Hiya! I’m currently in my second week of university and already feel the the stress of my third and last year of my degree. I personally do not deal with stress very well and will break down under academic pressure and have had a history of anxiety attacks from feeling stressed. I’m learning to deal with my stress and I thought it would be best to share some of ways that I have reduced my stress.

Always Confide in Someone

Find someone that you trust and talk to them about your stress, it’s always good to let your feelings out and everything off your chest. I’m very lucky to have a handful of people in my life that I can express my feelings and cry if I need to without feeling like I’m annoying them.

You might find that in expressing your feelings to someone they may also feel the same or have felt the same in the past from going through similar situations in university or life in general. When I talk to my friends and especially family members about my stressors more often than not they have dealt with the same situation and can give advice on how to get through it.

At University there will be services that they offer to help you manage your stress and anxiety in Student Counselling. If you are feeling like you can’t open up to your friends or family members, take full advantage of your universities’ mental health services and talk to someone there.

Don’t Try to Tackle Your Stress on Your Own

Take a Break

Seriously find the time to relax! Have time dedicated to yourself and time dedicated to spending with other people and socialising. Now looking back to when I was at my most stressed and having anxiety attacks, I can see that I wasn’t relaxing, my mind was constantly on work mode and I had also cut myself off from my friends from school and not socialising with them.

Now I find having a creative outlet for my stress in blogging and having a notebook with blank pages that I draw and write out all my feelings in (I should do a post in future sharing my notebook). Sometimes when I’m stressed I feel that I need to ‘Dance it Out’ like how they do in Grey’s Anatomy, if you aren’t familiar with this it is literally crazy dancing your cares away to loud music.

Note to Self: Relax

Don’t Compare Yourself To Others

As hard as it may be to look at how other people are preforming in their university work or what grade they got in the exam and comparing it to your own. Often when I do this, it makes just feel bad and more stressed as I feel like I’m not doing as well as other people or working as hard even though I am doing the best that I can.

Focus only on yourself, spend the time that you would have been spending on comparing to other people on yourself and your own personal goals and future plans. Do what works for you in terms of how you revise, how you learn and how you want to process in your career.

Just Chill and Do You Babe

Eat, Sleep, Love

Love yourself enough to take care of yourself! Eat well and get a good night of sleep. This is probably an obvious point but it is one that we can often forget during university when we are over working. Try not to push yourself too hard that you forget to take care of yourself. Admittedly I have been so bad at this, my expectations of myself academically are more than often too high and unrealistic. I expect too much from myself and very harsh on myself when I don’t reach my expectations.

Don’t be too hard on yourself mentally and try to have as much fun as you can at university. University gives you so many opportunities to have the best times of your life and make the best memories with people who will become your life long friends.

Be Gentle with Yourself. You’re Doing the Best You Can

If you feel that you need to talk to someone urgently please don’t hesitate, there are various mental health charities like Mind for example. You can also look to them for mental health information.

I will do more posts on how to deal with stress and anxiety especially since it is something that I have and still do deal with in my life. Hopefully this post will help other people in similar situations and under not only stress from university but in all situations.

Just Remember Even Your Worst Day Only Lasts 24 Hours

Thank you for reading! Please comment any other tips you have for helping to reduce stress.

Antonia

xoxo