6 Healthy Ways to Manage Stress This Autumn

Thu, 17 October, 2024

Can't switch off from work anxiety, or wondering how to help someone who is stressed?

In today's fast-paced world, resilience and maintaining mental well-being have become more crucial than ever, especially for those facing increasing academic, workplace, personal, and cultural pressures. With the autumn’s shorter days, reduced daylight, and cold weather, it is essential to find healthy ways to cope with stress.

The shift from summer to autumn often brings a heavier workload, both at the beginning of the new academic year and in the workplace, as companies experience post-summer project intensification. This can affect mood, leading to lower energy levels and potentially causing Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

In this article, we will explore practical strategies and insights that will empower us in fostering resilience, managing stress, and achieving a healthy study-life balance. Whether you're a student, professional, or someone supporting others, the following guidance aims to provide valuable tools for dealing with stress and navigating the complexities with confidence and well-being.

1. Build resilience

Resilience is an ability to come back from adverse experiences, negative events of life, setbacks and difficult situations as a more self-aware and strong person with focused priorities. However, it is more than just being 'tough'.

Think of a time when you feel like you “can’t cope” and “don’t know enough” or found yourself avoiding a certain situation or in a never-ending loop of negative thinking. For these exact moments, you need to build your resilience.

Resilience helps you view challenges and failure as an opportunity to grow, think positively of the situation and accept them as they are. With practice resilience becomes a natural response, helping you handle challenges more effectively.

5 ways to build resilience​

• Build connection and support network. Connecting with peers build resilience by broaden your social network for supportive behaviour and communication to gain emotional, esteem and tangle support from peers.
• Developing a growth mindset. At every corner of life you will faced with challenges and how to take on these challenges will determine the result. Maintaining a focus and sense of purpose helps you overcome challenges more effectively. For example, If you are working on a dissertation or a project then breaking it down into small milestones, spanning over a set period, will help you achieve a sense of accomplishment toward the bigger picture, achieving graduation or PhD degree. With the help of a growth mindset, one can reflect on what went wrong and proactively strategise to perform better next time.
• Facing fears and accepting changes as a part of life. Doing so will help reduce stress by allowing one to focus on solving problems. This will help foster flexibility, adaptability, embrace change and personal growth.
• Focusing on the positives. Key strategies for resilience development are having a positive view of yourself, positive self-talk, believing in yourself, and recognising that certain areas or situations are beyond your control. This help in building confidence, encourage proactive problem-solving behavior, and create a growth mindset that views challenges as an opportunity rather an obstacles.
• Resisting fight or flight response. Take care of yourself, and learn to regulate your emotions, and your physical and emotional well-being. Learning to regulate your emotions will help you face challenges with greater resilience.

2. Seeking professional help

While building resilience helps, sometimes external support is needed to manage overwhelming stress that is having a negative impact on your lifestyle.

Every student experiences stress, whether they are starting a new term in the UK, particularly overseas students, facing deadline pressure, PhD stress, or personal and cultural changes. There are many ways to relieve stress including talking to a friend or a family member, using time management techniques, breathing exercises, and setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals etc. If, despite trying the above-mentioned suggestions you are still finding yourself feeling anxious, overwhelmed, unusually irritable or afraid, then it might be the right time to seek professional support.

Opting for professional support will provide you with a professional diagnoses, personalised strategies for coping with future challenges, emotion regulation, crisis intervention, and building long-term resilience as well as adaptation strategies for international students.

To learn more about when to see a professional visit here.

3. Balancing study and life

As a student, you might feel full of emotion caused by back-to-back assignments, deadlines, exams, classes and homework, making it difficult to prioritise personal life and social well-being. The good news is that achieving a balance between study and life is easy.

Things you can do to achieve a perfect balance between study and life are prioritised self-care, paying attention to your feelings and reprioritise, setting daily priorities, balancing your diet, creating balanced schedules, adequate sleep, and taking breaks to disconnect from pressures.

In addition, engage in activities that bring joy, excitement, and contentment outside your academic sphere by joining clubs, sports, and hobbies that you are passionate about.

Remember, excessive work demands and personal pressure can lead to stress and anxiety and, in some cases can even cause burnout. Hence, it is important to establish boundaries between study and personal life to ensure both aspects receive appropriate attention. Achieving this balance will help improve productivity, reduce stress levels and enhance well-being.

4. Physical health and fitness

Stress is inevitable and it can disrupt your daily life. However, one can easily manage stress through regular physical activity and prioritise fitness. One of the proven methods to improve stress is exercise. It helps to not only improve endorphin levels but also help with mood boosters and help improve sleep, lower anxiety and provide a healthy distraction from daily routine to promote relaxation.

Incorporate activities like walking, yoga and running into your routine. Aim for 30 minutes, daily, of moderate exercise each day to boost your mood and reduce stress.

5. Journaling

Journaling is an effective ways to manager stress by exploring your thoughts and feelings surrounding your daily life experience. But the key is to consistency and writing in detail about your feelings and thoughts involving a stressful event.

Once you get into the habit of journaling you will be able to notice some significant benefits including emotion regulation, clarity of thoughts and feelings, relief from depression through the recognition and remediation of negative thoughts, processing of traumatic events and releasing emotion. In addition, it also offers physical benefits which you will notice in the form of a reduced number of sick days, improved immune system and ability to cope will illness.

As a beginner set a goal to journal 10 to 15 minutes for at least three days a week for 12 weeks, either in the morning or before bed. You can start with writing on a paper, keep it simple and write on anything you want to. Remember, there is no hard and fast rule to journaling and it is your place to express your feelings without worrying about the sentence structure or grammar. If you don’t like writing then you can even try voice memo.

6. Seasonal health: Food and full of treats

Autumn is a beautiful time to be outdoors, offering a myriad of benefits for both physical and mental well-being. The crisp air invigorates the senses, making activities like hiking and jogging particularly refreshing. The vibrant hues of foliage, with leaves transitioning from green to brilliant reds and golds, provide a stunning backdrop that can lift the spirit.

Spending time outside in this season promotes physical activity, which is essential for maintaining health and reducing stress. Additionally, the seasonal changes encourage mindfulness, allowing individuals to appreciate the natural beauty around them. Engaging with nature during autumn can enhance mood, foster social connections through outdoor gatherings, and provide a perfect opportunity for reflection as the year winds down.

For health and well-being, food holds as much importance as oxygen and water in your life. There is a saying ‘You are, what you eat.’ Autumn brings variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables peak nutrients and flavours, making them a healthy and cost-effective solution during the price spikes and increasing inflation.

In the UK, the autumn season starts with Halloween and it is the best time to binge on squashes and pumpkins, along with a variety of roots and brassicas vegetables as well as leeks, potatoes, spinach, etc. In addition, you can try some seasonal fruits apples, pears, plums, blackberries and cranberries.

 

In a nutshell, by building resilience, seeking professional help, balancing study and life, staying active and eating healthy, as well as learning how to express and regulate your emotions through journaling, students can effectively manage stress this autumn. By incorporating these strategies into your daily routine, you'll not only manage stress this autumn but also build a solid foundation for long-term mental well-being.