Stress is a silent killer. While everyone experiences stress in their life, it’s the chronic, long-term kind which greatly exacerbates one’s health and can lead to conditions such as high blood pressure, clogged arteries, anxiety and depression.
In an article about stress responses on health, Howard E. LeWine, Chief Medical Editor and Editorial Advisory Board Member of Harvard Health Publishing, explains that if left unchecked, stress is like a “motor that is idling too high for too long.” Mitigation can only do so much when the engine is overworked.
Yet modernity demands efficiency. Productivity. “Living to work,” not “working to live,” has replaced the status quo. For many Americans, making ends meet means sacrificing self-care routines.
LeWine offers research-backed techniques to help reduce our stress responses, including practicing mindful breathing, doing yoga, tai chi and other physical exercises and maintaining a close social network. These provide life-enhancing benefits, but these differ, of course, for each individual.
I feel most relaxed when curled up in bed, safe under my covers, watching movies, shows or reading webnovels that make me cry — all so that I may forget my worries and drown myself in fictional woes.
When I asked fellow Bruins how they deal with stress — academic, social or otherwise — Hannah Taylor, a second-year sociology and immigration studies student, said that what works best for her is staying active, getting outside and immersing herself in her surroundings, thus minimizing her problems.
“In the grander scheme of things,” she told me, “it really doesn’t matter. We’re all humans. We all make mistakes. We want to try our best and have fun. That’s how I manage my stress.”
Taylor also mentioned journaling, attending therapy and speaking about her issues with others as providing her with valuable outside perspectives. For her, self-care means carefully listening to your internal and external cues. She ended by saying, “I think sometimes it’s a privilege to be able to put yourself first. However, I think we should strive to do it because it really is important.”
For Jagger Berchtold, a second-year student under UCLA’s Pathways Program, listening to music and listening to himself allows him to work hard while prioritizing his own needs. A sweet treat never hurts, either. Though times are not always easy, he said, “I can power through it because I’m more than capable of powering through it.” A message we should all take into account.
First-year business economics student, Manuel Alvarado, balances responsibility with new hobbies. “Watching baseball, specifically the Dodgers, and also playing video games — that’s how I cope with the stress level,” he answered. While he tries to prioritize his mental well-being, he finds that academic stress hinders his ability. Yet for Alvarado, self-care means simply doing the things that make you happy, the things that he loves. And as long as you make time for that, that is all that matters. I have to agree.
There is no universal way to handle stress (and in fact, stress itself varies greatly), but we all have things we love doing outside of that. Whether it be staying active and immersing yourself in nature, or listening to music and pursuing your many hobbies, self-care comes in as many forms as stress itself.
So long as we’re doing what’s right for ourselves — prioritizing these personal strategies and making time for them in our busy lives — only then can we focus on prevention rather than mitigation. On self-care over stress.
