Stress Diagram and 5-Minute Escape!

Hello girls!

I hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving Break. Go eat lots of turkey and pie and have fun spending time with family!

So for this week's tech assignment, I decided to use the Stress Diagram and the 5-Minute Escape as stress management strategies. These two techniques can apply to all of my courses. The 5-Minute Escape is great to use whenever you are feeling stressed out about something. It helps alleviate your stress. The Stress Diagram is a good tool to use to figure out what it is that is causing your stress.

The Stress Diagram is basically a breakdown of the sources of stress that you're experiencing. I wanted to figure out what was causing my stress, which would help me determine on my own how to handle it. First, I made a list of these sources that have been lately causing me stress in order from most stressful to least stressful.

Here is my list of sources:

1. Grades
2. Spending Money
3. Routine Chores
4. Relationships
5. Health

Then, I incorporated all of these sources into a pie chart with each section representing the relative amount of stress it has on my life.

Here is my pie chart:


Since I am a visual learner, this pie chart really helped me recognize what sources were giving me the most stress. For me, grades, chores, and managing money have been the most stressful sources. Now, I understand what is causing me stress and I can find ways to lessen my stress.

For my second strategy, I used the 5-Minute Escape. This is a stress-relieving technique, which incorporates meditation and breathing. I am familiar with meditation considering the fact that I am taking a yoga course. I liked this strategy a lot because it effectively made me feel relaxed and relieved from stress in only a few minutes.

Since I don't have documentation of this technique, I'll just explain the steps of doing this strategy.

First, I made sure that I was in a quiet space. I did this alone in my dorm room in the middle of the day after class, when not many people were around to disrupt me. I closed my eyes and took a couple deep breaths. Then I rolled my shoulders backwards and forwards a couple times, massaged my temples and relaxed my jaw, moved my head in a circular motion, massaged my trapezius muscle, took a few more breaths, then opened my eyes.

This technique was very effective in that it helped clear my head of all the negative and stressful events that were occurring in my life. Since I am also a kinesthetic learner, this technique was really effective in actually relieving me of stress. I recommend using this technique before a test, after class, and any other time when you are feeling stressed.

Both of these stress management techniques are helpful in that the Stress Diagram helps you determine the causes of your stress while the 5-Minute Escape relaxes and alleviates your stress.