Most college students (92%) say they occasionally feel overwhelmed by the tasks they face, and over a third say they have dropped courses or received low grades in response to severe stress (Duenwald, 2002). No doubt you are among the lucky 8% who are entirely cool and report no stress. But just in case you’re not, you may be interested in stress management techniques.

Stressful events are magnified in the mind. If you fear public speaking, for example, just the thought of an upcoming presentation to a group can create anxiety. And if you do break down during a presentation (going blank, for example, or blurting out something embarrassing), intrusive memories of this stressful event could echo in your mind afterward. A significant part of stress management, then, is control of the mind. Let’s look at three specific strategies.

1. Repressive Coping

Controlling your thoughts is not easy, but some people do seem to be able to banish unpleasant thoughts from the mind. Repressive coping is characterized by avoiding situations or thoughts that are reminders of a stressor and maintaining an artificially positive viewpoint. Everyone has some problems, of course, but repressors are good at deliberately ignoring them (Barnier, Levin, & Maher, 2004). Like Elizabeth Smart, who for years after her rescue focused in interviews on what was happening in her life now rather than repeatedly discussing her past in captivity, people often rearrange their lives in order to avoid stressful situations. It may make sense to try to avoid stressful thoughts and situations if you’re the kind of person who is good at putting unpleasant thoughts and emotions out of mind (Coifman et al., 2007). For some people, however, the avoidance of unpleasant thoughts and situations is so difficult that it can turn into a grim preoccupation (Parker & McNally, 2008; Wegner & Zanakos, 1994).

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2. Rational Coping

Rational coping involves facing the stressor and working to overcome it. This strategy is the opposite of repressive coping and so may seem to be the most unpleasant and unnerving thing you could do when faced with stress. It requires approaching, rather than avoiding, a stressor in order to lessen its longer-term negative impact (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999).

Rational coping is a three-step process. The first step is acceptance, coming to realize that the stressor exists and cannot be wished away. The second step is exposure, attending to the stressor, thinking about it, and even seeking it out. Psychological treatment may help during the exposure step by helping victims to confront and think about what happened. Using a technique called prolonged exposure, rape survivors relive the traumatic event in their imagination by recording a verbal account of the event and then listening to the recording daily. This sounds like bitter medicine indeed, but it is remarkably effective, producing significant reductions in anxiety and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder compared to no therapy and compared to other therapies that promote more gradual and subtle forms of exposure (Foa et al., 1999). The final step is understanding, working to find the meaning of the stressor in your life.

3. Reframing

Changing the way you think is another way to cope with stressful thoughts. Reframing involves finding a new or creative way to think about a stressor that reduces its threat. If you experience anxiety at the thought of public speaking, for example, you might reframe by shifting from thinking of an audience as evaluating you to thinking of yourself as evaluating them, and this might make speech giving easier.

Reframing can take place spontaneously if people are given the opportunity to spend time thinking and writing about stressful events. In one study, the physical health of college students improved after they spent a few hours writing about their deepest thoughts and feelings. Compared with students who had written about something else, these students were less likely in subsequent months to visit the student health center; they also used less aspirin and achieved better grades (Pennebaker & Chung, 2007). In fact, engaging in such expressive writing was found to improve immune function (Pennebaker, Kiecolt-Glaser, & Glaser, 1988), whereas suppressing emotional topics weakened it (Petrie, Booth, & Pennebaker, 1998). The positive effect of self-disclosing writing may reflect its usefulness in reframing trauma and reducing stress.

Stress can express itself as tension in your neck muscles, as back pain, as a knot in your stomach, as sweaty hands, or as the harried face you glimpse in the mirror. Because stress so often manifests itself through bodily symptoms, body management can reduce stress. Here are four techniques.

1. Meditation

Meditation is the practice of intentional contemplation. Techniques of meditation are associated with a variety of religious traditions and are also practiced outside religious contexts. Some forms of meditation call for attempts to clear the mind of thought, others involve focusing on a single thought (e.g., thinking about a candle flame), and still others involve concentration on breathing or on a mantra (a repetitive sound such as om). At a minimum, the techniques have in common a period of quiet.

