Words for Wellbeing - The Exam Preparation Edition - October 21st, 2021

Welcome to Words for Wellbeing

Welcome to your fortnightly Wellbeing newsletter. You’ll find new information to enhance your health and wellness to keep you Fit4Life.

This edition is dedicated to our VCE students, especially those now in Swot Vac - Study Without Teaching Vacation. While the hard work is already done, in this edition we share some strategies to help our students (and teachers) manage their stress, revise their work in effective ways and prepare their bodies and minds for their upcoming exam period.

You can simply click on anything that interests you in the contents list, but make sure you don't miss out of watching our Year 12s on their Val day Monday. 

To our entire Emmanuel Community and please enjoy everything on offer in this edition of Words for Wellbeing, these are tools that can benefit all of us.

Year 12 Valedictory

On Monday October 18th, our Year 12s enjoyed the rite of passage that is Val.

We wish them well as they celebrate the end of their secondary school careers, as they embark upon the next two weeks of study, and then ultimately, their exam periods and/or the commencement of their working lives.

Whatever it is that their futures hold, we wish them nothing but health, love and happiness.

Enjoy this little video from the day.

How to Choose Wellbeing

At times we move through our lives as if our wellbeing is impacted significantly by events outside of ourselves, things that are outside of our control.

Well, according to Sonja Lyubomirsky and her colleagues, we're more in control of our wellbeing than we think.

Lyubomirsky and her Happiness Pie actually remind us that almost half of our wellbeing is within our conscious control - 40% to be precise - and that life events only account for 10% of how satisfied with life we are.

Situations like VCE exams may feel as though they dominate 90% of our current state of wellbeing, but remember, how you think and what you do play a much more significant role.

The following strategies are all excellent methods for you to take back conscious control of the choices you make, your behaviours and how you manage your thoughts and feelings.

Want to know more? It's not too late to contact us at fit4life@emmanuel.vic.edu.au

VCE Exams: Challenge, the good stress

Year 12 exams can be very stressful. Many students feel pressured to do well – to get into certain courses, or to please their family. On top of that, young people may be stressed about the uncertainty of what will happen once school ends. The good news is there are some simple ways you can  manage the stress of their exams. 

Most importantly, we need to understand and accept that stress can be our friend. In fact, we need it to focus, to concentrate, to feel motivated. 

Check out the Inverted U Hypothesis below to see what we mean. It really is like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

If we have too little stress our performance suffers, if we have too much stress, our performance suffers. We need the 'just right' amount of stress to achieve our optimal performance.

Seeing stress as a response to a challenge - a challenge we have the skills to overcome - as opposed to viewing our stress as a response to a threat too great to overcome, is a vital part of keeping your stress levels in the 'just right' zone.

Everything in this edition of W4W is designed to help you stay in the sweet zone, but they'll only work if you give them a try. {Insert winky face emoji}

Managing Stress with Self Care & Scheduling

We know, we know, we're always going on about self-care, but guess what... that's because it's important and it's helpful.

We also know that having a plan, a schedule, a routine, can be super-helpful. Creating habits requires repetition, persistence and commitment, but even after three weeks of consistent effort, you can notice that your choices in your behaviours can become a little more automatic, a little easier.

Why not download this self-care plan from My Wellbeing High School Journal by Lauren O'Brien and start scheduling.

Managing Stress by Managing your Emotions

Back to our Happiness Pie, how we think and what we do have a significant impact on how we feel.

Remembering our Inverted U Hypothesis, we need the 'just right' amount of stress for optimal performance.

If we can regulate our emotions to stay in the zone, we're well ahead of the game.

See below some useful emotion regulation strategies that may come in handy for you too.

Legs Up the Wall - Yoga Pose

This is a yoga pose designed to do everything that is wonderful for us, especially activate the parasympathetic nervous system which has the opposite effects to the sympathetic nervous system during fight or flight. This one slows down our breathing and our heart rate and promotes relaxation, among other things. It's also wonderful for insomnia. Just 15 minutes of lying in this position has the equivalent effect of three-hours sleep! 

The pose is easy to do, find yourself a wall, lie on your back with your bottom close to the wall, with your legs straight and resting up the wall, arms straight with palms up. Bliss. You could do this prior to going into an exam, or before completing any other anxiety provoking activity. It's also great just before bed to help with sleep.

Managing exam stress with good nutrition

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/Year-12-exams-managing-stress#bhc-content

So, what’s the best way to nourish your body to  cope with exam time?

Protein

Eating enough protein can help with learning, memory and mood, and retaining information for the long term.

