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How to stress less? Wouldn't these students like to know...

Seeking help is the key for greater productivity amongst stressed students

Lisa Branigan typifies the dynamic aesthetic of the modern Australian woman; an independent individual supportive of her surrounding friends and family, with burgeoning career aspirations who is constantly overwhelmed by life. Her filled with a variety of personal and professional roles and responsibilities she expected herself to fulfil, including doting wife, supportive friend and successful career woman. And like many women in Australia, the surmounting demands placed on Lisa overwhelmed her to a point where she could no longer function.

“How do you eat an elephant?” Branigan laughs, reciting her own personal philosophy on the looming presence in the room every time anxiety hits, “If you have too much stress or trauma it can overwhelm you” Branigan says, “I then didn’t have the physical or capabilities to be able to deal with day to day living, or to handle stress. This is a common habit in women.”

Rather than ask for assistance, Lisa dealt with the elephant in the room as she always had; by ignoring it. Despite having fostered an avid interest in self-help and development, Lisa rationalized that by compartmentalising her emotions and dealing with business as usual, the world could continue to revolve. Ignorance was bliss until a routine health check with her local physician revealed that the consequences of her stress-filled lifestyle could be far more serious than a wayward headache or spontaneous panic attack.

“I was always stressed, and became sick from that” Branigan says, “My doctor [sat me down] and told me that at 30, if I didn’t address [my] stress, I would have a heart attack. I was always good at goal setting, but I was always stressed. I needed to address that.”

The management of stress is not only a scenario unique to Lisa, but an issue that needs to be dealt with by young women all across Australia. Findings at the 4^th Australian Women’s Health Conference in 2001 found that young Australian women aged 18-23 are currently experiencing more intense levels of stress and anxiety than their mothers’ and grandmothers’ generations before them as their roles in society have shifted.

“Women’s liberation has done a total disservice to women” Branigan says, “Whilst the majority if of women now bring in 50 percent of the income, the majority of men are not doing 50 percent of the housework or child rearing. Now women try to know it all and do it all [themselves] as asking for help is seen as a weakness.”

Times have changed and women are suffering through a lack of support. They have just added another ball to the ones they are already juggling.

Though women’s roles in society have shifted, existing health care facilities are failing to target women’s needs as effectively as they have in the past. Heather Gridley, a trained clinical psychologist and member of the Australian Psychology Society, was present during the shift towards women’s health treatment through her work in community health centres in Melbourne in the 1980s. Married women had only just begun emerging from the role of dormant house wife and began returning to secondary education institutions like the community centres to further their professional abilities.

The acceptance of women into the higher education system coincided with an acceptance of their health issues. The women’s community health care centres were established within the colleges to specifically deal with women’s individual needs, as stressed and frightened women faced with the pressure to excel of in their new found studies looked for an outlet for their emotional needs.  Gridley admits that whilst the exposure of women’s health needs was exciting and terrifying for an untrained counsellor, women received greater health care support when the first issues came to light than they do today.

“I don’t see a need to separate men and women’s health, but I started to learn more about how women are ignored in the health system. It’s taken us a while to realise that we need to have specific programs for women and that they need to be different. ”

Gridley says that as women have come to play a more actively role both in higher education institutions and in the workforce, societal expectations placed upon young women, and the stress experienced as a result, have not been lessened.

“We expect women to carry a lot of emotional responsibilities. When women are stressed it is seen as some kind of weakness or it is just put down to hormones or menopause, but I think that is the least of the [women’s] problems.” Gridley says.

“We can predict when we get distressed during the monthly cycle when you are more likely to lose it but it doesn’t explain where the distress comes from. I wanted to do something about it, to prevent it from happening rather than picking up the pieces all the time.”

It is the overwhelming standards set for and by today’s young women, pushing themselves to excel in both their personal and professional lives that have resulted in more and more women like Gridley becoming involved in the specialist areas of women’s health to improve the services available to young women in Australia today.

Approaches to women’s mental health are slowly shifting with women’s needs, shifting from traditional reactionary methods such as counselling to a focus on alternative therapies driven more by interaction, self-healing, and the interaction between the mind, body and soul. Holistic therapist Melinda Smith believes holistic therapies are beneficial to young women as clinical assessment fails to acknowledge the emotional root of stress, and what the client is feeling in the moment.

“Young people are very stressed [in attempting] to work out their life’s path and need to learn to talk about their experiences in order to understand them”, Smith says, “Mainstream [approaches] use more cognitive disciplines [in changing] you thoughts [will] change your behaviours. We use more sentient, feeling orientated approaches.”

“Our approach is not finding answers but looking at techniques to allow one to better see, feel and sense the world around them, and [discover] how that impacts on their life.”

The Sydney-based holistic therapist’s work derives itself from anthroposophy, a philosophy based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner that suggests that self-growth can be achieved through meditation, objective perception and a connection with the spiritual world. The health benefits are not only in the reduction of stress, but the discipline even claims that meditation and self growth are essential in order for the evolutionary process to occur.

Melinda uses a combination of meditative methods, therapist style discussions, hypnotherapy, and massage to assist her clients in unburdening themselves and lightening their load. Reflection on the cause of stress is a significant part of the process, and Melinda suggests that confronting these issues is paramount to relieving stress.

“I use meditation and visualisation to allow my female clients to see their own truths. They can start to visually see the lump of concrete [crushing them], and why their chest pains. Working together we can look at what is needed to shift this weight” Melinda says.

Smith says that reflection on past causes of stress is important to ensure that the same mental health problems don’t affect women in the future.

“Every seven years we go through different phases of our lives and what we fail to learn often returns during the next phase. It is paramount to learn ways of coping, not running away or ignoring as you start to understand [yourself] on a deeper level.”

It was this same refusal to run from the source of her stress any longer that lead anxiety ridden Lisa Branigan to reach out to other women in need of a helping hand, developing her natural helpful disposition and tough personal experiences into a profession.

“I feel I have a really good understanding of where [women] are coming from, and I would like to support them in making changes in their lives so they can be happy.”

Branigan, who is based in Margaret River, WA, is now a certified Life Coach with the International Coach Association and has opened her own business, Quantum Coaching. Life coaching is one of the latest trends in personal self-development, assisting women in achieving their goals in life through communication. Branigan says that the same proactive tools used to help her clients achieve their dreams and eliminate fear can be applied to the reduction of stress, techniques she has used in her own life and recommends to others.

The key, Branigan denotes, is goal setting.

“If I feel overwhelmed and figure out exactly what I have to do. Drop everything that isn’t urgent and delegate everything else” Branigan says, “The same applies for university students”.

Branigan learnt through her own experiences that the best way to confront stress is to attack it head on by prioritising and avoiding procrastination.

“Deadlines is the same as a goal. You need to complete the goal by breaking it down into manageable pieces. It is really about breaking the tasks down. Most students generally [procrastinate] because they don’t know where to start.”

The work of mental health professionals like Branigan, Gridley and Smith are assisting women in overcoming anxiety and furthering their productivity in their professional and social lives. The most important factor, Branigan has learnt from personal experiences is taking that first crucial step to stress relief and a happier existence.

“Everything that was suggested to me I did, and I got well really quickly.” Branigan says, “Take advantage of any student support, of everything. Learning to take time for you and to get support [is] a lifesaver.”

See also related articles The Benefits of Laughter and The Road Less Taken.