Animals and humans both feel stress, whether it be a frantic zebra being chased down by a starving lion or a student overwhelmed by workload. There is no avoiding it. If you can’t avoid it, then why not learn how to deal with the stress that affects students everyday?

  The freshman year to the senior year of high school one of the main focuses in a teenager’s life is school. There is constant pressure from parents, guardians and teachers looming over our shoulders to do well in school. There is also social competition that has developed among students and peers, to do the best on tests, have the best Grade Point Average, etc. Most students would agree that stress from school is always with them, whether they are at home or in school.

  Senior year is stereotypically the simplest year of high school in terms of workload. Ella Mosher, a senior at Community High School (CHS), put many things onto her plate: work, applying for colleges, school (high school and University of Michigan classes) and her social life. Between all of these activities and obligations, it is hard for her to find time to relax. Senior year has become her most stressful year yet.

  Junior year can be a tough one as well, as students take a few major and potentially life-changing tests like the ACT and SAT. Standard tests and school work are taking their toll on Clarence Collins III, a junior at CHS. He also plays the trumpet in the Jazz band at CHS that is even more responsibility for Collins.

  “I’m expected to do so much this year, to be at a certain level, and I’m not,” Collins said, with a worried tone of voice.

  Why does Mosher feel so overwhelmed when she should be at ease in her senior year? And why does Collins worry so deeply about tests, while a zebra has real life-threatening worries like a vicious lion chasing it?

  Mosher’s and Collins’ problems are not immediately life-threatening like the zebra’s, but the problems can be damaging to their futures. So it makes sense that humans and zebras have the same stress response. This response is called fight or flight. In threatening situations natural instinct is to fight back against the threat or to flee from it. It can be seen in most living creatures.

  The thing is, zebras do not get chased half as much as humans take tests and face deadlines. Overusing the stress response, like humans do, can be detrimental to one’s health, mentally, physiologically and physically. The stress all of us feel can be traced back hundreds of thousands of years.

  “Bottom line about stress is: there is no such thing as stress,” Robbie Stapleton said, a Health and Wellness teacher, Physical Education teacher and Forum leader at CHS. “There is a stressor and there is the stress response. We call it stress.” All vertebrates feel stress in some way or form.

  The stress response is a mechanism that releases hormones, such as adrenaline and other catecholamines, instantly increasing heart rate, blood sugar, blood pressure and energy. Through natural selection homo sapiens with a good stress response would prosper when faced with predators, while those who did not would face certain death. This adaptation is almost useless to modern day humans who do not deal with predators on a regular basis.

  Robert Sapolsky, a researcher, professor of biological sciences and neurological sciences at Stanford University, studies stress reactions in the wild baboons of Africa. Baboons are one of the human’s closest relatives. Sapolsky found that stress reactions had been a helpful tactic for surviving hundreds of thousands of years ago, but now cause more harm than good.

  “If you turn on the stress response chronically for purely psychological reasons, you increase your risk of adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure. If you’re chronically shutting down the digestive system, there’s a bunch of gastrointestinal disorders you’re more at risk for as well,” Sapolsky said in an interview with Stanford University. There are many known and well-researched ‘side-effects’ of stress in the modern day human.

  A rare disease called Stress Dwarfism or Psychosocial Short Stature (PSS), arose recently in extremely overstressed children. It is when a child’s growth is stunted in order for more energy to be supplied in response to stress. This energy comes from growth, which, to the body, is an unnecessary process. It can also come from another unnecessary process: the immune system. If you were being chased by a dangerous predator there would not be enough time or energy for your body to protect you against the flu since you might be dead in that second anyway.

  Living in harmony with stress can be achieved. Doctor Roger Walsh, a professor of psychiatry, philosophy and anthropology at the University of California, has come up with eight major hacks to the stress response. Walsh calls them the Eight Ways to Wellbeing, but they are also known as Therapeutic Life Changes (TLCs). They include: nutrition, relationship building, exercise, sleep, time in nature, recreation, contributing a service to society, relaxation/meditation and spirituality.

  The symbol for TLCs is a flower with eight petals. Each petal represents one TLC. The petal for nature is light green, spirituality is white, exercise is red, relaxation is a deep blue, etc (using the rest of the colors in the rainbow). The colors of all the petals represents each TLC perfectly.

  Walsh made an hour long PBS documentary looking at the numbers/statistics and appears emotionally shattered by his discoveries and research. Over one billion people have some kind of mental disorder, which means that 60 million Americans deal with mental illness every day. The National Institute of Mental Disorders announced that the cost of treating worldwide mental disorders was 2.5 trillion in 2010, making it the biggest driver of health costs globally. Walsh worries about the public’s fear of mental disorders and the major stigma that surrounds it all.

  Walsh hopes that his TLCs will help with the health and wellness of our species, starting with mental wellbeing. His TLCs have been proven to help ameliorate stress, which in turn helps many mental disorders like depression. Regular practice of even a few TLCs can help prevent all the stress ‘side-effects’ mentioned above and more physical diseases. There are now thousands of separate studies that support one or more of his TLCs.

  Some people will be drawn to certain TLCs out of the eight, and that is a part of Walsh’s goal. They are natural lifestyle changes that should feel comfortable and easy. However they are not a cure for depression, high-blood pressure or any other diseases/disorders. In the fight against mental disorders, they are simply an option easier to have access to and sometimes safer than medication. Medications are meant to suppress symptoms, while a lifestyle change can become a part of someone through becoming a healthy habit.

  Collins found relief through the regular practice of music, which is the TLC “recreation”.

  “It’s not just therapeutic [jazz], it’s a cliche but it’s getting your emotions out and your stress and any other type of feeling out,” Collins said.

  Community High School student, Ella Mosher, finds relief through her “great and supportive friend group”, which is the TLC “relationship building”. Both Mosher and Collins admit their stress would be worse if it was not for the TLCs they have accidentally adopted.

  There is a controversial study performed by a Doctor Maltz, stating that habits take 21 days to form. Although no one is the same and that is why this study is controversial. For some people it may take more than 21 days to pick up a habit. If 21 days just is not doing it for you, do them for a month or two. Keep trying until something sticks.

  Combine Maltz’ study with Walsh’s and live in harmony and balance stress. Try hammocking in the woods for an evening, volunteering, or meeting someone new (as there is no harm in trying). Stress is a big deal, especially for a high school student who was just thrown into the midst of it.

   The teenage brain is more malleable than the adult brain. This is a good thing when it comes to forming new behaviors and habits. The malleability is from the fact that the teenage brain is not finished developing and the teenager is also not finished maturing. There is a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which is responsible for habit-making behaviors, emotions, memories and pattern recollection.

  If the rest of the brain has not finished developing then the basal ganglia has not either. Which means, picking up and dropping habits is way easier. The teenage brain is less cemented in old habits that could be unhealthy than a fully developed adult brain. Adopting TLCs at a young age is crucial so that they can be continuously used in your life. So channel your basal ganglia and form some healthy habits (TLCs).

   “Everything gets easier I think,” Stapleton said, with a delicate smile on her face. “Especially if you do these things that are called Therapeutic Life Changes. In other words they’re if you start doing them now, then as your brain has that last flourish in young adulthood.”

  The large amounts of stress students feel is not uncommon, as you can see. It’s a scary thing to think about.

  “It’s not going to go away. We need it. Stress is a motivator,” Stapleton said.