[ChipsAhoy]

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.

Hi chips!

Wow, you have certainly done lots of research, and the methods you mentioned are definetly great stress busters.

School can be so stressful. I dropped out in high school when I was 16 because I was just too ill to keep going every day. I have had several diagnoses, Including an anxiety disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder. SO I have definetly dealt with my share of the stress you talk about.



There are ways to get through it, and if you find none of the natural methods to be of much help, then sometimes it is best to try a medication. Effexor XR is VERY good in my experience for anxiety and depression, but I will warn you it can be hard to come off of it when the time comes, if it ever does. For this reason I reccomend staying at the lowest dose possible that works for you. That shouldn't scare you away from taking it because to be honest it saved my life as far as anxiety attacks go. Just something to be aware of and maybe ask about.

And the good thing is if it doesn;t work for you, there is LOTS of other medications you can try too. Sometimes its a manner of trial and error to figure out what works best for you, so also understand it can take a little while.

Tests also stress me out and I usually do badly on them because of it. I'll assume you do the regular things, like study, and keep on top of homework...if you find yourself struggling would it be possible to get a tutor or a study buddy that could help you get through some of the work?

And another thing I suggest to everyone is therapy. If you can get hooked up with a good therapist, all the better. Sometimes just talking it out is enough to make you feel better.

You are certainly dealing with alot of responsibility for your age - I am in awe! I don't know that I could handle the same thing but I congratulate you on chasing your dream of being an engineer. Just try to take it one step at a time, and you will make it.

[ChipsAhoy]

hello rainbowzz
thanks for the reply

I tend to get very anxious during the beginning of the semester. I should start to feel better as the semester progresses. I also find that I am more motivated to study as the semester goes on, which is nice. Classes just started on August 27th. Math and Chemistry are not bothering me very much. Those are my strong areas. It is in English and History that I am going to have more trouble. If I can pass those two classes, I can be done with his English for the rest of my life. It will also be nice to get some liberal arts credits like history and psychology out of the way. I have a meeting with my psychiatrist on Thursday and I am writing down some issues to discuss with her. She is planning on prescribing Effexor XR. I am excited to give it a go. I have been having a hard time lately. I hope that things will start to go smoother as the semester progresses. I also hope that I can stop taking so much Lorazepam. It does help, but it is also highly addictive. I think by this time in October I will be feeling much better and I will be able to get into a "groove" and the semester will start to fly by. I just have to try to keep up with the work and take it week by week. I am going to library soon to check out a book on meditation. I already checked this book out last year and read it, but I think it would be helpful to read it again and practice some of the exercises that they give you. I believe that meditation is the greatest stress reliever of all. It is too bad that so people know how to do it effectively.

I think that I am going to ask for a therapist during my psychiatry appointment on Thursday. I had a therapist for a year but unfortunately he had to retire in July and he left me therapy-less. I thought that I might be able to go without a therapist for a little while, but once school started I began to become exposed to more stress. I realized that a therapist could help me to cope with this stress to make sure that I do not break down and fail all of my classes or end up back in a mental institution.

I think that I should also get more sleep at night. I should take 100 mg of diphenhydramine hydrochloride at 8-9 o'clock and I should be ready for bed by 11 o'clock. I also should start taking naps. It is hard to think straight and be happy if you are tired. I just need to be sure to take the sleeping medication early enough or else I will have a nasty hang-over in the morning and I will be unable to do anything.

I was listening to late night radio in my bed a couple months ago. It must have been about 2 o'clock in the morning and All-Night with Jason Smith was on ESPN Radio. He was talking about how sometimes you outgrow your friends. You may have a certain group of people that you hang out with in high school. There may come a time when you outgrow these friends and you need to "ditch" them. He talked about his own experiences with this and he said that his group of friends did not have any plans after high school and all they really wanted to do was smoke. Jason wanted to go on to college, so he ditched them.

During the show, Jason also takes e-mails from listeners and he occasionally reads them on the air. Jason read several e-mails from people who shared their experiences with ditching their friends. Then Jason read an email from a man who said that while listening to Jason's show that night he realized that he was the one who was ditched by his group of friends. He did not realize this until Jason brought up the topic on his show that night. He then went on to write that his life had gone no where and that he wanted to turn it around. He said that he was going to go back to school and try to get his life back on track.

I just thought that I would share that with you. I don't know why I remember this.

Thanks for the reply.

[Diosa913]

Hey...I'm a student as well. In my last year of college. You said you have social anxiety, I was wondering how you cope with giving presentations and things of that nature in class? I have developed social anxiety in the last few years but it only really affects me when I have to talk in front of a group, just being around people isn't a big deal. Basically right now giving a presentation is out of the question for me. Just wondered if you could relate....