STUDENT-RUN GRIEF SUPPORT GROUP
Sponsored by the Office of Behavioral Health for Students
MEETS: Tuesdays
TIME: 8:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Group Room #212
(2nd fl., Davison Health Center)
Intended to create a network of support for
those who have experienced the death of a loved one.
Please feel free to come and leave when it’s convenient for you.
If you have questions, please contact: Margo (917/691-7312).
As students have begun arriving on campus for the start of another exciting year, many of my colleagues have been sharing a common thought with you: it is a sign of strength — not weakness — to ask for help when you need it. Whether that come in the form of asking your RA about where an office is located or seeking out an academic tutor, asking for help is the best way to ensure your own success at Wesleyan and beyond.
Now the Mayo Clinic reminds us that asking for help by creating your own support system is key to your health, by sharing the story of East African distance runners. Lessons learned?
Stress is probably the most common health complaint I hear about from students; it’s even worn as a badge of honor by some. But dealing with life’s stressors — which will never completely go away, just change as time passes – is a skill that is best learned now when you’re in a supportive environment like a college campus.
Very simply put, stress management is about consciously choosing how to respond to what is happening in your life, rather than letting your stressors take charge. And your support system — your friends, family, Peer Advisor, RA or House Manager, professors, other campus offices, or whoever helps you — will make all the difference in your health and well-being personally and academically.
Wesleyan Resources: Stress Management
The new academic year hasn’t even started and perhaps you’re already feeling stressed out. Experiencing stressors in our lives may be inevitable, but how we respond to them is the key to keeping your stress at a manageable level. Letting stress go uncontrolled can have a negative impact on our emotional as well as physical health.
A new study, discussed in Scientific American, indicates that the impact of stress may be greater on our physical bodies than previously thought, especially our immune systems.
It might seem counterintuitive, but Kiecolt-Glaser believes that stress makes our immune systems less effective because it actually elicits an immune response itself. Stress, she says, causes the body to release pro-inflammatory cytokines, immune factors that initiate responses against infections. When the body produces these cytokines over long periods of time—for instance, as a result of chronic stress—all sorts of bad things can happen. Not only does it hamper our body’s ability to fight infection and heal wounds, but chronic inflammation also increases our risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, and autoimmune diseases including type 2 diabetes.
What’s more, because regular stress causes a chronic immune response, it can also increase a person’s risk for allergies, which occur when the body elicits a chronic immune response against something that’s not really dangerous (like pollen). In her most recent study, announced yesterday, Kiecolt-Glaser found that when people are under lots of stress—for instance, when they are forced to deliver a speech or do difficult math problems on the spot—their allergies worsen over the course of the next day.
Read the full article here.
Discussion Question: Experiencing stress is not inevitable; it’s about responding in a manner that helps you rather than hurts you. What small steps can you take this semester to manage your stress more effectively?
Wesleyan Resources: Stress Management
Educational efforts on sexual violence prevention typically place a strong focus on communication, especially on the giving and receiving of consent to particiate in sexual activity. As thorny as it can be to define what consent looks and sounds like, what if your attempts to communicate your intention are completely misinterpreted?
Dr. Louanne Weston Cole, in her Sex Matters blog at WebMD.com, shares an intriguing study on the differences between men and women in how they interpret words differently in sexual situations:
I was reading an article about a new book, Studies in Applied Interpersonal Communication, by Michael Motley, a University of California at Davis professor. He did an interesting study on how males and females interpret what females say when in the very early stages of sexual kissing.
When a female says, “It’s getting late,” she means that she wants to stop what
they’re doing and go their separate ways. If she finished her sentence, it would go, “I should already be home in bed - alone.” Most males in this study, however, interpreted this to mean that she wants to skip the preliminaries and go forward a bit more quickly.
Or, if a woman says, “I’m seeing someone else,” (meaning that she wants to stop because her affections are really with another man), males tend to think this means, “Keep going, but let’s be discreet,” or “Keep going, but I want you to know that I’m not making a commitment.”
