High school consists of some of the most inconsistent years of a person’s life. Teens deal with so much change during these four years. On top of all the hormones, complicated social lives, and impending college expectations, we have to deal with everyday academic pressures. It’s easy to begin to feel overwhelmed. 

75% of high school students say they feel stressed by academics often, and 61% of teens between the ages of 13 to 17 admit feeling stressed by producing satisfactory grades.

However, there are so many great ways to manage all the stress students face.

Time Management

One of the best ways to deal with overwhelming work is to find a way to manage your time. Especially if you’re doing extracurriculars, you need to make time for different things, yourself, and your homework. 

Even without extra activities, procrastination is an easy place to find yourself in. An APA’s article “Procrastination or ‘intentional delay’?” They state that 80 to 95 percent of college students procrastinate, particularly when it comes to doing their coursework

It is a common habit, but potentially harmful, affecting your everyday chores and work but it can also quickly become a habit. Thus, we have to reduce distractions. One leading distraction for many is the screens we consume ourselves with every day. Try to step away from places with a TV or desktop, shut off your phone, and even place it in a different room. These small changes can make a big difference to keeping you focused. This method doesn’t just work with technology. Separate yourself from anything that may cause you to stray off from what you are doing.

Breaks are a huge help when becoming overwhelmed by schoolwork. However, we want to make timely breaks in between our work to not stray off-path. The Pomodoro technique is a common work technique consisting of 25-minute work stretches with 5-minute breaks, then you repeat. After 4 work stretches of this, your break gets expanded to 15 minutes until you start again. This method will keep you productive while giving timely breaks for your brain to rest.

The main goal is to create a strong routine.  Spacing our activities and sectioning off time for specific things. Routines help us to stay focused and organized. While sticking to a routine can be difficult, it will definitely benefit your mental health. The best way to start crafting your own routine is to make a regular list of everything you plan to do in the day while leaving free time in between. Setting reminders and alarms are great ways to help encourage your routine.

Acknowledgment

Sometimes we are dealing with a lot of stress without even realizing it. Stress can affect so many ways of our everyday lives. Therefore it’s extremely important to know the signs of being overwhelmed. Becoming easily agitated or wound up, distancing yourself, fatigue, and headaches, are all symptoms of stress. Now that you have acknowledged your stress, it is time to take the next step of self-care.

A lot of times it is easier to ignore the stress and anxiety washing over you, but that only makes it worse. By holding these feelings in, symptoms just get worse. You begin to hold all this weight on your shoulders which eventually turns into depression and worsened anxiety. So, put your emotions elsewhere. A common solution is to confide in trusted friends or family and ask for help carrying the load. If you aren’t comfortable talking to someone, another great method is to journal. Taking aggression and sorrow out on a piece of paper through words and art are great ways to acknowledge your feelings.

Distraction Techniques

When your anxiety begins to take over, there are some wonderful methods to ground yourself. A lot of these methods, you can do in a public setting, such as a class, without raising attention to yourself. A very common way to minimize stress and anxiety is to do simple breathing techniques. Just breathe in, hold, and exhale. Fairly easy, right? However, it may not be what you are looking for at the moment. Another way to help is to distract yourself. There are many distraction exercises but here are some of my favorites.

There are a few visual methods that can be used by just looking around your environment. The first exercise is to look around and name something around you for every letter of the alphabet within any category. For instance, you may become overwhelmed in history class and decide to do this exercise. Looking around for something starting with “A”, you may find an apple. Then you move on to “B”, you may find a book, and so on. The next exercise is very similar to the last but instead of going down the alphabet, you will go down the rainbow, naming 2 things around you in each color. 

The next set of exercises are simple things to do with your hands. My favorite is to tap your fingers together to make a rhythm or sequence. Or, if you know sign language, subtly spell out the alphabet with your hands. 

If none of these work for you, there are hundreds more on the internet for you to find and try.

High school can be extremely overwhelming but with these coping methods, you can prioritize your mental health the best you can as well as manage your work a bit better.