By: Aurora Dziadul/Staff Writer
Picture yourself having just received a bad grade on an important test you took last week. You’re probably disappointed, sad, and maybe even a little bit angry. The next week, you find yourself feeling the same way after your roommate is finished yelling at you for not picking up your room like they wanted you to.
Unfortunately, stressful events like these are an everyday occurrence in the life of a college student. When balancing school, work, a social life and (hopefully) eight hours of sleep a night, it is easy for things to feel as though they are spiraling out of control. How you deal with these negative situations can determine whether the emotions you are experiencing now will cause you problems down the road.
Please answer the following questions to determine if you are dealing with stress in a way that is harmful to your health:
You receive a bad grade on a test that you took. How do you respond to this?
a. I’m not good at taking tests.
b. This test was really hard.
You notice that your professor seems to be in an especially bad mood this morning, and they disapprove of a comment you made in class. What do you think about this?
a. This professor is always so mean.
b. They must be having a bad day.
You find yourself struggling to understand the material in one of your classes. How do you respond to this?
a. School is awful. I don’t know why I’m here in the first place.
b. It’s just this class. Maybe I should talk to a friend and see if they can help.
If you responded with any a’s to the questions above, you may be struggling with a pessimistic style of attribution. People who are more pessimistic tend to believe that there is nothing that can be done about the bad events that happen. Instead, they think that they are simply inevitable, and that good events only occur for a short period of time (consider the saying, “waiting for the other shoe to drop”). They also tend to think that bad events are global, and generalize specific negative things to the world or to their life as a whole.
Consistently making negative attributions like the ones listed above can lead to a decrease in your hope for the future, and potentially cause depression. On top of that, believing that negative events are internally caused (i.e., “I made this negative event occur”, as opposed to “It just happened”) is linked to lower self-esteem.
Luckily for us, humans are naturally inclined towards optimism. Even if you find yourself spiraling down a pessimistic rabbit hole, you can easily change your way of thinking to produce a happier and more confident you. Consciously changing our automatic pessimistic reactions into optimistic ones has been shown to cause significant improvement in mental, and at times, bodily health. Here’s how you do it!
The first thing to think about is the fact that whatever negative event you are stressing about is not permanent. The argument you are having with your roommate can be resolved through apologies and probably just a few hours away from each other. Your slipping grade can be helped through increased studying, tutoring, help from a friend or professor, or even YouTube videos. Instead of focusing on how terrible the situations seem, try making a list of the ways you can solve it. The solution is probably much easier than you think.
Secondly, try not to focus on the negative event, and instead think of all the positive ones that outweigh it. Although it can be tempting to create a mental list of all the negative things that are occurring around us (after all, we like to feel justified in our misery), creating a list of all the positive things that have happened to you is much more beneficial. This can be as small as a nice conversation you had with your family a couple days ago or the tasty cup of coffee you’re drinking right now. Although it sounds cliché, thinking about the positive makes you realize how much it really does outweigh the negative.
Finally, and most important, don’t be so hard on yourself. Not every bad thing that happens is your fault, and even if it is, that’s okay! Nobody aces every test they take or gets along perfectly with everyone they know. Chances are, even the people with seemingly “perfect” lives are dealing with things you don’t know about. So rather than taking so much responsibility for the negative, focus on the positive things that you have brought about. If a friend compliments you on your favorite sweater, don’t try to push the compliment away (e.g., “I just got it because it was on sale” or “I guess the color is halfway decent”). Appreciate that your friend thinks you have good taste, and take that to heart. If a professor writes a nice comment on the paper you wrote, it’s because you have great ideas. Practice accepting responsibility for the good things that come your way.
These tips should help you reorder your thinking to be more positive and to deal with the stress of a busy semester! However, if you are experiencing persistent negative emotions and stress, remember that you may need to seek outside help, whether that be in the form of counselling services or talking with a close adviser.
Your mental health is important, and if you have any doubts about whether what you’re experiencing is normal, don’t hesitate to contact someone. Nevertheless, I hope these tips will alleviate any feeling of helplessness or despair that becomes so common at this point in the semester.
