sure. But most importantly it helps to get you sharing as the perfect ice-breaking game for new friends. Remember you can really make this fun by drawing out all of the crazy facts about your life. Uncovering your world and what has happened to you in the past can help others to empathise with you and bring up the topic of your mental health in a not so obvious manner.

Blind Cooking Challenges

Not only an icebreaker but the perfect way to catch up with friends.

Set a cake recipe in front of one person. From a recipe for the other person’s choice, this is the best way to get everyone together, working together. The other person must instruct, but not touch the other person. Please note, you may need to clean the kitchen afterwards, there’s no doubt it’ll get messy and make sure you aren’t involving knives or sharp objects.

Over a cooking session, you might be able to share your emotions, feelings, thoughts or help express some of the stress that comes along with your condition. This hilarious activity can quickly turn into an excellent form of talk therapy in a group and build trust between everyone. Talk therapy can be very helpful for discussing and thinking out the symptoms and issues in your condition.

Coloring Challenge

Adult coloring books are all the rage right now. Take part in a group coloring challenge.

Begin by organizing a day and time to visit a coffee shop. Instruct everyone not bring their smartphones or if they do, to have them switched off on entry. The challenge begins by writing down a prompt on a piece of paper for a drawing.

This could be anything, an animal or a member of the group, your grandma, whatever!

Each of the team submits their slip of paper. At random, the group pick out a slip of paper and color or draw the stated item on the paper. The results will then be revealed all at the same time. The game is a funny one and commonly sparks healthy conversation and the perfect time away from the stress of your phone. For mental health, the use of coloring books has risen in the last few years, thanks to research pointing to the success of the practice in helping to reduce anxiety and calm mental health conditions.

Fear in a Hat

In a similar way, the “fear in a hat” game is a good way to reveal your group members’ fear in a fun trust-building game. Each team member gets a slip of paper. On the paper, they write out their deepest darkest fear. Entering all of the fears into a hat.

This typically helps conversations begin about the fear itself and why that fear begin for them. This game has become a smart way to break down barriers and discuss what matters. This trust-based game will help you to uncover what fears people face and open the floor to how they handle this and whether they are currently facing these fears on a daily basis. Fears can trigger conditions and grow into mental health problems if not addressed.

Three Animals

Ask all of the group members to come up with their three favourite animals. From this, the group needs to write down the name of the animal and three qualities each animal has that you appreciate. The first, second and third animal represents how you want to see people, how you see others, and who you really are. Going around in a circle, you then reveal the traits of your animal and why you agree to discuss with the thoughts.

To round this off, everyone must end the exercise by drawing a merge of the three animals. This is a relaxed, fun way to end the session and help reflect on the discussion learnings. Reflecting is important for your mental health, overviewing why you made those decisions will help to produce insights and learn about yourself in a constructive manner.

Let us know in the comments below about the exercises that you’ve done with your friends or family that has helped to improve your mental health or promoted healthy discussions.

Managing Anxiety – Your Guide to Taking Control

October 1, 2018 by Admin

There are many different ways of managing anxiety that crops up across your day.

From journals to meditation, there are endless recommendations and that can sometimes be very overwhelming if you’re dealing with anxiety. With countless solutions, what’s best for anxiety sufferers looking to take control of their own anxiety?

First off, well done! You’ve made a positive step to seek out ways to manage your anxiety. In this guide, we’re going to dive into the topic of anxiety, why people suffer from anxiety and how it affects you on a day-to-day basis. The aim of this article is to help educate you about how anxiety occurs and why you feel as you do.

To round this article off, there will be a range of recommendations for getting starting and managing your anxiety. This article should give you an insightful look into the world of anxiety, whether you are looking for a friend or relative or yourself to help take back control. [Read more…] about Managing Anxiety – Your Guide to Taking Control

How to Use Journaling in Therapy | Helping Your Clients Get Started with a Journal

September 24, 2018 by Admin

Journaling, commonly known as a journal writing consists of a short writing practice that can be continued day to day. Keeping a journal has become very popular in the mental health community for its therapeutic use during treatment.