Motley concludes that in their efforts to not offend or upset their male partners with direct and forceful words, women are merely confusing them. He found out that men would prefer to hear it loud and clear, even if it smarts a little bit, rather than trying to read the woman’s mind and risk offending her and/or losing the sexual opportunity. read full article…
While the research is a bit locked up in the gender binary and heterosexual relationships, it still illustrates an important point: what we say may not be what is heard. It’s extraordinarily difficult to get what you want (and avoid what you don’t) if your attempts to communicate your intentions aren’t interpreted correctly.
Discussion Questions:
What does this mean for how we should be communicating with our partners?
Would being more forceful and direct in what we say solve the problem?
Or could our words continue to be misinterpreted even when said with conviction?
How do our cultural attitudes about sex and gender stereotypes play into this?
Wesleyan Resources:
Sexual Violence information
Emotional Abuse information
Sexual Misconduct Policy
Office of Behavioral Health for Students
Our reaction is usually a greater predictor of how stress will impact us rather than the stressor itself, so stress management techniques usually focus on improving your responses. Dr. Edward Creagan of the Mayo Clinic offers these three very simple ideas in how to avoid and deal with stress, taken from a spy novel!
While waiting for an airplane, an interesting thing happened to me. I picked up a novel in a bookstore at a local airport and came across a story of a James Bond-type character who lived on the edge. His work was challenging, dangerous, and vital to national defense. When queried by his colleagues about his survival tactics, he mentioned three things which I think also apply to us. Regardless of the assignment or the project, there were just three things that he kept in mind.
- Keep it simple. The more moving parts, the more individuals involved, the more complex the program, the higher the risk of failure.
- Always be prepared for contingencies. What if … what might go wrong … how will I deal with x, y, or z? For example, as a public speaker, I always keep in mind plan B if my laptop explodes, if the projector “freezes,” or we lose power.
- Never panic. This means being prepared within reason for what may lie ahead.
As an afterthought, this agent also embraced the uncertainty of life. Things go wrong, relationships become painful, the goal sometimes is not reached. We need to be flexible, we need to be adaptable, and to recognize that there is great merit in staying in the day and turning over our needs and our concerns to a higher power however we may define that power.
The moral of the story? Always be open to new ideas — they can come from anywhere — and often less is more!
Wesleyan Resources: Stress Management
Discussion Questions: How do you implement these simple keys to survival in your life? Or what barriers do you believe exist to their implementation?
Do you feel confident in your decision-making or not? We all probably can improve to varying degrees in this area, so the Dumb Little Man blog offers advice on what might contribute to low self esteem in decision making and how to improve it: 
If you suffer from low confidence and feel insecure about your own abilities, you may find it difficult to make even the simplest of decisions. Even the horrid choice of choosing where to go for dinner sends you into a frenzy. Insecurity occurs for several reasons. Perhaps at a young age your parents striped your ability to make any choices by choosing everything you ate, everything you wore, etc.
Now that you are grown and in the workforce, you find yourself suddenly having to make a lot more decisions. With little or no previous experience, it is no wonder that you start to fumble. Anxiety and worry are your constant companions during the decision making process. While trying to decide on your options, you spend hours playing out the possible scenarios of failure. You are nervous about what others may say and think, swearing that you can already hear the sounds of snickering in your head. read full article…
Wesleyan Resources: Office of Behavioral Health for Students
Discussion Questions: What helps you to improve your decision making ability?
It’s the end of the academic year. Your brain may literally feel baked from the over-stressed, over-caffeinated, over-sleep-deprived, over-done year you’ve just completed. The summer months hopefully offers a much-needed respite and time to recoup. But if you want to un-bake your brain a bit faster, blogger Jonathan Fields at Awake at the Wheel offers a list of suggestions that can help:
While we’d all like to rid ourselves of the daily brain-burn, most of us are not willing to extract ourselves from the professional and lifestyle circumstances that are creating that stress (though, I have to tell you, trading in my Ferragamo’s for bare feet has been pretty friggin sweet for me).
So, for those who choose to endure, rather than extract, here are 10 powerful practices that will help get you back to a calm, focused, relaxed and rejuvenated state of mind and allow you to take back body and health:
1. Mindfulness-based stress reduction™
Developed by acclaimed psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, more than 20,000 people, from all walks of life have now completed this 8-week mindfulness-based stress reductiontraining with remarkable results. And, the good news is, now you don’t have to live in Massachusetts to do it. There are many trained affiliates or you can do it at home with Kabat-Zinn’s book and audio CDs (or mp3s) with only 45-minutes a day.
