How Does an Individual's Destressing Method Affect Their Mentality the Next Morning?

Acute stress: more common and day to day, either positive or negative and is short-term.

Chronic stress: more long-term and seems like it will not dissipate, it can stem from multiple things including trauma.

Episodic Acute stress: acute stress that eventually evolves into a way of life causing distress continuously.

Eustress: paired and identified with surges of adrenaline and is considered to be energized and fun.

Mentality: thought process, and attitude.

Relaxation: the mental and physical freedom from tension or stress.

Stress: anything that causes strain on an emotional, psychological, or physical state.

There is a problem with the way humanity destresses. Despite how needed these moments are, less time is given, and occurring, is a less positive mindset in the mornings where dread is instilled into the next day. This problem has negatively impacted the population of routine workers, so this study specifically has chosen teachers in Pierce and King County, due to the concept of being in a routine and when they get home to unwind and relax the amount of time and way they decide, can leave them dreadful and unwilling in the morning. A possible cause of this problem is the increased work hours, and obligations before our mental health and a break of relaxation, for teachers specifically this is referencing their nine-hour school day with a minimum of two hours outside of work for planning and grading each day, spanning up to four or five hours sometimes more. So, a study that investigates the ways of destressing by a non-experimental method by survey gathering quantitative data could find a connection to how does an individual's destressing method affect their mentality the next morning? Specifically exercise, reading, watching television, and spending time with family or friends affect mentality the next morning?

The gap in my research stems from researched areas being the long and short term effects of stress, and each method in itself (working out, alcohol, reading, music, television, etc.) being researched and the effects, but not particularly the next day and put together, so it developed my question from being curious about stress to giving an area to look into.

Research has been done about each relaxation method and coping habits, and their individual effects on what happens to the mind and body, but in comparison physical effects on the individual themselves have not been recorded in reference to readiness and willingness the next morning. But mostly when the thought of relaxation strategies occur a quick assumption of most individuals is in the moment stress and breathing techniques. With a goal to be able to better the current mindsets and create a sense of reality with a grasp on what's going on. Along with knowing each response that occurs due to the outside stimulus. Rather than looking at the everyday occurrence. Stress has been shown to induce a variety of negative effects on our minds and body. While the research of methods to control stress has a variety of solutions the most popular and chosen ways can cause a mental block the next morning.

This is important because it shows flaws in the common ways people destress. Including the effects that can occur while giving information on what truly would be the best way to relax after a workday to improve mindsets and create a more optimistic day. Allowing more productivity and benefits to appear, plus once identified it can correlate to the way a teacher feels and how he or she begins to teach their class and ultimately what the students get out of it by the engagement and environment that is built upon the teacher's mood.

Assumptions and biases that have occurred during the beginning stages and throughout my research are the kind of stressors individuals may have, the way an individual chooses to destress, and the perceived definition of stress itself. Along with assumptions in the questions on the survey that the specificity would be understood to what I'm referring to then the exact word-to-word moments. However, my hypothesis of this study was that exercise will leave the most positive mentality the next morning this is due to the idea it energizes the body but calms the mind, by increasing the heart rate and activity along with releasing endorphins and dopamine which is the brains happy chemical while also getting rid of the cortisol hormone.

Using a non-experimental, survey method to gather quantitative data. The survey had 36 multiple-choice questions (not all required), there are three consent questions, and two blocking questions to ensure they are in the right population as a sample. Questions measuring stress and difficulty of waking up in the morning are on a scale of 1-5 (waking up) or 1-10 (stress level) were labeled only as one being the lowest and ten or five being the highest but no Likert scale rating. Using emails to send out the survey to principals in Pierce and King County asking them if they will send it out to their staff that would be willing to participate. The data will be sent back to a personal email where bar graphs and pie charts will be built to see trends and data outlines, numbers will be put together to create a percentage based on the number of respondents to chosen answers. Once the quantitative data was gathered and percentages are given the correlation to how a destressing method affects mentality the next morning will be shown.