Busy schedules can include working, going to school, hanging out with friends, studying, and doing after-school sports and activities.

One thing these schedules all have in common is stress.

National Stress Awareness Day is Monday, April 16.

Stress can be harmful on the body and mind. Tight muscles, increased blood pressure, heart disease, a weakened immune system, as well as anxiety and depression can all be effects from stress.

Mrs. Amy Graham, health teacher, believes stress management is important, especially for adolescents.

“Managing stress is extremely important, even at a young age,” Graham said. “The biggest health issue with teenagers and stress is getting sick. During times of stress your immune system shuts down. This leaves a person more susceptible to contracting the common cold, influenza, or much worse.”

This national holiday is supposed to encourage people to relax and take a break from the chaos and pressures of daily life.

Some methods of coping with stress include exercising, eating healthy, treating yourself to a spa day, taking soothing baths, having face masks and manicures, meditating, reading, or using a stress ball or worry stone to hold in fidgety hands to stop bad habits such as biting nails because of stress.

It is important to stop and breathe.

Take a break from the craziness of everyday life.

Focusing the mind on the truly important things, and not worrying about every single detail, becomes a large part of reducing stress.

Find the most significant things you should focus on and let the rest go. You can only do your best.

Junior Audriana Counelis copes with her stress by making realizations of her situation and thinking rationally about them.

“When it comes to coping with stress, I think the best thing to do is take a step back and breathe,” Counelis said. “When I realize I’m stressed, it’s easier to calm myself down and look at what the cause is and how I can fix it.”

Stress management is crucial for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. According to the Huffington Post, a key to better stress management is taking control of your life. This can be linked to accessing the prefrontal cortex of the brain in order to better control emotion, fear, and stress.

Junior Heather McNeill deals with stress regularly.

“Stress affects me tremendously,” McNeill said. “I’m a person with very high anxiety so the littlest inconvenience stresses me out.”

McNeill believes that it’s crucial to cope with stress in a healthy manner so she doesn’t become overly anxious.

“I try to distract myself or accomplish whatever is causing me stress,” McNeill said. “If I had a test that was stressing me out I would study to help ease the stress down.”

It’s easy to adopt a mindset that says you don’t have enough time to manage stress, you’re too busy, no one understands, the stress won’t stop, you can’t control your thoughts and emotions.

While it’s easy to believe this, it simply isn’t true. Work to create the time to relax a little bit, and manage your time efficiently. Know your limits and understand your body. This will prevent stress from ruling your life.

Counelis said National Stress Awareness day is important because it educates people on something that everyone deals with.

“It’s important to bring awareness to stress because we all experience it. It’s inevitable,” Counelis said. “It makes people feel less alone to actually come to the realization that other people are going through the same type of thing.”

Stress is influenced by both external and internal factors, so individuals are encouraged to be aware of themselves as well as their surrounding environment today.

McNeill also believes bringing awareness to stress is important, especially in today’s society.

“Bringing awareness to stress today is so important because I feel like more people are affected by it today compared to times in the past,” McNeill said. “I honestly believe that teens today have the highest stress levels of all. So much is put on us that the stress becomes detrimental. Bringing awareness to all of this helps make people realize what others are going through.”