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Time spent meditating can be restful and revitalizing. Beyond these immediate benefits, many people also meditate in an effort to experience deeper or transformed consciousness. Whatever the reason, meditation does appear to have positive psychological effects (Hölzel et al., 2011). Many believe it does so, in part, by improving control over attention. Interestingly, experienced meditators show deactivation in the default mode network (which is associated with mind wandering; see Figure 5.5 in the Consciousness chapter) during meditation relative to nonmeditators (Brewer et al., 2011). Even short-term meditation training administered to college undergraduates has been shown to improve the connectivity between parts of the brain involved in conflict monitoring and cognitive and emotional control (Tang et al., 2012). These findings suggest that meditators may be better able to regulate their thoughts and emotions, which may translate to a better ability to manage interpersonal relations, anxiety, and a range of other activities that require conscious effort (Sedlmeier et al., 2012).

2. Relaxation

Imagine for a moment that you are scratching your chin. Don’t actually do it; just think about it and notice that your body participates by moving ever so slightly, tensing and relaxing in the sequence of the imagined action. Our bodies respond to all the things we think about doing every day. These thoughts create muscle tension even when we think we’re doing nothing at all.

Relaxation therapy is a technique for reducing tension by consciously relaxing muscles of the body. A person in relaxation therapy may be asked to relax specific muscle groups one at a time or to imagine warmth flowing through the body or to think about a relaxing situation. This activity draws on a relaxation response, a condition of reduced muscle tension, cortical activity, heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure (Benson, 1990). Basically, as soon as you get in a comfortable position, quiet down, and focus on something repetitive or soothing that holds your attention, you relax.

Relaxing on a regular basis can reduce symptoms of stress (Carlson & Hoyle, 1993) and even reduce blood levels of cortisol, the biochemical marker of the stress response (McKinney et al., 1997). For example, in individuals who are suffering from a tension headache, relaxation reduces the tension that causes the headache; in people with cancer, relaxation makes it easier to cope with stressful treatments; in people with stress-related cardiovascular problems, relaxation can reduce the high blood pressure that puts the heart at risk (Mandle et al., 1996).

3. Biofeedback

Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of having to learn to relax, you could just flip a switch and relax as fast as possible? Biofeedback, the use of an external monitoring device to obtain information about a bodily function and possibly gain control over that function, was developed with this goal of high-tech relaxation in mind. You might not be aware right now of whether your fingers are warm or cold, for example, but with an electronic thermometer displayed before you, the ability to sense your temperature might allow you (with a bit of practice) to make your hands warmer or cooler at will (e.g., Roberts & McGrady, 1996).

Biofeedback can help people control physiological functions they are not otherwise aware of. For example, you probably have no idea right now what brain-wave patterns you are producing. But people can change their brain waves from alert beta patterns to relaxed alpha patterns and back again when they are permitted to monitor their brains using an electroencephalograph (also called an EEG and discussed in the Neuroscience and Behavior chapter). Often, however, the use of biofeedback to produce relaxation in the brain may not be much more effective than simply having a person stretch out in a hammock and hum a happy tune.

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4. Aerobic Exercise

Studies indicate that aerobic exercise (exercise that increases heart rate and oxygen intake for a sustained period) is associated with psychological well-being (Hassmen, Koivula, & Uutela, 2000). In various studies, researchers have randomly assigned people to aerobic exercise activities and no-exercise comparison groups and have found that exercise actually does promote stress relief and happiness. One recent review compiled data from 90 studies, including over 10,000 people with chronic illness who were randomly assigned either to exercise or to a no-exercise condition, and the researchers found that people assigned to the aerobic exercise condition experienced a significant reduction in depressive symptoms (Herring et al., 2012). Another recent review showed that exercise is as effective as the most effective psychological interventions for depression (Rimer et al., 2012). Pretty good effects for a simple, timeless intervention with no side effects!

The reasons for these positive effects are unclear. Researchers have suggested that the effects result from increases in the body’s production of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, which can have a positive effect on mood (as discussed in the Neuroscience and Behavior chapter) or from increases in the production of endorphins (the endogenous opioids discussed in the Neuroscience and Behavior and Consciousness chapters; Jacobs, 1994). Perhaps the simplest thing you can do to improve your happiness and health, then, is to participate regularly in an aerobic activity: Sign up for a dance class, get into a regular basketball game, or start paddling a canoe—just not all at once!

After you have tried to manage stress by managing your mind and managing your body, what’s left to manage? Look around and you’ll notice a whole world out there. Situation management involves changing your life situation as a way of reducing the impact of stress on your mind and body.