2. Get lost in great music.
This is pretty intuitive, but there is actually significant research that reveals listening to the right music can actually be a powerful de-stressor and help get you back into a better state of mind relatively quickly. And, if you think listening to music drops you into the chill-zone, try learning or playing music. A fascinating study on the impact of playing music on stress reveals that keeping a guitar handy in the corner of your office and cranking out Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Little Wing on your lunch break will help you feel oh so much better!
Strive to implement some of these now, continue with them throughout the year and you might just find yourself in better shape a year from now.
Discussion Question:In addition to those techniques listed in the article, what helps you un-bake your brain?
From the Mayo Clinic…
Anger is natural, but it can be destructive when expressed inappropriately. Gauge your anger level and identify your unhealthy expressions of anger.
Do you slam down the phone when faced with endless computerized voice prompts? Have you gotten into a shouting match with a stranger over a parking space at the mall? Ever put your fist through the wall after an argument with your spouse?
This is not anger management at its finest. Although anger is a natural emotion, it may be getting the best of you. Instead of expressing your anger in a healthy and assertive way, you may be expressing it in a hostile, aggressive manner — a manner that could lead to violence and a slew of personal and professional consequences.
From CNN…
Teenagers who use marijuana put themselves at higher risks for serious mental health 
problems, including worsening depression, schizophrenia, anxiety and suicide, according to a new White House report.
The report said more teens use marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined.
The goal is to “correct the blind spot we’ve had in our society that’s caused more young people to suffer,” Director of National Drug Control Policy John Walters said.
“The short message is: Marijuana’s not safe.”
Although the report from the Office of National Drug Control Policy notes that use of the drug among teenagers has dropped by 25 percent in the past seven years, it emphasizes that more teens use marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined.
That use can have serious consequences, according to the report. Teenagers who smoke marijuana to self-medicate can compound their depression, the report said.
From eCampusTours.com…Going home for summer break may be hard to get used to since you have been living without a lot of rules all school-year long. Your parents may want you home at a certain time, but you are used to coming and going whenever you please. Your parents may not want you sleeping until 1pm every day, but you feel that you deserve a break since you worked so hard throughout the school year. These kinds of disagreements can easily escalate into full-blown fights and make summer break disastrous for everyone involved. Here is how to prevent arguments with your parents and have an enjoyable summer break.
Initiate discussion. If you go home for summer break and your parents treat you like a child, ask if they have time to sit down and discuss some independence issues you are having. By having an adult conversation with them, they will realize that you aren’t a child anymore and should start treating you like a responsible adult.
Compromise. Having an adult relationship with your parents means being able to compromise. If your parents want you home by curfew, try to bargain with them by telling them you will call when you are going to be late. If your parents let you borrow the family car, show that you appreciate their gesture by pitching in on household chores.
Show respect. You should treat your parents with the same degree of courtesy as you would anyone else you were living with. That means you should pick up after yourself and turn down the volume on your radio or TV while others are sleeping. If you show your parents respect, they will more than likely treat you like an adult and allow you more privileges.
Appreciate your parents’ concerns. When your parents treat you like a child and try to enforce rules upon you, they are doing it for your wellbeing. They want you to be safe. Even though you may not like the fact that they worry so much about you, try to understand where they are coming from. You would be worried about your parents if they weren’t home by 4 in the morning, wouldn’t you?
Spend quality time with your parents. When you come home for the summer, your parents want to spend time with you. Try to make time for them and don’t spend your whole summer hanging out with friends. You should be able to adjust your schedule so you can spend time with all the people you care about, including parents, siblings, old friends, and new friends. Spending quality time with your parents is crucial in forming an adult relationship with them.
If you are going home for the summer, you may find that you run into a few confrontations with your parents because they want you to follow the same rules of the household as you did before you went away to college. By following the tips listed above, not only will you avoid conflict with your parents, but you will also show them that you should be treated like a responsible adult.
Discussion: Going home from college essentially means constantly renegotiating your relationship with your parents/guardians, as you grow and become a more independant person…and as they adjust to your independance. What are you doing or have you done in the past to help make those negotiations go more smoothly?
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