College Stress: Why Standard Avice For Dealing With It Is Outdated ...

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Copyright ? 2012 M.C.Orman, M.D., FLP

Everybody knows there is plenty of stress on college campuses today. Also, there?s plenty of guidance and self-help advice available that is aimed at helping college students improve their ability to cope with stress more successfully.

I believe, however, that much (but not all) of the existing advice for coping with college stress is both ineffective and outdated. Let me explain why.

Standard Advice For Coping With College Stress

Most existing advice for coping with college stress centers on the following types of problems:

-The stress of choosing and getting into college
-Freshman stress (adjustment challenges)
-General academic anxiety and workload
-Test/Exam anxiety
-Social stress
-Sleep deprivation
-Substance abuse
-Self-esteem issues
-Bullying (including cyber-bullying)
-Violence (including the fear of violence)

Sometimes, it might be necessary for college students to seek out a competent mental health professionals or therapist to help them work through these common problems when they become major sources of stress. But for the vast majority of students who experience these problems to a lesser degree, there?s a ton of self-help advice out there for dealing with college stress or with stress in general.

Examples of self-help advice for dealing with college stress include:

-Create a quiet work-space where you can concentrate without distractions.
-Create a system to keep organized (note taking, assignments, exam dates).
-Try to manage your time well (study times, break times, social time).
-Learn to practice relaxation and other stress management techniques.
-Learn to use visualization and mental imagery.
-Be vigilant about making sure you get enough sleep.
-Don?t overuse alcohol, illegal drugs, food or other chemicals to cope.
-Keep junk foods to a limit and try to eat a healthy diet.
-Exercise regularly.
-Learn effective study skills and develop good study habits.
-Think optimistically and maintain a positive attitude.

Sound familiar? This is the same type of standard self-help advice you?ve probably received, over and over again, to cope with your own stress, both during and after college.

Why Is This Advice Outdated?

While most of the existing self-help advice about stress makes sense, and while it would certainly help if faithfully followed, it usually doesn?t go deep enough. It?s mostly directed at controlling the student?s external environment, minimizing external stressors, improving diet, exercising, using relaxation techniques, etc.

It doesn?t really get to the heart of the matter.

It doesn?t help students to better understand how to do battle with their internal causes of stress. Sure external factors, such as having noisy or inconsiderate roommates, being bullied or being made fun of by others, and not being well-organized clearly play a role. But why do some students deal very well with noisy roommates, while others give up and decompensate? And why do some students deal with bullying better than others. And if you?re not very well-organized, then what?s going on within you that?s keeping you from manifesting these very useful skills?

You see, it?s the internal factors that are most important for college students to learn how to address, because these are the ones we all have much more control over. And most (but not all) self-help advice, whether it?s about dealing with stress in college or dealing with stress in general, either doesn?t address internal causes at all, or it addresses these causes in ways that are not very empowering.

Mort (Doc) Orman, M.D. is a physician, author, stress coach and Founder of The Stress Mastery Academy. He also writes a popular stress relief blog at http://ormanstressrelief.com To learn more about his free College Stress Relief E-Book, visit http://collegestress.net

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