Stress Awareness Week 1

Greetings WRSD!

This message is coming to you from the Supportive Services Department:

Each week during the month of April we will send out an email related to stress awareness and ways to reduce stress. We hope you will read these emails, discuss them among yourselves and share the info with your students. During group counseling we will also be discussing and completing activities about this topic.

So this week's focus is: IDENTIFYING UNHEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS

What does that mean? We all have stress in our lives. And we all deal with our own personal stress in different ways. Sometimes we do healthy, beneficial things and sometimes we do things that may feel good in the moment, but may actually be doing us harm in the long term.

How do you know if your coping mechanisms are unhealthy?

Are you withdrawing from your social circle of friends and family? 

Are you oversleeping (sleeping too many hours of the day)?

Are you overeating?

Do you spend too much time watching TV, playing video games, or on social media? (too much could be 2 hours, 4 hours, 12+ hours, etc.)

Are you smoking, drinking, doing drugs?

Taking your anger out on other people and/or animals?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you may need some help finding more positive ways to deal with the stress in your life. The Supportive Services Department is available to meet with students to discuss any of these issues. If you'd like to chat with one of us please seek us out. 

Next week and the following weeks in April we will be discussing ways to improve your coping mechanisms to find more healthy ways to deal with stress. Please feel free to share your ideas and insights with us either in this email or in person. We'd love your feedback!

With Kindness,

Jenro, Lori, and Karen

“How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time” – Morgan Freeman