150. Mental Health in College Q+A: Burnout, Getting Rejected, Stress, & Self-Care

Jun 3

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In today's solo episode, I am answering a bunch of your questions on mental health when applying to college and while attending college! I talk all about how to practice self-care even while busy in college and how to avoid burnout, how you can enjoy the present and make the most of your college experience, what to do when your workload is becoming overwhelming, what you can do freshman year to set yourself up for college success, how to deal with rejection during the college admissions process, and how to manage your stress during final exams and when applying for jobs and internships while in school. This episode is a MUST LISTEN if you're wondering how to optimize your mental health while making the transition into college!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ College Mini-Series: Ep. 147

+ College Mini-Series: Ep. 148

+ College Mini-Series: Ep. 149

+ Submit your questions!

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Episode Sponsors

🛋This week's episode is sponsored by Teen Counseling. Teen Counseling is an online therapy program with over 14,000 licensed therapists in their network offering support with depression, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and more via text, talk, and video counseling. Head to teencounseling.com/shepersisted to find a therapist today!

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

Sadie: It also is important to remind yourself that while this is on the path to the future, not getting that grade or not getting that score on the test or not getting that GPA isn't going to derail you from pursuing that goal and really referring the idea that everything is riding on this one test or this one score, or this one piece of performance that isn't.

All encompassing of you as a person and your work ethic and your ability to do well in life.

Hello, hello and welcome back to She Persisted. If you Are New here, my name is Sadie. I am an incoming junior at the University of Pennsylvania. I started, she persisted after a year and a half of intensive mental health treatment, so I was entering my junior year of high school. We're now four years from that point.

Four years into the podcast and I'd just done a year and a half of intensive treatment at a residential program, a therapeutic boarding school turned my mental health around, and I really wanted to share everything that I had learned, all the resources I had access to with fellow teenagers. So all the coping skills, the mindset shifts, the conversations.

All of that, and since then I've been working to create the resource I wish I would've had when I was struggling because so much was preventable. So much suffering could have been avoided. So my hope is that with this podcast, you can take ownership of your mental health, use coping skills that are effective and sustainable, and take ownership of your life, even as a teen.

So if you have not listened to the previous episodes in this mini-series, we're doing a little college mental health. Series of episodes. This episode four in this series. The first episode, we had a psychiatrist on the show that works heavily with college students and high schoolers making the transition to college. That episode was with the college psychiatrist, aka a Dr.

Bianca Bush. Then on episode 1 48, we had on the lovely Emmy Nate Field, we talked about if you should address your mental health in your college application. Got multiple respectives there. Had a really amazing open-minded conversation about that.

And then the episode before this, we had on two two fabulous psychologists, Sarah and Liz from the college's. Fine, everything is fine. Podcast. And we talked all about thriving as a college student, specifically through the lens of D B T. So dialectics in college skills you can use, maintaining self-respect in your relationships.

Just so many phenomenal parts of D B T that can apply to the college setting and this age, demographic and skills I use on the daily in college. So today we're throwing a solo episode in there. I'm gonna answer a bunch of questions about mental health in college, college life. My advice being halfway through this journey that is college. And obviously you guys know every college experience is different, but there are a lot of parallels and what I found from talking to a lot of friends at schools all over the country is that you are experiencing the same things.

You're all stressed about finals. You're all meeting new friends. You're all in a new location. You're all navigating this new relationship with your family at home versus your life at school. Things are very similar across the board. A lot of these emotions and thought patterns are super relatable.

So even though we might not be at the same school, you might be going to college a different year. I really do hope that these questions and pieces of advice are very evergreen and helpful to whoever's listening.

So question number one, what are the best ways to practice self-care with a busy schedule? I love this. You guys know self-care is such a buzzword. Everyone's talking about it. Everyone's practicing self-care 24 7, but I think this is absolutely key and essential to avoiding burnout and stress in college.

And we're gonna dive more into burnout in the next question. But for this question specifically, My advice is to build it into your schedule and almost make it a habit. So rather than saying, I'm feeling stressed today, I need to self-care. I'm feeling so overwhelmed about this test coming up, I need to do some self-care. What I instead recommend doing is taking a very preventative approach and.