Journal therapy helps clients keep track of their emotions, thoughts and situations through documented exercises and prompts. The use of a journal creates a reflective environment and helps clients voice concerns or things on their minds.

Therapists have been increasing their recommendations of journal therapy in recent years thanks to the long list of benefits supporting it. One of the initial things that attract therapists to endorse journal therapy is the ease of set-up and ability to guide clients between sessions in writing about specific things.

Journal therapy helps clients capture emotions, analyze concerns and commence a dialogue with themselves, which helps their therapist to decipher what’s been going on outside of sessions with the client and their condition.

Still not convinced?! Let’s explore the science behind journaling during treatment.

The Science Behind Journal Therapy

The science behind journal therapy continues to uncover the mental health benefits of routinely journaling. And luckily the practice can be applied for a variety of conditions including the following;

Anxiety Disorders
Depression
Low self-esteem
Relationship issues
OCD conditions
Grief
Chronic Illness
Substance abuse

Journal therapy alone won’t cure a client’s condition, it’s the treatment as a whole that helps for a steady recovery. However there’s a number of ways how journal therapy supports treatment by uncovering a wide variety of concerns of clients.

What Do Studies Show?

A study of the benefits of writing from the Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 281, No. 14) showcased that there’s more to journal therapy than meets the eye. 107 patients suffering from asthma and rheumatoid arthritis wrote for 20-minutes on each of three consecutive days, 71 of them covering topics of stressful events and the 37 remaining covered emotionally neutral subjects of their day plans.

The next 4 months after the writing exercise, 70 of the patients showed improvement on objective, clinical evaluations.

In addition, those who wrote about stress improved more and deteriorated less, than controls for both diseases. “So writing helped patients get better, and also kept them from getting worse,” says Smyth.

Extensive studies continue to show the benefits of writing about your experiences during the day. A study from the University of California took 20 volunteers to a lab for a brain scan. Before this scan, the volunteers were asked to spend 20-minutes per day writing, for the four days before the scan with 10 of the candidates writing about an emotional experience, the others about something neutral.

The science from the brain scan proved that the emotions-lead writing experience induced relaxed neural activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (element of the brain).

One more extensive study showed the effects on recovery. The study in 2003 found that 76% of adults who spent 20-minutes a day journaling three days consecutively before a medical biopsy were healed in full 11 days later.

Meanwhile, 58% of the control group had yet to recover. The results indicated that with just one hour of writing about an emotion experience helped candidates to reduce stress levels and understand the events of the situation.

Getting Started with a Journal

So, your clients are open to engaging with a journal. Where do you start?!

This is great news! Any additional ways you can engage your clients between sessions, will help treatment. The positive thing about journal therapy is it takes many shapes, so the act can be used in a multitude of different ways.

Many therapists like clients to use journal therapy for their out of session time. Having clients start their therapeutic writing experience when they have the time, can promote journaling to become a positive, healthy routine.

Here’s a list of recommendations:

Start by recommending the inclusion of journal therapy during sessions. Explain the benefits of how therapeutic journaling has improved many treatments and increased the longevity of the recovery post-therapy.
Introduce an initial piece of homework. Between sessions set your client a 10-minute writing activity to kick things off. 10-minutes is a healthy-sized introductory period of writing they can get started with.
Each session review the act and benefits of journal therapy. Re-evaluating, why this is beneficial practice, will increase homework compliance and engagement rates with your client.
Set more complex homework exercises that will test their insights. Activities like this will promote in-session discussions and cement their commitment outside of sessions. You can find recommendations listed below.

Don’t hesitate to add a digital tool to the mix that can help both you and your clients practice journaling. With Therachat you can send your clients journal prompts at any time and your clients will be reminded to do so. A tool like Therachat will also show you the journal entries immediately so you can follow along with your client in realtime and use that info to have more effective sessions.

