Beating stress

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/i-wanna-talk-about/beating-stress

How To Immediately Stop Stressing Out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DshUw2Gwaag

Teens feeling stressed

Is your everyday life tense and stressful? How do you relieve and reduce stress?

It is said that stress is also a motivating force to drive you to do better. What do you think?

What causes your stress?

How do you feel, both physically and emotionally?

What do you do to make yourself feel better? 

Teens feeling stressed, and many not managing it well

Teens say they're feeling the stress in all areas of their lives, from school to friends, work and family. And they aren't always using healthy methods to cope, finds a new national survey.

Experts worry that bad habits for dealing with stress learned early will carry over into adulthood.

(A)
Teens across the USA are feeling high levels of stress that they say negatively affect every aspect of their lives, a new national survey suggests. More than a quarter (27%) say they experience "extreme stress" during the school year, vs. 13% in the summer. And 34% expect stress to increase in the coming year.
Stressors range from school to friends, work and family. And teens aren't always using healthy methods to cope, finds the latest Stress in America survey from the Washington, D.C.-based American Psychological Association. Findings on more than 1,000 teens and almost 2,000 adults suggest that unhealthy behaviors associated with stress may start early and continue through adulthood. With 21% of adults reporting "extreme" stress levels, the survey says that with teens "mirroring adults' high-stress lives" they are "potentially setting themselves up for a future of chronic stress and chronic illness."
The report warns that teens are at risk of a variety of physical and emotional ills and potentially shorter lifespans than their elders if they don't act to "reverse their current trajectory of chronic illness, poor health and shorter lifespans." "Our study this year gives us a window in looking at how early these patterns might begin," says clinical psychologist Norman Anderson, the association's CEO. "The patterns of stress we see in adults seem to be occurring as early as the adolescent years — stress-related behaviors such as lack of sleep, lack of exercise, poor eating habits in response to stress."
 (B)
Hannah Sturgill, 18, of Portsmouth, Ohio, was among those surveyed last summer when she was 17 and heading into her senior year in high school. "The last two years in high school have been the most stressful for me and my friends," she says. "We have to do everything and be perfect for colleges and we have a big workload. Most of the time we talk about how stressed we are." Sturgill says she skips meals because of stress. Unlike many teens surveyed, she goes to the gym to work out every day. Only about 37% of teens surveyed exercise or walk to manage stress; 28% play sports. Many more choose what experts say are less healthy activities, including playing video games (46%) and spending time online (43%).
This is the first time the group has focused on teen stress. Other research has studied teen depression and other mental health concerns, but officials say this may be the most comprehensive national look at stress in teens to date. Despite anecdotal reports of high stress, researchers say stress itself in adolescents hasn't been studied broadly; global comparisons have focused on adult stress rather than teens.
Despite teens' own perceptions, some experts question whether stress is merely a convenient excuse for teen behaviors. "It's hard to know" if all the negative effects teens report are "really based on stress," says clinical psychologist Jonathan Abramowitz, of Chapel Hill, N.C. "It's hard enough for anyone to really explain why they do certain things, like procrastinating. Give a kid any excuse — it may or may not have anything to do with stress."
(C)
Michael Bradley, a psychologist in Feasterville, Pa., who specializes in teens, agrees. "I'm not sure it would be the clinical definition of stress. I think they get stressed because somebody puts a demand on them and they don't want to do it," he says. "However, on their behalf, I will fall back on the fact that hard numbers tell us kids are more anxious and depressed than they've ever been."
A literature review of mental health among U.S. adolescents by the non-profit Child Trends released last year, for example, found that one in four high school students have shown mild symptoms of depression. The report noted symptoms include persistent irritability, anger, withdrawn behavior and deviations from normal appetite or sleep patterns. The report also said 29% of high school students in grades 9-12 reported feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or longer during the past year.
Bradley says teens need help from parents — to a point. "Some parents set out on a mission to get rid of stress in their kids, but the fact is, some degree of stress is very therapeutic and an appropriate amount of stress is what helps us become strong. The hard part is what's appropriate," Bradley says. "We do know the more we try to mitigate all stress in our children's life the less resilient that child becomes and they feel hopeless about their own future."