3 Ideas to Help Relieve Stress On Your Campus

Stress!

You feel it, your staff feels it, and your students feel it.

As a marriage and family therapist, I help my clients and my schools work through this unrelenting issue.  After years of graduate school, over a decade on the road with TEEN TRUTH, and working with countless people, the best answer I’ve come up with to truly relieve stress is to enhance the quality of our relationships.

We are social animals. We thrive in our connections with others, and it is that key aspect of our life that will overcome stress, depression, and anxiety.

So how do we cultivate good relationships?

Step #1

You need to be intentional about it. Most people reading this blog are successful administrators, counselors, and teachers who are at risk of getting so caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life that they find themselves isolated from others.

Sometimes this even includes their families.

Making time to intentionally be with family and friends (to “unplug” from work) is a direct route to feeling happier and less stressed in life.

Step #2

This can be a huge challenge for your staff. They have all of the same life pressures you do, but they are often stuck in their classrooms, isolated from the rest of the people at work. To remedy this, we must intentionally work to bring them together to discuss personal issues. Hosting a relational needs workshop is the perfect way to spark communication among your staff. It can develop intimacy and, most importantly, create a vocabulary that can be used to help communicate our own needs and to meet the needs of others.

To learn more about this game-changing experience, CLICK HERE to download a PDF or contact me today for more details.

Step #3

For your students, consider developing times in the school day to help them find stronger relationships. This can be done through your activity program (CLICK HERE to check out this awesome idea from TEEN TRUTH’s Activities Director, Stephen Admudson), or through your after-school programs and extracurricular activities, or even at lunchtime.

Lunch is a high stress time for some students. That is why I asked Stephanie Lerner, TEEN TRUTH’s school counselor, to blog and create a lesson plan around lunchtime stress. CLICK HERE to read her blog and access her free lesson plan.

Whether on campus, in a corporate environment, or in my therapy office, the pressures that we face are usually solved by building stronger relationships in our life. It is my hope that this short time we had together today will get you thinking about how you can drive relationships both on campus, and in your life.