Stress is something that is present in everyday life, no one escapes it, no one dominates it, we just have to learn to deal with it when it appears. My aim in this blog post is not to get overly technical about stress and how it is a problem or where stress comes from. I only want to help those of you that, like me, struggle with stress in your lives, from a non-expert point of view.

There is a key thing to know about stress and its consequences: stress can be good for you (if it is not too much). Stress can be positive when it creates some accountability and makes you do work that you would not usually do. This can be, for example, when you know you have a test and you feel stressed because you have to study for it, you are being held accountable for your ability to learn concepts and memorise information, that is why you are stressed. I recognize this is not the best example since you can be overly stressed because of an upcoming test but I believe my point has been made: stress can retroactively make you do positives things you would not do otherwise, like being more cautious, holding yourself accountable, thinking out of the box in order to solve a problem and many others.

However, what I am to help you with are those moments when stress is too much to handle, the moments when stress affects learning or those when it does not allow you to live your life to its fullest. There are many, and I restate many, causes to this kind of negative, paralyzing anxiety triggering stress: it can come from family, school, your career or even yourself, amongst many other possible causes of stress.

There are times when negative stress is so bad that people start developing symptoms. Some of these symptoms can be: anxiety, skin rashes, diarrhoea, chest pains, hair loss, stomach aches, dizziness, back pains, anxiety, the need to use coffee, alcohol or drugs in order to relax, tiredness, headaches, high blood pressure, and others. Yes, this is a very scary list but its purpose is not to scare you, it is to show you how negative stress can be and how important it is to identify it and to create strategies to deal with it. Please be mindful and aware of yourself and see a doctor if stress becomes too hard to handle, your mental health is very very important. 

Stress has no miracle cure you do need to identify and address its causes, to create coping mechanisms to deal with something that is going to be present every day of your life. In this blog post, I will suggest some creative - or very non-creative - ways to help you deal with stress.