1. Social Support

The wisdom of the National Safety Council’s first rule—“Always swim with a buddy”—is obvious when you’re in water over your head, but people often don’t realize that the same principle applies whenever danger threatens. Other people can offer help in times of stress. Social support is aid gained through interacting with others. Good ongoing relationships with friends and family and participation in social activities and religious groups can be as healthy for you as exercising and avoiding smoking (Umberson et al., 2006). Lonely people are more likely than others to be stressed and depressed (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and they can be more susceptible to illness because of lower-than-normal levels of immune functioning (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1984).

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Many first-year college students experience something of a crisis of social support. No matter how outgoing and popular they were in high school, newcomers typically find the task of developing satisfying new social relationships quite daunting. Not surprisingly, research shows that students reporting the greatest feelings of isolation also show reduced immune responses to flu vaccinations (Pressman et al., 2005). Time spent getting to know people in new social situations can be an investment in your own health.

The value of social support in protecting against stress may be very different for women and men. The fight-or-flight response to stress may be largely a male reaction; in contrast, the female response to stress is to tend-and-befriend by taking care of people and bringing them together (Taylor, 2002). Like men, women respond to stressors with sympathetic nervous system arousal and the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine; but unlike men, they also release oxytocin, a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland in pregnant and nursing mothers. In the presence of estrogen, oxytocin triggers social responses: a tendency to seek out social contacts, nurture others, and create and maintain cooperative groups. After a hard day at work, a man may come home frustrated and worried about his job and end up drinking a beer and fuming alone. A woman under the same type of stress may instead play with her kids or talk to friends on the phone. The tend-and-befriend response to stress may help to explain why women are healthier and have a longer life span than do men. The typical male response amplifies the unhealthy effects of stress, whereas the female response takes a lesser toll on her mind and body and provides social support for the people around her as well.

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2. Religious Experiences

Polls indicate that over 90% of Americans believe in God, and most who do, pray at least once per day. Although many who believe in a higher power believe that their faith will be rewarded in an afterlife, it turns out that there may be some benefits here on Earth as well. An enormous body of research found associations between religiosity (affiliation with or engagement in the practices of a particular religion), spirituality (having a belief in and engagement with some higher power, not necessarily linked to any particular religion), and positive health outcomes, including lower rates of heart disease, decreases in chronic pain, and improved psychological health (Seybold & Hill, 2001).

Why do people who endorse religiosity or spirituality have better mental and physical health? Engagement in religious/spiritual practices, such as attendance at weekly religious services, may lead to the development of a stronger and more extensive social network, which has well-known health benefits. Those who are religious/spiritual also may fare better psychologically and physically as a result of following the healthy recommendations offered in many religious/spiritual teachings. That is, they may be more likely to follow dietary restrictions, restrain from the use of drugs or alcohol, and endorse a more hopeful and optimistic perspective of daily life events, all of which can lead to more positive health outcomes (Seeman, Dubin, & Seeman, 2003; Seybold & Hill, 2001). On balance, many claims made by some religious groups have not been supported, such as the beneficial effects of intercessory prayer (see FIGURE 13.3). Psychologists are actively testing the effectiveness of various religious and spiritual practices with the goal of better understanding how they might help to explain and improve the human condition.

3. Humor

Wouldn’t it be nice to laugh at your troubles and move on? Most of us recognize that humor can diffuse unpleasant situations and reduce stress. Is laughter truly the best medicine? Should we close down the hospitals and send in the clowns?

There is a kernel of truth to the theory that humor can help us cope with stress. For example, humor can reduce sensitivity to pain and distress. In one study, participants were more tolerant of the pain from an over-inflated blood pressure cuff during a laughter-inducing comedy audiotape than during a neutral tape or instructed relaxation (Cogan et al., 1987).

Humor can also reduce the time needed to calm down after a stressful event. For example, men viewing a highly stressful film about three industrial accidents were asked to narrate the film aloud, either by describing the events seriously or by making their commentary as funny as possible. Although men in both groups reported feeling tense while watching the film and showed increased levels of sympathetic nervous arousal (increased heart rate and skin conductance, decreased skin temperature), those looking for humor in the experience bounced back to normal arousal levels more quickly than did those in the serious story group (Newman & Stone, 1996).

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