If you experience 'stress' it means that you are feeling tension, because you perceive the demands are greater than your resources. For example, your child might feel stressed because they have an assignment due (demand), two tests (demand), and work (demand), but feel they have no time (resources) and don’t understand the content well (resources). Another student might not feel stressed because they only have one test (low demand), they have studied for it (resources), and the subject is their favourite (perception).

Some stress is helpful as the hormone cortisol is released and helps you to be more alert, focused, attentive and energised. However, too much stress is not healthy as the excessive cortisol can disrupt your moods, digestion, memory and focus, and also cause muscle tension, sleep problems, weight gain, and headaches.

To reduce unhelpful stress, you need to reduce the demands, increase your resources, or change your perception. I have outlined some ideas below to help you manage stress. I have made them generic so that all of our LJBC community may be able to use them.

• Reduce demands: Do a stocktake of every task in your life that is putting you under stress. Is there anything you can remove? Even easy and good things can be a weight when you have too many tasks. You have to be selective, you can’t do it all (I promise, I have tried).
• Reduce the value of some demands: You have told your brain that some tasks are very important but they are just ordinary. Remove some of the importance on ordinary tasks: the house is clean enough, the essay says what it needs to say, the speech has all of the points you need. Don’t elevate every task and make it super important.
• Increase resources: Stress can emerge when you feel like you don’t have the resources to manage the task. Resources could include time, skills, or knowledge. It is easy to get more resources – the problem is most people think it is a ‘me’ problem rather than a resource problem. They might say “I get stressed because I am useless at writing essays” rather than “I get stressed because I need to get some more skills in writing essays”. Take the stress, and try to think of it as a resource problem that is solvable, not a you problem that is fixed.
• Change your perception: Stress really depends on how you perceive a situation. Two people can look at exactly the same challenge, and one can be excited by it and the other stressed. Are there any ‘stressful’ events that are maybe just exciting? Just thinking about it differently can reduce your feelings of stress.

I hope some of these ideas help. If you have any topics you would like me to cover, please email them to ljbc@ljbc.wa.edu.au and I will try to include them.

Dr Mandie Shean
College Psychologist