Tips for Managing Stress

MIT may be a culture shock and as you progress through your first term, you may be facing new pressures and more demands on your time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed in this situation, especially if you have too much on your plate. Therefore, the tips below have been compiled to help you identify stress and how to eliminate it.

1. The first step is to identify stress, so how do you know if you’re overwhelmed and stressed? The following are some common stress symptoms:
   
   
   • Inability to sleep or sleeping too much.
     
     
   • "Reverse sleep habit": staying up all night, sleeping during the day.
     
     
   • Feeling isolated. No time for friends.
     
     
   • Poor eating habits.
     
     
   • Neglecting exercise or your favorite activity.
     
     
   • Excessive involvement in extracurricular activities or job: these can be used as ways to avoid schoolwork.
     
     
   • Missing classes and appointments. Poor or non-existent time management skills.
     
     
   • Feelings of apathy, depression, and homesickness.
     
     
     
2. Once you've identified your stress symptoms, the next step is to work on alleviating your stress. Here are a few tips to get you started:
   
   
   • Try to get enough sleep. A good nights rest can do wonders for your state of mind. If you have trouble getting to sleep, try to avoid caffeine or television before going to bed, they may keep you awake. Also, try to establish a regular sleep schedule-once you do your body will get tired around that time everyday.
     
     
   • Try to exercise and eat well. Your body needs to be nourished and exercise can help you burn off your stress, by giving you something else to focus on. The Z-Center and DAPER have a host of exercise facilities and classes available to you.
     
     
   • Talk to people who can help. See the resources outlined below.
     
     
   • Learn some stress management techniques. Consider mediation, yoga, tai chi, diaphragmatic breathing or other relaxation techniques. MIT Medical offers a number of stress relief and wellness classes.
     
     
   • Check out the stress tips posted on the MIT Medical website for some additional tips and techniques for reducing stress.
     

Getting Help When You Are Stressed

If you feel overwhelmed, sad, depressed, or unable to deal with your situation, your first response may be to keep it to yourself. After all, you may think, you should be able to deal with this, since you have always dealt with all your problems by yourself in the past.

However, there are many people at MIT whose primary purpose is to help you.

• Your first source of assistance is your advisor. He or she can offer a friendly ear, may be able to help you directly, and can certainly direct your towards people and offices who can.
  
  
• Also, staff in Student Support Services and MIT Mental Health Services are available to help you with any issues that you may be experiencing.