Home>>Health Issues>>Stress

Need to save a baby from a burning building, pull a jumper back onto the ledge, perform the Heimlich manuever on a choking restaurant patron?

You can count on your stress hormones to prepare your body to face danger by increasing heart rate, increasing your lung capacity, and diverting blood to your muscles. It's a great system.

Unfortunately, the same system is activated, to a lesser degree, when we face the dramas of everyday life. Being in college can be extremely stressful because of the constant demands to adjust and change.  

You may be living on your own for the first time, constantly meeting new people, balancing your course work with laundry, meals, and perhaps a job. More stressors can pile on in the guise of roommate or other relationship problems, test anxiety, deadlines, finals, and your parents.

Not all stress is negative. New opportunities, new relationships can cause positive stress, but also add anticipation and excitement to your life. The trick to stress management is to balance the stresses so you are not feeling bored or overwhelmed. 

What is stressful to one person may not be for someone else. So it's important to evaluate yourself and your reaction to things in your life; to understand where your stresses come from and how they affect you in order to cope and keep your life balanced.