His feet feel like bricks. His eyes sink like anchors. His body sweats rivers. Time drags so slowly he feels frozen between heartbeats. The court morphs and changes around him. His fingers twitch and curl instinctively. The squeaking of shoes and the echo of screams fog his mind, the complexity of anxiety making him lose focus on the game.
For many students suffering with severe anxiety, this feeling is not a rarity. Rather, it is the routine. Anxiety, defined as a feeling of worry, fear, or unease in response to intense stress, is a plague on all people, and it is something natural in our lives. It can be diagnosed as an illness in the most severe cases, but for the majority of people, anxiety is as natural as a smile or a frown. As students, we are often faced with a lot on our plates, whether it be from our intense AP (Advanced Placement) classes, our clubs or extracurriculars, or even the sports we play, and it can be quite overbearing at times. Sometimes the stress placed on our shoulders is a little too heavy, and our backs might buckle.
Sports, in general, tend to be very stressful and anxiety inducing. The basketball player described above, who has asked to remain anonymous, can attest to this. He told me that the moment he steps onto the polished court, it feels like an anvil drops between his shoulder blades, making it hard to focus, even causing him to slip up and miss shots. The tangerine-tinted ball falling from his hands and slipping into the palms of the enemy team, time after time.
“It gets more difficult every quarter,” he told me. “It’s like the pressure stacks on my chest. Some days I feel like I can’t breathe out there.” With each game becoming more and more important, the stress on his mind becomes stronger and stronger. Coupled with the amount of difficult classes he is taking, it can be overwhelming for him, and oftentimes, he says, he feels hopeless. “Every game feels heavier than the last,” he admits. “The pressure my teammates – and my mom- put on me is pretty much destroying me.”
When asked how he copes with this, he stated the only way he has found success in managing his anxiety over sports and school is to just simply laugh about it. Despite all the blood boiling in his body and the mountains of late homework, this overworked basketball player manages to balance it all by merely sharing a chuckle with his friends. “I laugh. No, seriously. I just laugh about it. Whenever I’m laughing over stupid [stuff] with my friends, I’m not worried about missing a shot or failing a test. That’s my safe haven, man. My, uh, my oasis.”
According to him, laughing with his friends distracts him from the stress he experiences on a daily basis, and he needs those experiences to get by day after day.
Another method of coping with anxiety or hyper-induced stress is to take what is known as a “mental break.” A mental break can look different for different people. It can look like watching television, or eating a childhood snack, or even just taking a break from your phone. Sometimes, a mental break can simply be relaxing on the couch in the quiet. If ever you are feeling overwhelmed and anxious, oftentimes it can help to simply cool down or distract yourself from what it is that is troubling you. Go out with friends, watch a movie, play a game. While this doesn’t dissipate the stress, nor does it resolve the problem, it can help make it more manageable, as it seems to have been doing the trick for this basketball player. And he isn’t the only one who puts stock in laughter. Experts, such as those at Mayo Clinic have determined that laughter can actually help reduce stress. According to Mayo Clinic, “Laughter enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles, and increases the endorphins that are released by your brain.”
Similarly, a wrestler, who also wished to remain anonymous as well, claimed to experience anxiety in a similar proportion, but he mentioned a DIFFERENT coping skill. For him, pressure hits his chest on the eve of a big tournament. “My heart races so fast I can, like, hear it. Dude, it’s [really] bad sometimes,” he says. As he stands on the mat before each match, he is overwhelmed by the vibrations of the people nearby. The roar of the crowd bounces off the walls and echoes in his ears.
Unlike the basketball player we previously spoke with, however, this wrestler turns to a different coping mechanism: food. “It sounds [expletive],” he admits, “but I can’t get enough of those, like, watermelon Sour Patch Kids? You know what I’m talking about?” According to him, the sugar from the candy or other sweet treats makes him focus more on his goals and helps mitigate the stress. For him, sugar isn’t a treat, it’s a stress reliever. Sugar makes him happy and releases dopamine in his brain, which in turn allows him to enjoy his matches more.
Furthermore, another coping mechanism commonly used by athletes is a method called “5-4-3-2-1.” This method has the person slow down and name 5 things they can see, 4 things they can touch, 3 things they can hear, 2 things they can smell, and 1 thing they can taste. This method is super commonplace in therapy settings and is frequently expert recommended, with the most notable being Bob Hoffman, founder of York Barbell company and a medalist in American weight-lifting.
In my experience, there are a lot of ways to handle the stress of anxiety. As an AP student myself, I am well versed in dealing with mounds of homework or lots of peer pressure. While I am by no means an expert on this subject, I have found that for me, the best way to regulate anxiety and stress is by listening to music. Even if its merely just playing in the background, music helps relax me and keep me focused.
To conclude, all three mentioned methods each help the specific person in different ways. There is no one solution to easing anxiety and stress, and everyone has their own way to cope. One of the methods mentioned above might help you, or you might have your own specific way to make it better. How do you handle your stress?
