Example: Stress Management Plan

This page includes excerpts from several separate assignment submissions. These excerpts showcase the most successful portions of each of these students' work. (Notes: Don't expect this example to flow perfectly as the students were all very different.)

Examples

The following examples are from several different students' assignments and do not present a coherent full Stress Management plan - they are meant to inspire you as you work on your own plan.

Section 1: Reducing Hindrance Stressors

Military Student Example (Anonymous, personal communication, 2015):

This example was from a military veteran student with PTSD. I have not included a name and date citation for this personal communication to preserve their anonymity.

Other Student Example (M. Leija, personal communication, 2020):

Hindrance Stressors

Work: My stress is caused by role overload and daily schedule hassles between school and work. I am challenged at work to complete work that is still new to me. I have to deliver results while I am still learning the job. I feel like I am always trying to catch up but never making it to the finish line.
School: The school workload is heavy when combined with my work obligations. This is because I want to finish my degree sooner than later. I started attending school before I started this second job.
Non-Work: Work-family life is strained due to work and school load. There is little time for family or personal time. My wife says “I know, you have homework sad face emoji”

Coping Strategies

Work: Communication with partners and other employees on how my education path is a positive for the company. They can see how my education is making an impact on company performance. Seek out assistance and inform everyone when a task is out of my skill set. Don’t over promise or over commit.
School: Start by buying back time and ask my family for help with the household obligations. Outsource husband duties like yard work or anything I do not have time for.
Non-Work: Communicate with my family on hard deadlines I need to meet. My family gets together on Sundays. Break away from school work for a couple of hours on that day. Have a date night on Saturday’s with my wife.

Section 2: Improve Work-Life Balance (R. McGrew, personal communication, 2014)

As you can see I'm actually where I want to be with my work-life balance. So my strategies in this area are: (1) to remain consistent in this balance by (2) not overdoing it and taking on too much in any one areas at one time, e.g. saying no when I need to do so to maintain balance.

Section 3: Improve Hardiness/Resilience (E. Delich, personal communication, 2014)

Section 4: Reflect (Excerpts)

Anonymous, personal communication 2014: I'm concerned that I don't have a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006), so I don't look at hassles and issues as challenges I think I can overcome. I really want to work on that, to become more of a problem-solver. I'm not sure exactly how to do that, but I ordered her book off Amazon and my first SMART goal is to read one chapter per week and try to find a way to apply what I read to help develop a new mindset. I think doing that first, before I even think about working on my other stress problems, will help me deal with all of them.

L. Vasquez, personal communication, 2014: I do believe that I need to implement these strategies. Being so busy with work and school will hopefully pay off and I can work less and spend more time with my children in the future. Right now there is not really anything I can do to reduce my work or school hours. I want to be more active and hopefully begin to exercise more in the near future, so I think trying to combine my goals is my path to success. For example, I can work out with my kids if I plan it right and then I am both spending the time with them that I need and also getting in exercise.

Report abuse