This means including foods such as lean meat and fish, eggs, nuts and seeds, beans, dairy and whole grains in your diet. 

But remember, too much of anything is not healthy. Protein should make up about one fifth to one quarter of your daily diet.

Carbohydrates

The brain also needs energy and nutrients to repair and maintain brain cells. Glucose is the brain’s main energy source, and it comes from carbohydrates. But carbohydrates come in different forms, so think about what you put on your plate. Complex carbohydrates – found in wholegrain cereals, breads and pastas, and in fruits and vegetables – are absorbed slowly in the bloodstream, which means energy is released and is available over a long period. Complex carbohydrates keep students more alert and able to concentrate better for longer. Simple carbohydrates – found in foods such as cakes, biscuits, lollies, soft drinks and white bread – give a quick energy hit, but are followed by a tired and sluggish feeling. Sugary foods and drinks can lower concentration levels and memory function – the last thing students need when they’re trying to study.

What about caffeine?

Caffeine causes the body to release adrenaline, which produces a ‘flight or fight’ response. Your hands get cold, your muscles grow tense, you feel excited and your heart beats faster.

And once the adrenaline wears off, you face fatigue and difficulty sleeping. Another dose of caffeine can get the adrenaline flowing again, but having the body in a state of emergency, jumpy and irritable all day, isn't healthy.

For students, one coffee a day is plenty (though it’s better to have none at all). And having it earlier in the day is better.

The best drink for the brain is water. A good tip is to fill a 1.5 litre bottle at the start of each study session and sit it on the desk with a glass. You can then work through it as you study.

On the day of the exam…

Before sitting their exam, make sure you have eaten a light, healthy meal. As throughout the study phase, protein and carbohydrates make a good combination. Think: baked beans on a wholemeal muffin with a sprinkle of grated cheese. Or try one of these suggestions:

• a multigrain or wholemeal sandwich made with salad and your choice of egg, tuna, fresh turkey, chicken or ham
• chicken and vegetable noodle soup
• vegetable stir-fry with tofu and rice
• grilled fish and salad with a small baked potato.

And for a snack, you could try:

• cereal with milk
• fruit and yoghurt
• cheese and wholemeal crackers
• dried fruit and nuts
• carrot sticks and hummus.

Managing Stress with Thinking

Write it Down

Another piece of pure and simple genius is to write down all of your worries and feelings. This helps to activate your pre-frontal cortex, engaging your 'thinking' brain, whilst emptying your working memory, calming your worries and leaving you with space to focus on the task in front of you.

Reframe or Label It

One final and very quick strategy is to be able to cognitively evaluate any stress or anxiety in a productive way. One way to do this is to label what you are thinking or feeling:

Sometimes it can be helpful to simply say to yourself:

"That's just a thought."

"That's a feeling."

Or,

"Oh look, that's just my anxiety talking, this situation isn't really a life or death one."

You could also acknowledge your mind for doing its job, albeit doing it too well.

"Thank you mind. I know you're just doing your job and helping me survive, but I think I've got this one covered."

You can also put it into perspective and give it a positive reframe.

"I'm feeling a little bit anxious which is a positive thing because a little bit of anxiety will actually help me stay safe."

Managing Stress with your Breath

Controlled Breathing

Breathing is one of the first things to change automatically once our fight or flight response is activated. When we subconsciously detect threats in our environment our survival instinct aims to increase our oxygen supply to the muscles in our major muscle groups so that they are prepared to either stay and fight the threat, or run to safety.

So, how do we get more oxygen into our bodies? We breathe it in. You'll usually notice when you are anxious your breath becomes faster and shallower as you attempt to obtain more oxygen into your body.

To nip the fight or flight response in the bud, we can take back conscious control over one of the first things that changes when we are feeling anxious, our breathing.

Try this simple controlled breathing exercise.

1. Hold your breath and count to six.
2. Exhale slowly to the count of three, forcing all of the air out of your lungs.
3. Then, inhale slowly and deeply to the count of three.
4. Repeat the exhale/inhale process nine times.

Once you've completed that full cycle, one minute will have passed and you should notice your anxiety symptoms have or are subsiding. You can easily repeat the controlled breathing cycle one more time and that should be enough to have returned your body to a more relaxed state.

Feel free to get creative with the counting. You might inhale for 2, hold for 3 and exhale for 4, for example. It doesn't matter, as long as you count.

The counting is important because it occupies your cognitive space that you might otherwise use to worry!

Tip: Practice this one when you are feeling calm. It needs to become an automatic process that you can easily access when you are stressed or anxious, so don't wait until you are stressed or anxious to try it out, it won't work. And don't worry, no one needs to know what you're doing. You can use this one anyway. I do it ten minutes before an exam or interview and it works like a charm.

