How to overcome Stress and Fear in an Immersive Program.
By: Sam Jomaiv
Tags: Learning To Code, Bootcamp, Anxiety

The way we feel is closely linked to the way we learn. “The reason why we remember specific moments or movies is because they have been stored in our memory under the influence of emotions.” When we experience emotions such as joy or disappointment we learn “ fast, deep or plenty”.

But fear has the opposite effect.

When we are afraid our brain limits our ability to think. Fear is the body’s natural response to perceived threats. This includes physical or psychological threats. Stress, a negative emotional state, has also been reported to facilitate and impair both learning and memory, depending on intensity and duration (Vogel and Schwabe, 2016). More specifically, mild and acute stress facilitates learning and cognitive performance, while excess and chronic stress impairs learning and is detrimental to memory performance.

When stress is detected the body goes into fight or flight mode and it switches off its ability to think logically. “ This makes creative and critical thought processes impossible.” In a life or death situation, this is necessary but in a classroom setting, this can be problematic.

Fear results in “tunnel vision” making it hard to learn new information.

So what should you do the next time you feel fear or stress while learning?

Don’t panic

If you feel yourself start to panic, tell yourself: don’t panic, you can do this.

Self Talk

Self-talk can reduce anxiety. We all hold internal conversations as we go through our days, and sometimes our nights. Psychologists have identified one important type of these inner monologues as “Self-talk,” in which you provide opinions and evaluations on what you’re doing as you’re doing it. You can think of self-talk as the inner voice equivalent of sports announcers commenting on a player’s successes or failures on the playing field.

Unlike that sports commentary, which athletes never hear while they’re competing, you can actually “hear” what your own self-talk is saying. When this is upbeat and self-validating, the results can boost your productivity. However, when the voice is critical and harsh, the effect can be emotionally crippling.

Take a deep breath

The way you breathe affects your whole body. Breathing exercises are a good way to relax, reduce tension, and relieve stress. Work on controlling your breathing. Try breathing in through your nose for four seconds, holding for two seconds, then breathing out through your mouth for six seconds.

When we take shallow breaths, we over-breathe oxygen and breathe out too much carbon dioxide stressing our body and telling our nervous system to stay on red alert. In contrast, breathing in a calm pattern that activates the rest digest and recovery part of our nervous system requires us to lengthen our exhale and slow down the number of breaths we take a minute. To prevent the negative long-term effects of this “stress-like” state, we must try to prevent shallow breathing. Another factor that affects our breathing is our sitting posture.

Correct your Posture

Posture affects our health and how well we perform in all areas of life. For example, people with rounded shoulders, hunched backs, and necks that force their gaze towards the floor, generally do less well at interviews.

Poor alignment in that slumped position means your diaphragm can’t descend easily making it hard to activate the posterior half of your diaphragm that attaches to your lower ribs and spine. Your body will want to get air in still so it can replenish its oxygen stores. To do that it has to recruit its backup breathing muscles around its neck and chest to help inhale, expanding the rib cage to get air traveling down into the lungs.

Research into breathing patterns and emotions has also shown that when you adopt a slumped posture/breathing pattern you experience sadness. The powerful finding in this research is if you change your posture and breathing pattern you can change your emotion.

Taking short walks

Taking 5-minute walks can reverse harm caused to leg arteries during three hours of prolonged sitting, researchers report. Sitting for long periods of time is associated with risk factors such as higher cholesterol levels and greater waist circumference that can lead to cardiovascular and metabolic disease. When people sit, slack muscles do not contract to effectively pump blood to the heart. Blood can pool in the legs and affect the endothelial function of arteries, or the ability of blood vessels to expand from increased blood flow.

Moderate your caffeine and alcohol intake

Excessive caffeine increases symptoms of anxiety and although alcohol is a relaxant it may not help the next day.”

Caffeine is not the enemy,” Julie Radico, a clinical psychologist with Penn State Health said in a university news release. “But I encourage people to know healthy limits and consume it strategically because it is activating and can mimic or exacerbate the symptoms of anxiety.”

Low doses of caffeine are in the range of 50 to 200 milligrams (mg). Consuming more than 400 mg at once may lead to feeling overstimulated and anxious, and bring on symptoms such as racing heart, nausea, or abdominal pain.

Remember you are not alone. Everyone else may look as if they are coping fine but many of them are struggling too. Talk to people.