Journal Therapy Exercises

So, now you’ve started out with a basic practice of 10-minutes.

You’ll be looking to ramp up your use of the practice with your clients outside of therapy sessions. Remember, keeping things relevant and interactive with clients will keep them progressing towards their end goal.

These are some of the best ways to use journal therapy:

Routine Entries – The first and easiest practice is to ask your client to set a time aside every single day that they can add to their journal. A routine practice will help to improve the more advanced exercises but help to build your clients confidence around the topic of journaling. Setting a limit of 10-20 minutes of emotional writing will help to get things started as they bring this into treatment.
Letter Writing – The act of letter writing can be a good way to start a journal entry. Writing letters to the people in your life that you have an emotional connection with can help to release stress and promote reflective practices. This is something to discuss with your client and work out whether it is suitable. Positive or negative entries will help express your emotions.
Dialogue – Using dialogue can help to promote awareness of other people’s state of mind. Asking your client to take the role of someone and writing about how they would react can help to create a two-way conversation that the client can review and be aware of emotional reactions. This can promote social learning and help anxiety as they try to change perspective.
Photo Entries – Using photographs to start an entry can be a great way to write in an emotional manner. By having a photo to speak to in your journal can help bring up emotional situations. Maybe it’s a positive photo that you can share about how you felt in that current state or one that makes you feel pressured or anxiety, all of these will help produce a reflective piece of writing.
Prompts – An easy way to get your client started. Bringing a range of prompts for their journal can help them to answer complex emotional questions without much hassle. Prompts like “The happiest times in my life have been…” or “The most emotional day of my life was…” will help to test their emotional state and get the ball rolling as they start out.
Listicles – One that doesn’t take too long but many clients enjoy, starting a listicle. Asking a client to list the “Top 10 Things They Like…” or “The Top 100 Things They Hate” can help them to list one word or short sentence answers and flag many issues they are having. Being grateful or providing issues in this format can provide you as the therapist a condensed list of talking points with your client.

Becoming a Journal Master

The act of therapeutic journaling will take time to master and your clients will start to benefit across a longer period of time. Like many studies show; the extensive use of journaling can help and promote recovery, so keeping it in the client’s mind as a healthy routine practice will boost outcomes.

A final recommendation would be a read by the author, Kate Thompson.

Her book, Therapeutic Journal Writing: An Introduction for Professionals is one of the best recommendations for those looking to further understand this topic and how they can endorse the practice with their clients.

On a final note, journaling can provide so much to your clients. Reviewing it as part of your practice will become one of your best decisions of the year and integrating as part of your homework compliance will help to arrive at your client’s destination with a stronger footing.

Let us know whether you’ve used journaling in therapy. We’d love to hear your stories about what has worked, what hasn’t and how you go about endorsing the use of journal therapy.

Anxiety: 10 Anxiety Remedies for your Daily Routine

September 19, 2018 by Admin

Anxiety can take many different forms and doesn’t discriminate.

Globally, according to research, 260 million people suffer from some form of anxiety disorder. In the US alone, 18.1% of the population live with an anxiety disorder, that’s over 42 million people living with anxiety. The studies mount up and the anxiety crisis around the world is continuing to grow because of a combination of 21st-century pressures.

Treatment from therapy is one of the many ways to manage anxiety but it isn’t limited to the sessions you take part in with your therapist. Anxiety can be controlled and tackled outside of the sessions. There are many anxiety remedies that people use that help them cope with anxiety.

They range from healthy food options to over-the-counter remedies and even positive habits. We’ve put together ten useful remedies that you can take away and use in your daily routine to tackle anxiety. Broken into these three core categories, all the anxiety remedies have come with some research or recommendation from therapists.

Let’s explore ten anxiety remedies for your daily routine. [Read more…] about Anxiety: 10 Anxiety Remedies for your Daily Routine

A Guide to Stress Management for Teens: Back to School

September 14, 2018 by Admin

It’s time to head back to school!

