Everyone in the world seems to have the remedy to cure stress. Hot tea, soft music, scented candles and so on. I for one happen to prefer coffee over tea and singing harmonies over the sound of a wave maker. That’s not to say that these well-known remedies don’t work—I happen to thoroughly enjoy my after-finals-week bubble baths. But there are some unspoken truths about stress relief that I have recently discovered that have changed the way I look at my mental stresses.
I made a pet rock in elementary school (painted to be a ladybug) and I had completely forgotten about it until the day I was packing my room to go off to college. I ran to show my mother my rediscovered artwork. A few days later she came to me with a much smaller, less colorful rock; a stone to be precise. It was soft and fit easily in the palm of my hand. She told me the ladybug had jogged her memory of when she was stressing out over leaving home for the first time and she had used a stress stone to relieve it. My stress stone now sits on the bedside table of my dorm right next to my pet rock/ladybug.
The best thing about my stress stone is that it works! I pick it up and the soft, cool texture relaxes my body as well as my mind. Any time I am feeling particularly anxious, I can pick up my stone, image my stressor in my head, and squeeze it into my stone. Then I can put the stone down and move on.
This remedy might not be for everyone, but I think it’s extremely important in these times of high anxiety over travelling home, dealing with school, and staying indoors for long periods of bad weather to have something you can always turn to in order to get some relaxation. There are other things that are similar to my stress stone that I have also found helpful, such as a material puppy that is filled with rice and that I can put in the microwave. It’s one of the best ways I have found to relieve the tension in my muscles left over from stress (and they come in tons of fun designs!). These two combinations are easy and fast, and for a student who’s sometimes stuck in her dorm because of the occasional snowstorm; it’s nice to have something convenient and easy to help me get through a tough day.
Something else that could be fun is making your own personal stress-busting rice bag!
Here’s a website I found that shows you how:
http://diginncrafts.tripod.com/hmcrafts/hmgenprojects1.html
-Anna Taddei, Anxiety In Teens Contributor