Managing Stress by Having Fun

Don't forget to have some downtime. Having fun, doing the things that you enjoy and that bring you pleasure are all things that should be a part of your schedule. They're just as important as everything else and can be used as rewards for your study efforts.

Think about studying for a 45 minute block and then rewarding yourself with a 15 minute break of some kind, then repeat.

Watch that internal motivation grow once you attach a reward to an effort.

Managing Stress with Good Sleep

Good quality sleep, 7-8 hours per night, is your best friend.

You can do whatever you like once school is finished, but for the next few weeks, do yourself a favour and prioritise your sleep by trying some of the strategies in this hand out.

Managing Stress with Mindfulness

Focussing your attention into the present moment will help you concentrate and stop your mind wandering into the future where you'd potentially like to be!

Try these mindful grounding activities, or join us over Swot Vac at 8.45am in the chapel on Rice Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for meditation practice.

Alternatively, see the meditation/chill out timetable for the exam period.

Haven't received the email? Just email me and I'll send it to you - jfleming@emmanuel.vic.edu.au

Managing Stress by Remembering there's Life After School

It's difficult at the moment because exams will be almost all you're thinking of but remember, there is life after school.

No matter how your exams go, no matter what your ATAR ends up being, it's all going to be okay.

This exercise below will help you dream, plan and set goals for your future - the future you choose for yourself.

Go for it!

A Note to Year 7 Parents on Taming the Butterflies for 2021

Mid way through the year, we planned to roll out a series of Taming the Butterflies social anxiety group programs for our year 7 cohort.

We were inundated with referrals and were able to commence a number of group programs in term 3, with the plan to undertake a similar number of group programs in term 4.

Unfortunately, the pandemic and frequent lockdowns had other ideas and we have been unable to complete the initial programs.

Our efforts this term have to be directed at assisting our students to return to school, as well as to assist our VCE students as they approach their final weeks of school.

As such, we unfortunately are unable to offer any further Taming the Butterflies programs for 2021. We will however revisit this in early 2022 and our Year 8 students (current year 7s) will be our first priorities for access.

In the meantime, we are highly recommending the BRAVE program as an alternative resource for your family. The BRAVE program is an online self-help program that contains both resources and information for children, teenagers and their parents. It is designed specifically to help young people with anxiety overcome their worries and improve the quality of their lives.

You can access it via this website: https://brave4you.psy.uq.edu.au/about

Thank you for your understanding as we navigate our way through the remainder of this year.

Kind regards,

Dr Jodie Fleming
School Psychologist

APPs to Help You Study

Offtime:

Behavioural scientists conducted an experiment that put students(external link) into three different rooms and asked them to perform a series of tests. Students in two of the rooms were interrupted twice via an instant message device and subsequently scored 20% lower than the students who had not been interrupted.

Interruptions impair our cognitive ability(external link), but with OFFTIME(external link) you create profiles that block your calls, texts, and notifications.

You can even restrict access to any apps and limit your phone usage (digital detox), so you can make sure you can focus, don’t get distracted, break free or have some quality time. Make exceptions for the people important to you, or send out custom auto-replies that let others know when you’re back on the grid.

Forest:

With Forest, you plant a seed and can watch it grow into a tree – only if you can resist closing the app down.

Close the app, and your tree dies.

But by keeping you focused on study and avoiding ‘app hopping’, the longer the app is kept open, the larger your tree will grow.

Maths Alarm Clock

On one hand, SWOTVAC is great – no more classes! On the downside, there’s no need to get out of bed – you snooze, you lose!

This app forces you to solve a maths sum in order to turn off your alarm, decreasing the chances of you hitting snooze for the fifteenth time.

Study

Sound and communication expert Julian Treasure(external link) stated in a great Ted Talk that we’re only one-third as productive(external link) in a noisy environment compared to a quiet environment. But finding a quiet place to study can be difficult.

The ‘Study’ app delivers 45 minutes of sound designed to increase your productivity by masking background noise.

We hope you’ve found something useful in this edition of Words for Wellbeing.

Our past editions of Words for Wellbeing contain useful reminders about how to cope with many different scenarios. You’ll find all of our past editions online - just follow this link and enter Words for Wellbeing in the search bar: 

Stay tuned for our next edition of Words for Wellbeing!

In the meantime, if you need to contact Wellbeing, please email us at wellbeing@emmanuel.vic.edu.au to organise a catch up or just to check in or offer us any suggestions or feedback on our Words for Wellbeing.

Stay safe and well everyone.

Love from your Wellbeing Team