STADS is once again up and running, and you can register for spring classes and exams. The registration deadline is Thursday 7 November at 23.59.
At the Student Counsellors' Office, we often meet students who contact us because they feel under pressure or stressed in their student life. This can be because of exams, but, often, it is because they are combining many commitments, such as a student job, social activities and family obligations.
In the section below, you will find some of the questions will would often ask if you visited us at the Student Counsellors’ Office. Reflect on the questions and note your answers on a piece of paper. If you make an appointment with your student counsellor, it is a good idea to bring your answers with you to your counselling session.
If you suspect that you are suffering from stress and have an urgent need for help, we recommend that you contact one or more of the following:
What many people don’t know is that stress is actually vital for our survival. Positive stress is what enables us to perform as well as we can. This is because stress is an important biological mechanism that can help us when we’re under pressure – for instance in exams and other aspects of life as a student. Negative stress arises when the pressure to which you’re exposed over time exceeds the resources which are available to you (physical, mental and social).
If you experience too many symptoms of negative stress over a long period of time, or if you notice any sudden warning signs, you need to stop and take stock of what’s going on and why you feel the way you do.
If you contact the Student Counsellors' Office because you feel stressed, we will focus on the following questions in order to shed light on your current situation:
Once you have answered these questions, you are already well on the way to shedding light on your relationship with stress. In this way, you can learn to spot the signs of time or work pressure and perhaps negative stress and its causes. There’s often a pattern which can help to reveal how stress can be alleviated.
Can you see a pattern?
If you can, you can now continue to unfold and explore this pattern in the next section. If you cannot, it could be a good idea to discuss your situation with a student counsellor, a fellow student or your parents. It can often be helpful to discuss your answers to the above questions with somebody else.
Stress symptoms may appear in different ways, such as insomnia, depression, irritation, concentration problems, and a lack of energy or overview. If you know your stress symptoms and stress patterns, you can use these to recognise your warning signals when you experience stress.
Once you have uncovered your pattern, you can start investigating how you can remedy any overload and/or early stress symptoms.
Once you have explored your pattern, you can start working on your courses of action. If you have been in a similar situation before, a good starting point may be to ask yourself: “What did I do then and what worked?” If you have decided that you would like to change your pattern in order to reduce your workload and alleviate your early stress symptoms, you can start to consider how you will do this:
The challenge for many students is that they aren’t aware of their own stress symptoms. They might underestimate their significance or find some reason to ignore the warning signs. This is because the symptoms of stress vary from one person to the next. If you’re in a negative stress spiral, which may lead to exhaustion and burn-out, you may not be able to exit this spiral yourself.
If you suspect that you are suffering from stress and have an urgent need for help, we recommend that you contact one or more of the following:
Meditation and mindfulness can help to reduce stress. The aim of them both is to help boost your awareness of your thoughts, feelings and physical sensations – and to deal with them in a new way.
We encourage you to explore the following free services and apps and find out what works for you: