Bailey Kaiser

HED 044
06/05/19
Project 3: Case Study Analysis

OVERVIEW

This case study is about Katya, currently in her first-year of college. So far, Katya

has accumulated a grade point average of a 3.0. She is a hardworking student, but

suffers from immense anxiety when it comes to testing. Katya is fully aware that her

scholarship rests on her ability to maintain an adequate grade point average. Her

anxiety has been getting so bad that she suffered a panic attack earlier today. She has

a chemistry exam in two days that she will need to pass to keep her scholarship. As we

can clearly see, Katya is feeling the pressure of performing and meeting the

requirement she needs, and her body is reacting accordingly.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Being a college student is no small feat. I also was fortunate enough to get some

really helpful scholarships to help pay for college, so I understand the pressure to

perform and meet standards academically. For myself, the most difficult part of being a

full-time student was trying to balance that with working simultaneously. I felt the

pressure to provide for myself and stay on top of schoolwork, not even to mention trying

to balance a social life and spiritual practice. At the time, I wasn't great at balancing it all

and relied pretty strongly on working out and smoking weed to relieve stress.
 Bailey Kaiser
HED 044
06/05/19
RECOMMENDATIONS

Traditional and mental health professionals are constantly working to understand

and provide stress management skills. In Afghanistan, an app called DART has been

developed for intense stress management. DART was created to fill the void for

active-duty soldiers facing massive amounts of acute stress and potentially already

facing effects of having PTSD. The app introduced skills such as controlled breathing,

grounding, tension scanning, and other cognitive behavioral strategies are being used

to manage stress among some of the most stressed out individuals: active duty soldiers.

As a college student, our body reacts to stress in similar ways to those soldiers - so we

can hypothesize that even we could use the same skills to cope. These practices, once

stigmatized for weakness, are being redesigned to "reduce both anxious arousal and

autonomic reactivity, and enhance self-efficacy, following stressful events in

warfighters". There was a study performed to show the effectiveness of these practices

and they found that "DART techniques are easy to understand, thought the techniques

would be helpful, and would be likely to use them" (McCaslin).

CONCLUSION

As you can see from the work being done in Afghanistan, sometimes the best

ways to manage stress are to reconnect with yourself, your breathing, and your

relationship with stress. My first piece of advice to Katya would be to take some time

away from studying. I would encourage her to give herself a specific amount of time

focused on reconnecting with herself through a breathing. No studying, no stressing,

 Bailey Kaiser
HED 044
06/05/19
just allowing herself to be okay with doing nothing. Just like the soldiers, these practices

seem counterintuitive to dealing with their issues, but in reality she is building resilience

into her brain and enhancing her self-efficacy in a natural, sustainable way. I would

recommend professional help to anyone with the means to afford it, even just for the

sheer opportunity to have a moment in time where one can release their issues safely.

Along with the conscious breathing and potential visit to a professional, I would

encourage Katya to do something that lifts her spirits. Maybe that’s working out,

hanging with friends, watching a stand-up special on Netflix - anything to get her out of

her own head!

Next semester, I would recommend that Katya set some realistic and fair

standards for herself academically. Clearly, this semester, she struggled not because

she wasn’t working hard enough - but because she may have put too much on her plate

at once. I would also encourage her to build into her schedule time that is dedicated to

showing herself some self-love, self-compassion, and self-reflection. I would also

remind Katya that there is so much peace found in knowing that you’ve done the best

you can do, and releasing the rest of it up to the universe, or God, or life.
 Bailey Kaiser
HED 044
06/05/19
References

McCaslin, S. E., Herbst, E. D., Armitage, N. H., Allen, I., Neylan, T., Becket-Davenport,
C., … Inslicht, S. S. (2018). Deployment Anxiety Reduction Training: A Pilot Study of
Acceptability and Feasibility in Current or Recent Active Duty Service Members. ​Military
Medicine​, ​183​(suppl_1), 371–378.
https://doi-org.ezp.pasadena.edu/10.1093/milmed/usx154