Interrupting Stress Glorification Culture
By investing in your own wellness you'll be positively impacting the larger student body.
So let’s take some time to think about your role as a member of this community particularly relating to toxic stress glorification culture.
- What is Stress Glorification?
- Did you hear about Stress Glorification or examples of it during your admissions process?
You’ve heard from Dr. Kelly Crace already about Stress Glorification Culture and how it develops during the Authentic Excellence program. Now we’re going to continue that conversation by discussing how we can interrupt this toxic culture.
At William & Mary you might hear messages that compete with or totally disregard your individual wellness, but those are myths. Stress glorification is the competitive and comparative value placed on how much one is suffering. You might feel this creeping into your life when you fall into a false trap of equating your worth with how stressed you are. This badge of honor around excessive stress has negative implications on our internal environment as well as our external reputation. It’s especially easy to get caught up in this glorification in an academically rigorous institution like ours but we want to succeed and flourish during our time here so we’re going to have to talk about interrupting the stress glorification culture here.
What are some ways we can actively interrupt stress glorification?
- Try to let go of perfectionism
- Carve out time to do nothing
- Intentionally be less busy (can you set a limit to how many organizations you join? Or how many extracurricular activities you participate in? Or decrease your leadership roles?)
- Learn to say no! Identify what really matters to you and what doesn't!
- Resist the urge to compare how long you studied, what your GPA is, or how little sleep you got with your peers as a bonding experience
- When your peer groups step into a conversation that perpetuates stress glorification culture try stating how you are doing things differently. For example, “Wow, you must be so tired! I quit studying at 10 last night, read my novel for a little while, and then conked out. I needed to rest my brain and catalog everything I’d learned with a good night’s sleep.”
Scenario Practice
Scenario 1You’re chatting with your friend about spring break plans while walking to Sadler for lunch. You express your excitement about reading a novel you’ve had your eye on and hanging on the couch at home. In response, they start listing off their “resume” of extracurricular achievements this semester and express in great detail how stressed they are about everything they have to do over spring break to catch up with their leadership positions. |
Scenario 2You overhear a pair of friends chatting on the way into SWEM. The first student says, “This is my sixth cup of coffee this afternoon. I’m gonna need three more to make it through this exam review.” The friend says, “Dude, at least you haven’t cried yet today. I’ve cried three times over this paper since I woke up. I still have 9 pages to write!” |
Scenario 3You have a friend who is really obsessive about grades and you knew they we worried about a test today so you text to ask how it went. They text back, “ugh. Not great. After studying all week I only got an 87%” You reply with an encouraging text, “That’s actually really good! It looks like your studying paid off!” They quickly respond with, “It’s not good enough”. |
Thanks for taking some time to practice what it actually sounds/looks like to dismantle stress glorification culture. When we attend to our own wellness, and work to eradicate stress glorification, we become more resilient against unhealthy coping patterns such as excessive drinking and drug use. Practicing self-care every day attunes us to our own individual needs and allows us to be intentional about our choices and behaviors, hopefully resulting in connecting with our community in safe and healthy ways.
If you find yourself struggling to cope take some time to check out the Self-Care Over Soothing resource. SOS is for those who are looking for a healthy way to manage stress, cope with the vicissitude of life, or decrease/eliminate substance use. For context, soothing is any behavior motivated by the desire to temporarily feel better. Self-care is any behavior in which the intention is to be healthier.