With the introduction of September, students around the globe begin planning how they’ll approach the upcoming academic year. Internal discussions like what crowd to mingle with, which classes to pick, what to wear and more spring to mind. But not all students look forward to the new school year.

For many students, being back at school can cause severe stress and anxiety.

Triggers range from the stress of being around other students to the barrage of workload offered up by teachers. This stress and anxiety can go unnoticed inside the classroom but cause a huge amount of strain to a student’s mental health.

This will help you to navigate stress in school with a host of recommendations to help you tackle it. Whether you are looking to apply this advice to your own efforts or bringing together tips for your friends, family or children, stress management is something not to be ignored and treated as early as possible.

Feeling lazy?! Listen to this article here!

Causes of Stress in School

During our time at school, we undergo many different types of stress. Deadlines, relationships, results are just some of the examples that cause us strain. Understanding the triggers for stress can help you to pinpoint the best route forward.

There are countless stressors that cause students to dread school. From student to student, the reasons will vary. Here are some of the most common causes of stress in schools for students.

Being New – Being brand-new to your classroom can be very scary. Being the new kid on the block can have its benefits and its negatives. But the stress causes from the negative attention drawn to you can damage your self-confidence, this can lead to further loneliness, anxiety and stress, if not addressed.
Social Pressures – Being in the right crowd can matter in school. Fitting into a social circle can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. Pressure to conform or act as others do can lead to poor grades, a change in personality and even pressure to do things outside of your comfort zone.
Transitions – Moving from high-school to college is a new start for many. A chance to reset. Lots of students use this as a way to express their personality, others struggle with this change. Being the new fishes in the pond can scare students who got comfortable with what they knew.
Tough Classes – The stress of intense topics in the classroom can put pressures on a student to perform. The complexity of the subject might not be manageable. With a demanding schedule and a fear of being left behind a student can feel like a fish out of water very fast.
Homework Workload – Managing a continuous stream of work is something all students have to deal with. The pile of work for some can be a huge stressor if not handled and managed. The workload can quickly build up and act like a clogged sink with more water coming in.
Lack of Organization – One of the biggest causes of stress for students is not being organized. Not having a method to manage what’s coming in and out. As more and more things come into your to-do list, being able to handle all that’s happening and what’s coming up next is vital.
Lack of Sleep – A huge stressor that students don’t consider is sleeping. Sleep is a very important part of our body’s recovery cycle. As young people, sleep doesn’t seem so valuable. But during this time of growth and study, you need it more than ever.
Lack of Support – Stress can occur when a student doesn’t appear to have the support promised or available to them. Being stuck on an assignment or in a class that is overwhelming, and not having the support network of teachers, friends and family and other such resources can be daunting.

These are just some of the many causes of stress and how they affect students around the world as they tackle school on a daily basis. But stress is a part of our lives no matter what. Surely you need stress?!

Healthy Amounts of Stress for Students?

Stress is one of many things that we deal with every single day. It’s a natural phenomenon.

Stress and anxiety are becoming more common in students. Research from NYU shared insights into the stress levels of college students. According to their study, 49% of students reported feeling “a great deal of stress on a daily basis” with only 31% of them reporting that they felt “somewhat stressed”. In this research, females reported having higher stress levels with a 60% to 41% split. The study also uncovered that 26% of the group interviewed, reported symptoms of depression at a clinically significant level.

The majority of stress reported was centred around grades, homework and preparing for college.

At school, high school and college, the study and workload are challenging. Many students underestimate the workload and panic to catch-up or fully comprehend what they need to do. However, is there a healthy amount of stress to handle as a student?

The challenge and pressure of accomplishing deadlines are natural. The exploration and discovery that comes along with school can help us to find out more about our personalities. Stress can affect students at any time. The stress that students need to be aware of is “chronic stress”. This is a type of stress that persists past deadlines and continues with us across the day.

