Take Care of Your Mental Health
A high school student’s life is far from simple. Particularly important were the years between classes X and XII. Students must put in a lot of effort during these years to achieve academic excellence and prepare diligently for competitive exams. Despite the uncertainty of the future, students are expected to persevere during these years, which are pivotal in their lives.
The result is typically straightforward: learn everything you can to develop the career of your dreams. However, the procedure is demanding, leaving students stressed and prone to illnesses like anxiety and depression.
Here’s How to Manage Academic Expectations While Taking Care of Your Mental Health.
Ways To Assess & Deal With Academic Stress:
Let’s first clarify what academic stress is. Academic stress is what you’re going through if you’re feeling burdened by the pressure of getting good grades, placing in the top five, and finishing your schoolwork.
What results from this stress in the classroom, then? Students who are under constant academic pressure are more likely to experience physical symptoms of stress like anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and self-confidence problems. If this occurs, students should talk to a family member they can trust and seek professional mental health assistance.
However, since prevention is always preferable to cure, we’ve put together a list of various academic stressors and pressures, as well as solutions.
Understand Self-Imposed Pressure: Take Care of Your Mental Health
You may have high expectations for your academic performance as a student. This is admirable, but are you being too hard on yourself when you fail to meet your objectives?
If you are, you might be putting too much pressure on yourself. You need to understand that you are more than your grades to overcome this. Instead of being hard on yourself, you might want to concentrate on developing extracurricular interests and skills that make you happy and enhance your resume.
Learn About Career-Related Pressure: Take Care of Your Mental Health
There will be a lot of pressure on you to achieve exceptional grades and pass competitive exams if you want to pursue a career as a doctor or engineer. To explore your options whenever you feel pressure, you might want to access career counseling. If you are committed to working toward your ideal career, you may want to do so with the proper preparation and step-by-step approach.
Setting small goals that will help you achieve your big goal is the key. It’s crucial to ask for assistance when circumstances become challenging. You can move forward and solve your problems thanks to this. Keep in mind that failure teaches you more than you can imagine.
Manage Family Expectations: Take Care of Your Mental Health
It makes sense that your family would want you to succeed in all that you can. Their hopes for you and encouragement are meant to spur you on to succeed and achieve your objectives. These demands, though, can be overwhelming and make you feel as though you’ll disappoint your family if you don’t live up to them.
Knowing that you can talk to your family at any time and express your feelings is crucial. It’s important to understand that grades do not accurately reflect how much your family values you. No matter your grades or rank, you are loved.
Avoid Comparing Yourself With Your Peers: Take Care of Your Mental Health
There are two types of peer pressure: one where you frequently compare how well you perform to your peers, and the other where you are compelled to change your behavior to fit in. In the former, you might catch yourself evaluating your performance in comparison to your classmates.
This might make you feel unwell and put more pressure on you to perform well. You can be motivated by some friendly competition. However, it could impede your development if you appear to be very affected by your peers’ performance. You might feel anxious and be unable to give your best effort. Even though you’ve probably heard this before, never forget that your journey is unique to you.
Additionally, not everyone enjoys the same opportunities and privileges; these aspects influence academic success. To avoid feeling inferior to your peers and instead learn from them, it is wise to celebrate their successes.
Become Aware of Exam-Related Stress: Take Care of Your Mental Health
Classes X-XII, which are crucial academic years, are a prelude to what your career might entail. You must have previously heard this a lot. To get into prestigious institutions, you must maintain a strong academic record and sit for numerous entrance exams. This translates into deadlines for completing assignments and exams, which can be demanding and stressful.
Here, it’s important to work hard but also wisely. Ensure you have a backup strategy. What other options do you have for a career or a college?
Furthermore, be aware that competitive exams follow a certain pattern. Gaining experience through PYQs and mock exams will boost your confidence and enable you to plan more effectively.
Having said that, keep in mind that options will always be available, and no matter what, you’ll choose a profession that will be fulfilling. And that you’ll be able to pass your exams with grades that will allow you to get into other top universities.
Overcome Your Fear of Failure: Take Care of Your Mental Health
Failure anxiety can be crippling, especially during the years when academic success is most important. Knowing that even minor failures are necessary because they provide teaching opportunities is beneficial. Making errors is a beneficial learning process. Fear is common; however, you must sit with these feelings with empathy. As long as you’re willing to analyze the situation, identify what went wrong, and have the desire to fix it, failing is acceptable.
Finally, you must respect and believe in yourself. You must have faith in your ability to pick yourself up and try harder. Additionally, you will be aware of what you must not do the second time around. Hard work and self-compassion exercises will undoubtedly benefit you.
Manage your expectations: Take Care of Your Mental Health
It’s unlikely that this will be the idyllic writing retreat of your dreams. The idea that periods of isolation might result in productivity levels never before seen suggests that we should raise the bar rather than lower it. Do not undervalue the pandemic’s cognitive and emotional demands or how they will affect your productivity, at least initially.
It is normal to experience attention deficit disorder, low motivation, and a distracted state. It will take time to adjust. Be kind to yourself. We must be realistic in the goals we set for both ourselves and the people we are responsible for as we get used to this new rhythm of remote work and isolation.
Know your red flags: Take Care of Your Mental Health
Finding the specific thoughts or bodily sensations that frequently feed your cycle of distress and overwhelm is one strategy for managing stressful moments. These negative emotional spirals are fueled by our thoughts (“Why can’t I concentrate? “), feelings (“Why can’t I concentrate? “), bodily experiences (“tension,” “upset stomach,” “jitters”), and behaviors (“checking the latest COVID statistics compulsively,” etc.).
You can break the cycle and regain control by actively addressing one aspect of this loop, such as actively reducing the physical symptoms (I use box breathing: breath in for four counts, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold for four, then repeat).
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