I have been under a lot of stress lately in school. as a high school senior i am taking classes at a local community college and it is very stressful. i am taking 15 credits right now and i am currently freaking out. i have broke down and starting crying a few times, and i am unsure if i am going to be able to keep up with the work. i have a lot of social anxiety, which doesn't help at all.

the stress comes in the form of tests and writing assignments. i am in a math class right now where a lot of homework is assigned and we have a quiz every week on the sections that we covered in the previous week. i feel that even though the semester is only 2 and a half weeks old i am already starting to break down. i hope that i do not end up in a mental hospital like i did two years ago when i could not handle the social pressures of a large public high school.

i have visited a few websites hoping to find some information about helpful ways to cope with stress. i learned that if a human is exposed to excessive amounts of stress for prolonged periods of time, their health may begin to deteriorate. they might experience physical and psychological problems. i hope that i do not come to that point. i am trying to find some good ways to cope with stress so that i do not begin to fall apart. one good method that i read about is called meditation. apparently the goal of meditation is to clear your mind of outside distractions and try to focus on what your mind is thinking. you need to learn to control your thought processes and you should also learn how to clear your mind of all conscious thoughts. if you are able to focus on something (such as a mantra, your breath, or a body part), your mind will begin to enter a new stage of consciousness which is very beneficial to your physical body as well as to your psychological well-being. very experienced monks who have meditated for years report that they can completely escape from their body and their conscious. they also claim to see vivid hallucinations while meditating. in an experiment performed at a mind body medicine hospital a group of buddhist monks were hooked up to EEG's and thermometers so that their body temperature could be monitored. they were placed in a room that was below freezing, and wet towels were draped on their backs. they were able to produce so much body heat through the method of meditation that they were using that they evaporated the water off of the towels. many humans would have contracted hypothermia in this situation, but the excess body heat produced by the monks in meditation prevented this from happening. meditation can be a powerful tool in the quest for self-actualization. i am hoping that if i can practice meditating and become more skilled in the art i can use it to cope with some of the stress that i have been dealing with lately.

another method of coping that i would like to try to use is exercise. i used to be a runner in high school. i played soccer and ran track my freshman year and ran cross country my sophomore year. i was pretty good at running and was on the varsity team. since i transferred from the school because of my social anxieties, my body went down hill and i am not in shape at all anymore. last march i went to a local athletic club and ran on the treadmills. running on the treadmills was very relaxing, and i could even watch college basketball while running. i read something about endorphins. apparently they are a neurotransmitter, and when released in the brain they produce sensations of euphoria. runniing can trigger the release of these hormones, leading to the "runners high".

right now i am having trouble keeping my head above water. i have been under a lot of stress over the past couple of weeks and i am hoping that i am going to be able to make it through the semester. then i need to make it through spring semester and finally graduate from high school. i want to be an engineer. i worry about my anxieties and sometimes wonder if my social phobia will hinder my chances of becoming an engineer in some way.

so my question is this. do any of you have any ideas about how to cope with stress? should i take a walk? should i take a run? should i eat more? should i see a therapist? should i start taking a psychiatric medication? (i have a meeting with my doctor on thursday, she is planning on starting me on a drug called effexor xr, and she says that it should help with the depression and anxiety) i sure hope that i don't fail all of my courses this semester. that would not be good. i hope that i can get a passing grade in all of them. it is a stressful time. i think that if the psychiatrist can prescribe mt he right medication, i should be alright and eventually i will be able to mature and go ahead with my life and become an engineer.

\i am sorry if this post is confusing. i am also sorry if it doesn't have a point. sometimes i find it helpful to write down what i am feeling.

i am really tired right now so i am going to sleep. i guess i will take with all of you tomorrow. i look forward to seeing you in the chat. i have history paper due tomorrow and i am going to have to finish it tomorrow before class. that is okay. history is my least favorite subject (besides english, of course) i wonder why i am so tired. i did not take any sleeping medication. oh wait, yes i did, i took 2 tablets of Simply Sleep (diphenhydramine) 25 mg each for a total of 50 mg. i am sleepy now.

so what is your favorite method for coping with stress? what are your favorite methods for coping with stress in school?
also, what medications have you taken and what is your favorite.