Being able to prevent this is of utmost importance as you tackle your time as a student. Chronic stress can lead to further mental health conditions like depression and generalized anxiety.

Your Guide to Stress Management

It’s time to reduce your stress levels.

Let’s explore the many ways you can reduce stress and manage your anxiety during your time at school. There are four core stress management areas we’ve uncovered and would like to share with you.

1. Calming Down – Taking Control of Stress

Let’s start by focusing on how to calm down in the moment.

Stress can be overwhelming and absorb all of your attention. Pausing is your next move. Take 20-minutes out of your schedule to pause. During these 20-minutes you could meditate, sit quietly or even do some light exercise like a walking. The goal is to separate you from the stress itself and take your mind away from thinking about it. Incorporating these short breaks will help to introduce a healthy habit and routine.

A popular technique during these 20-minute breaks is to write down all of your current stress on pen and paper, with the aim to clear your mind of worry. You can use the paper to tally all of your thoughts in the moment. This is a form of stress relief and will help to reset as you go into your next activity.

Mediation has become increasingly popular and accessible. With smartphone applications like Calm, Headspace, Oak Mediation, Stop, Breathe, and Think and more, you can use meditation to reduce stress and anxiety by taking time to pause and clear your thoughts. Start with a simple session and work your way towards more advanced practices. The benefit is that these applications help you to take on meditation with no prior knowledge.

2. Time Management – Preventing Future Stress

Time management is being adopted in many schools as a way to help get yourself organized.

If you aren’t lucky enough to benefit from these lessons, time management is easy to get started with. Time management can be applied to help prevent future stress by helping to plan in any incoming workload. Organizing what you have coming up and what needs to be done will save you huge amounts of worry and stress, and of course effort hunting for what you need next.

Evernote, Trello or Todoist are strong applications to help keep yourself organized. Evernote is a good note-taking application, Trello is a visual way to plan your projects and assignments and finally Todoist a way to manage your deadlines. All of these applications are available on iOS and Android and are perfect for using outside of schooling too. All of these tools are praised by students of all ages. Give them a go! YouTube channels like Thomas Frank and Lavendaire can help you make sense of all of the ways to improve your study routine and keep productive.

Keeping yourself organized is easy once you’ve adopted a set of resources that are suitable for you. These applications are some of the many recommendations if you don’t feel these suit your needs.

3. Interacting with Others – Building Your Support

Growing a friendship circle that is healthy to support your stress.

Finding people that are like-minded in interests and hobbies will help you to reduce stress. Building a support network of other that you can discuss anxiety and stress with will help. Asking your teachers whether there are clubs, extra-circular activities and lunch-time meetings that you can attend can help you to bridge the gap and start meeting people. For the older students, using apps like Eventbrite to discover events in the local area can be a good way to connect with hobbies/interests.

A healthy circle of friends will be open to discussing topics like anxiety and stress.

Sharing their stress and workload with you to help you tackle it and grow yourself stronger for the next big challenges in life. You might come across these friends through common interests or even your own struggles but making sure you have a good family, friendship group and extended circle of teachers and community will help your chances of beating the stress.

4. Continue your Learning – Building Your Confidence

Taking control of your confidence is an important way to move forward.

Self-confidence can be at an all-time low when suffering from stress. You doubt yourself and your decisions. Everything becomes critical and you never switch off. Once you’ve tackled stress and brought yourself out of the deep water, bring your attention to maintaining this.

Building organization systems to help keep your head above water the next time, speaking with friends about your struggles and using calming methods like meditation to bring your anxiety are all ways to keep ahead of your stress. Remember healthy habits adopted will pay dividends as you continue to use them.

Our final recommendation is to try our new application Therachat, a way for you to tackle anxiety through therapist-curated activities. It’s free and there’s a host of powerful practices for you to get involved in and learn how to fully take control of your stress.

Let us know in the comments how you are handling stress in college or high school, we’d love to hear how you tackling anxiety and stress.

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