Stress Management

Understanding and Coping with Stress

Learning Target

Students will demonstrate their understanding by identifying a current source of stress in their lives and talking to a partner about ways they might cope with it.

​

Students will understand that they can improve their ability to handle stressful situations by:

• Identifying sources of stress in their lives
• Choosing helpful coping strategies, including certain attitudes about stress, and
• Asking for help when stress feels unmanageable

What is Stress?

Stress is the body’s automatic response to a challenge, pressure, or threat. These situations trigger changes in the body that can be uncomfortable, such as racing heartbeat, fast breathing, feeling shaky, or sweating.

​

This is also called the fight, flight, or freeze response, because these changes in your body are intended to help you respond to the threat or challenge. You might notice the desire to fight back, run away/avoid the stressor, or freeze up.

​

Stress and anxiety have a lot of overlap, but are different concepts.

How do teens experience stress and anxiety?

What are the biggest sources of stress for high school students today?

Instructions:

• Take 3 minutes to discuss the question with one or two people near you.
• Have one group member keep a list as you brainstorm.
• Then, gather as a class to share your lists, building on each other to create a master list on the board!

Three Types of Stress

1. Positive Stress
1. School, homework, activities, trying something new, presentation, test
2. Tolerable Stress
• Difficult or unpredictable, but temporary or gets easier to manage over time
• Loss of a loved one, moving or switching schools, a pandemic, injury or illness
3. Toxic Stress
• Stress that lasts a long time or doesn’t go away
• Bullying, discrimination, harassment, mental health challenges, witnessing violence or abuse

Q: We brainstormed many examples of stressors high schoolers experience. What kinds of stress do you think these fall under?

• Positive Stress
• School, homework, activities, trying something new, presentation, test
• Tolerable Stress
• Difficult or unpredictable, but temporary or gets easier to manage over time
• Loss of a loved one, moving or switching schools, a pandemic, injury or illness
• Toxic Stress
• Stress that lasts a long time or doesn’t go away
• Bullying, discrimination, harassment, mental health challenges, witnessing violence or abuse

Different Responses to Stress

Two people can go through the same situation and experience it differently.

What one person finds to be a tolerable stress, another might experience as extremely stressful OR not stressful at all.

Consider public speaking, or heights!

​

​

How we feel about and respond to stress depends on a lot of factors, like:

• Coping skills
• Support system (supportive family, friends, teachers)
• Access to resources for help
• Amount of stressors that have “piled up”
• History of having coped with a similar experience in the past

Agree/Disagree/Unsure

This is a healthy/helpful coping strategy. Agree/Disagree/Unsure?

​

• A student is stressed about giving a presentation in class at the end of the week. They try to cope with the stress by avoiding thinking about the presentation and bingeing shows instead.
• A student is being bullied verbally in person and on social media nearly every day by other students in their grade. They try to ignore it.
• A student-athlete feels nervous about not making the varsity team in the fall. They use their feelings as motivation to go to bed on time and wake up early for workouts throughout the summer.
• A student who is feeling a lot of pressure to get high grades in all of their classes starts using marijuana on the weekends with friends to relieve tension.
• A student who is going through a lot of family conflict talks to a close friend about it.
• A student struggling with a recent break-up and considering self-harm posts about their feelings on social media

How Can Stress Make Us Stronger?

Closing:

How can stress make us stronger?

Take-aways:

1. Stress can give me energy to tackle challenges
2. Stress reminds me to reach out to others and stay connected with my support system
3. Although I would never choose a difficult situation, I can learn and grow from stressful experiences

​

Seeking Help

Signs that you might benefit from some extra support:

​

• Struggling to cope, or feeling like you just don’t know what to do to feel better
• Relying on unhealthy coping skills like drugs, alcohol, or other forms of coping just to numb/distract yourself
• Using self-harm (like cutting or burning)
• Having thoughts of suicide or wishing you weren’t alive

Seeking Help

​

You can find help and resources a lot of places!

​

• a trusted adult… parent, relative, or teacher
• These adults may be able to listen, give advice, or help you find other resources
• your school counselor or other mental health professional

​

Iowa Crisis Chat

• Online chat available 9:00am to 2:00am
• Hot line available 24/7 by phone at: 1-855-325-4296.

​

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

• Online chat as well as hotline available 24/7 at: 1-800-273-8255

​

​

Academic Vocabulary

• stress - a physical and emotional response to difficult or demanding circumstances
• positive stress - the usual pressures of everyday life. Examples: being busy, feeling nervous before a high-pressure situation, disagreements with classmates or friends
• tolerable stress - stress that arises from challenging life situations that are typically temporary. Examples include moving, family conflict, break-ups, the loss of a pet or close friend or family member, natural disasters
• toxic stress - feeling overwhelmed by stress over a long period of time, or stress that exceeds a person’s coping skills or resources. Examples include ongoing health issues, mental health issues, ongoing bullying, abuse, domestic violence
• stressor - something that causes an uncomfortable physical or emotional reaction experienced as strain or tension
• fight- or-flight-or freeze response - another description for the stress response, which describes automatic responses in the body that cause a person to want to escape, fight, or freeze in situation
• cope - to use personal resources to manage emotions and physical reactions to stress

Learning Target

Students will understand that they can build resilience for handling stressful situations by identifying sources of stress, adopting particular mindsets about stress, and asking for help when needed.

Students will demonstrate their understanding by identifying a current source of stress in their lives and talking to a partner about ways they might cope with it.

Getting Help

Iowa Crisis Chat

• Iowa Crisis Chat provides non-judgmental support for individuals facing emotional crisis. Our highly trained volunteers and staff are available from 9:00am to 2:00am central time, seven days a week. If it is outside of our hours of operation, the link above will connect you to Your Life Iowa‘s 24/7 chat. You can also call us 24/7 at 1-855-325-4296.

Your Life Iowa (crisis line & chat)

• We walk beside you so you’re never alone. When you don’t know who to turn to about a problem with alcohol, drugs, gambling, suicidal thoughts or mental health, Your Life Iowa is here for you 24/7. We provide free, confidential support and connect you to resources meant to help you get your life back on track.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

• We can all help prevent suicide. The Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.