National Stress Awareness Day!
7th November 2019
It’s national stress awareness day so today we want to talk about all things stress, what can make you feel stressed, how that can affect your health and how you can help yourself.
Stress is something that affects everyone and having a little bit of stress in our lives is normal and can be a good thing. We might call this positive stress.
Positive stress can make us more productive, concentrate better or become more focused and can help us to do well in exams at school.
But sometimes the stress we experience can become too much and can become overwhelming, impacting on our emotional health and our everyday lives.
It is really important that we all have a number of stress management techniques that work for us.
But first we need to understand what stress is.
You can feel stressed when small things that worry you build up, making you feel stressed.
It could be that you have a lot of work from school, you are preparing for exams or you have had arguments with a parent, siblings or friends.
Everyone deals with each of these things differently. For example, some people may feel very stressed out by exams but others don’t seem to be affected.
Feeling stressed can make you feel tired, have a headache or stomach ache. It can affect your sleep and can also affect your appetite (going off your food).
Stress can also impact on your emotional health, making you more irritable, angry or more tearful as well as affecting your ability to concentrate at school which can impact on your school work.
So what can you do to help yourself when you feel stressed?
Talk to someone – this could be a teacher, a parent or carer, a friend or a sibling. Talking to others can help release some of the stress you are feeling and they may also have ideas to help you too.
Remember you can also talk to your school nurse via CHAT HEALTH or arrange to see your school nurse at drop-in.
Have a break – take time out for yourself. As well as making sure your school work is completed on time, make sure you have time to do things you enjoy. This could be spending time with your friends or having a hobby or club that you attend after school or in the evenings
Sleep – getting a good sleep can help, but can also be difficult if you are feeling stressed. Check out our sleep top tips on our sleep page
Exercise – exercise is a great stress buster! Try to get your 60 minutes a day – this might sound a lot but walking to school, PE lessons, or playing a sport after school all count. Visit the EXERCISE page for more information.
Relax – have a relaxing bath or try some breathing techniques to help you feel calm and relaxed.
Be organised – if you feel like you have a long list of things to do and you don’t know where to start, write them down!. Make a list of the things you need to do and plan what you need to do each day. Being organised can help relieve some of the stress you may be feeling and also help you to set aside time to do the things you enjoy!
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