Health Center: Anxiety & Stress Management

Stress is an unavoidable part of life and you cannot get through college without facing periods of intense stress related to things like school, relationships, money, and the future. Since stress cannot be avoided, it is our goal at the HealthCenter to help students learn skills to help minimize stress when possible, and to help handle unavoidable stress in ways that are healthy and effective. Professional counselors can help students develop strategies to reduce stress and maintain balance in their lives.

Anxiety Disorders

Symptoms:  As with many conditions, anxiety can take a lot of different forms.  A few of these are listed below to give you a general sense of common types of anxiety.

• Excessive worry about many different life events (school, home, friends, family, job, roommates, traffic, etc.) that can cause the individual to feel “on edge,” easily fatigued, irritable, tense, and feeling like his/her mind is going blank.
• Worries that are excessive and unreasonable related to the presence or anticipation of specific things (spiders, heights, etc.).
• Fears of performance situations (i.e. public speaking) OR social situations where there will be unfamiliar people present or where the individual is confronted with the possibility of being scrutinized by others.
• Symptoms of anxiety which develop following exposure to a traumatic event. Some of these symptoms can include recurrent distressing recollections of the event, recurrent distressing dreams of the event, flashbacks, and psychological and physical distress related to cues that symbolize the traumatic event.
• Worry about feeling panicked in places or in situations from which escape may be difficult or embarrassing OR in which help might not be available.

Panic symptoms are common during times of high anxiety and can include things like: pounding heart, sweating, trembling/shaking, sensation of shortness of breath, chest pain/discomfort, feeling of choking, nausea, feeling dizzy and lightheaded, feeling like being detached from oneself, fear of dying, and fear of losing control or going crazy. Panic symptoms can be triggered or made worse by many different situations, and sometimes worry about panic can make panic worse. Some common reasons for panic include:

Related Link

National Institute for Mental Health

The Unabridged Student Counseling Virtual Pamphlet Collection