Edusity EdTech Newsletter for January 30, 2023: Feeling Thankful Buffers Stress
It’s inevitable that every phase of teaching and learning will bring some emotional pressure to teachers and students alike. The challenge is to deal with that stress effectively.
The next time you’re faced with a stressful exam or test, try taking a few seconds to remind yourself how grateful you are for the experience. Reminding yourself that being tested or examined is part of an amazing opportunity you were given, or the result of brave actions you were privileged to be able to take, and being grateful can help control your stress levels.
Not only does gratitude help buffer your stress, but that buffering can help your long-term cardiovascular health.
It’s an established fact that stress can cause high blood pressure. It can also increase cardiovascular morbidity and coronary heart disease. It’s also true that the way we respond to stress can help to buffer or cushion against its ill-effects.
Irish researchers have found that feelings of gratitude have “a unique stress-buffering effect on both reactions to and recovery from acute psychological stress.” Gratitude interventions are already used in clinical settings as one part of the treatment plan to help patients recover from stress-induced cardiovascular incidents.
The results of the study by Brian Leavy , Brenda H. O'Connell and Deirdre O'Shea, PhD at Maynooth University and the University of Limerick can be found in the article Gratitude, affect balance, and stress buffering: A growth curve examination of cardiovascular responses to a laboratory stress task.” It appears in the January issue of the?Journal of Psychophysiology.?
The Edusity Edtech Newsletter is based on recent press releases concerning the larger themes of teaching, learning and EdTech. It is published by Edusity.com on LinkedIn each week. If you are a subject matter expert in the field of learning psychology, we’d like to talk to you about creating a course to help students psychologically prepare themselves for exams. Please see Teach with Edusity for more information.