tips to deal with stress

Stress. 

Let’s face it, we all deal with it, especially as teens, and with being back in school for just over a month, my stress levels have been sent through the roof. And since I’m in Year 11 at school (also known as the dreaded GCSE year), I’ve had homework for almost every lesson at the same time, leaving me feeling overwhelmed and stressed to the point where I ended up crying. Because of this, I decided to look up ways to deal with stress in a healthier way. Here are the things I tried and how much I feel like they helped me. Some of these might help you, some of them might not, but this is just what I personally found out.
 
1)      Colouring.
Yep, I know what you’re thinking, “we aren’t two years old anymore, why would we want to do colouring?”. I thought the exact same thing but I found that, when I was panicked, it helped me to have something to focus on and to calm myself down. I personally like the ones that are quite intricate but they are more time consuming so aren’t a good idea if you don’t have a lot of time on your hands. I’ll put a link to one that I’m currently working on: 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Enchanted-Forest-Inky-Quest-Colouring/dp/1780674872

2)      Listen to music. For me, this was fairly obvious, but I thought I’d include it anyway, because this is the one thing for me that I’ve always used since I was younger and it never fails to help me. The music that I tend to listen to (not just when I’m stressed) is Dodie’s EPs ‘Intertwined’ and ‘You’. This is because I relate to a lot of the songs and there are a few about mental health, which, at least for me, is not a topic you hear about in songs a lot, which makes them unique.

3)      Do some light exercise. This is one of those that for me really depended on my overall mood and how stressed I was. In a few cases, it didn’t really work, but when it did, it helped quite a lot.

4)      Hang out with friends. This one was hard for me, because I live far away from most of my friends, but even texting somebody helped, although face to face works best for a lot of people. I video call my friends a lot and I always find that I’m less stressed after talking to them, or just having them on the other side of the screen when we didn’t have anything to say. For me, this was the best way of doing this method because I struggle with face to face contact because of my anxiety.

5)      Set yourself a small goal. I know this might sound weird because it seems like it will cause added stress, but if you set it around something you enjoy, I've found that it can actually relieve stress. An example of a goal I set was to learn something new such as a new song on piano.
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I hope these tips help you, if you do use any of these, let me know how they work out for you. Also, if you want any more help you can DM me on one of my Instagram accounts.
Personal (not used as much): nikki_shannon_2002
Dodie Fan account: dodie_trash_
Remember to stay strong and I’m always here if you need me,
Alex ❤️