Stress Management Support Group
Stress management defines stress as a person's physiological response to an external stimulus that triggers the "fight-or-flight" reaction.Stress can be overwhelming. This community is for best practices in stress management.
Hi everyone,
I have been struggling with stress over school and preparing for graduate school. I often feel very overwhelmed with all the work I have to do as I have six classes, and I am applying for graduate school at the same time. I am also stressed with applying for scholarships and balancing my relationships, work, and more. It has been difficult, and I am worried that I won't be able to get it all done. Because of my stress, I procrastinate on papers now, which I have not done in the past.
I was able to do all you are doing and on top of that introduce myself to panic attacks and a catastrophic illness. I think it would have irritated me to add a counseling session or two to the schedule, but here is why i think that might be beneficial. It could be useful to have a more rested person with some post grad expertise facilitate your working through at least a couple of key questions: 1. What is the risk/gain payoff of overloading every aspect of my life at this time for now and proposed for the next x years, and what might I gain by cutting back some set or subset of school, work, or social/relationship expectations to be more productive, healthy, and less stressed during this time of intensive academic focus while still being able to pursue reasonable career goals, and 2. Identify what you could reschedule more long-term or cut back on immediately in order to give yourself the high quality of life experiences you deserve.
To oversimplify just a little, at the heart my personal choices were constrained by a fear that if i didn't overachieve in order to appear brilliant i wouldn't be noticed and a true success and opportunities wouldn't come my way in the form of scholarships and bullet points for my vitae. Grad school is by design set to burn your candle at both ends, but you can make some informed choices about taking some of your optional candles off the pile in the interest of quality survival.
Courage in your endeavors!!!