Mental Health and Wellbeing Support and Resources for Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs): Stress during your PGR Studies

Stress can be understood as the perceptions or feelings a person experiences when a particular environment exceeds the person’s available personal or social coping resources (Lau, 2019). Stress leads to biochemical, physiological, and behaviour changes in people – causing negatives effects on an individual’s health, including headaches, muscle pain, dizziness, sleep problems, feeling tired, and eating too much or too little. Emotionally and mentally stress can make you feel overwhelmed, irritable and anxious. It can cause you to have low self-esteem, racing thoughts, to worry, to find it hard to concentrate and have difficulty in making decisions.

• Acute Stress is usually healthy and manageable in small doses and occurs when an individual perceives difficulties for a current or anticipated event – for example, presenting your research at a conference.
• Chronic Stress occurs when stress persists even after the stressor is removed – associated with intense demands or pressures for long periods of time.

A common effect associated with stress is emotional hi-jacking. Think about that last time you were worried, anxious, frustrated or angry about something and suddenly found that you couldn’t think straight – the frustrating experience of your mind going blank when you least want it to. This is called emotional hi-jacking, where your brain shuts down your ability to think.

In simplified terms, the amygdala is responsible for controlling our feelings of fear. When it picks up the presence of risk, it triggers what we call the fight, flight, freeze response - this includes pumping blood into your muscles, heighten your senses and prepare you to run away or defend yourself. As part of this fear response, it shuts down parts of your brain that are used for complex thinking – causing your ability to focus and think clearly; and creatively problem solve to be impaired. Emotional hi-jacking also causes your thinking process to become more rigid and nuance to disappear – everything will appear to be perfect or awful.

There are many ways to help manage stress levels and decrease the feeling of being stressed during your PGR studies. One of the most effective ways to manage stress levels is breathing exercises – e.g., 7/11 breathing.

7/11 Breathing exercises can help reduce stress and fear in the moment – if you practice it regularly, you may also find that it helps you feel calmer generally. The more you practice 7/11 breathing, the more effective this technique becomes.

• Allow your lungs to completely empty, then breath deeply into your stomach while counting to 7 – once you reach 7, breath out gently to the count of 11 – as long as your out breath is much longer.
• Repeat this for 2 to 3 minutes or until you feel calm and relaxed.

Other Strategies for managing Stress Levels:

• Take a walk at a brisk pace – exercise has been shown to be extremely effective at reducing stress in the short and long term. Additionally, taking breaks has been shown to help you reduce stress and avoid exhaustion, which makes you more prone to stress and emotional hi-jacking.
• Prioritising tasks can help you to get an accurate perception of what you need to do and help to manage your stress. Write a list of the tasks you need to complete, organised by importance and priority – incl., [1] urgent and very important; [2] important but not urgent; [3] urgent but not important; [4] neither urgent nor important.
• Sleep can help you to manage negative thoughts and emotions and provide you with the energy to tackle the problems you face. Sleep is a very important element in maintaining good mental health and wellbeing during your PGR studies – as discussed elsewhere in the guide.
• Fun and leisure can help to reduce the stress and emotional hi-jacking you are feeling, reset your emotional equilibrium and provide you with energy and positive feelings. While PGR studies are likely to be demanding on your time, making the space for fun and leisure will help you to feel better and recharge you for your work.

Source 

Summarised from 'The Wellbeing Thesis' - An online resource for postgraduate research students to support your wellbeing, learning and research - https://thewellbeingthesis.org.uk/