Putting self-care pockets into your schedule and so that you're building up your emotional resilience for these difficult moments, whether it's finals, an argument with a friend, missing home, a crazy week, whatever it is, you have built up this emotional resilience. You've decreased that emotional vulnerability, and even as you are in those moments, if you're like, this is still really challenging and stressful, that self-care is now a habit, and it's something that you don't have to think about and go outta your way to do. You're more likely to implement that effective coping skill. So when I think about my day at college, I'm home for summer break right now, but my routine is very similar.

There's a lot of parallels, but when I think about my day as a college student going to classes, doing homework, et cetera, there are many moments that self-care is sprinkled in there. It starts as soon as I wake up. I almost think of my morning routine and even like my bed as very much self-care.

I'm a big sleeper. I love sleeping. I love naps. It's been a problem for a really long time. I just remembered the other day that when I was in residential, I. I took a nap. Like this was one of my biggest issues that I would just sleep during the day and they'd be like, so this is called avoidance and you can't nap all the time.

But I would take naps during the day. And it was also like I was really chronically tired a lot of the time because when you're depressed and overwhelmed, you're exhausted, you're low energy, and I was an insomniac. So I was even more tired during the day. But regardless, I was taking a lot of naps, and I remember that we implemented a rule where we were like, okay, after you get up for the morning and start your day, we're gonna lock the door to your room.

So I wouldn't go back in. I wouldn't nap because if I was in my room, I was falling asleep without a doubt. And so, I remember at one point I went back to my room after a therapy session cuz you would do therapy sessions throughout your day, residential. And I didn't tell anyone that I was going to my room or that I was taking a nap.

And so I took a nap there for like three hours. And this was the point of treatment and residential where I was going to their date program to learn the skills. And it was almost like you're going to school. So I would go to another building. I would do the activities, I'd do the therapy group, and then I would go back to the unit of residential.

Sleep there, spend my night there. But it was a good exercise in having that daily routine, having that sense of purpose and having somewhere to go. So the I O P, which was the daily place I went to, thought I was still at the unit doing therapy and the unit. Where I had been doing therapy, thought I'd gone back to iop.

So everyone was like, she's fine, she's doing her thing. They came and did room checks like three hours later and we're like, what are you doing here? And I was like, oh, I'm sorry. I was just taking a nap. And there's a rule at this specific residential we're with, they don't have eyes on you every four.

45 minutes. It's a potential safety concern. So you have to get a medical clearance. So because of this nap, because I didn't tell anyone because I was in my room, unbeknownst to me, like locked in there, I wasn't locked in there. But the outside no one could go in without the keys. Other students couldn't go home, but the staff could.

I was fine. I was not at risk. I was sleeping. I was living my best life. But unbeknownst to me, I'd been MI for three hours, so I had to go to the emergency room and get medically cleared in case I'd like eaten a book or something crazy because you don't know what happens when someone at McClean goes missing for three hours.

So it's like six hours at the emergency room. Getting medically cleared was fine, just had a really great nap. But yeah, that's also say that very long tangent. Napping is a theme. Napping is a pattern, and so for me, being in bed, relaxing, sleeping, it's a happy place. It's a form of self-care. And we also know that sleep is absolutely essential to mental health.

. So when I wake up in the morning, I'm like, this is great. This is lovely. Of course, I was like, oh, my alarm is going off. It's terrible, but my bed is comfy. That's a very safe space. That's very a self-care ask for me. And then in the morning, first things first.

I'm doing my skincare routine. I'm getting ready. I'm doing my hair, I'm doing my makeup. That is also, for me, a sense of self-care. For some people were like, this is the worst. I hate, like washing my face and getting ready for the day. For me, I found it very therapeutic. So that is in itself built into my routine, a form of self-care.

And then I'm making my coffee. I always look forward to my ice latte in the morning. So that is very therapeutic. It boosts my mood. And then there's little things like walking to class, being outside, maybe saying hi to a friend.

All of these moments are very positive and reinforcing. And then there's little moments throughout the day. Maybe it's listening to music, watching a favorite show. Maybe I'm like doing my nails that day. These little pockets of self-care are built in. And then the day is book-ended again, with moments of self-care in my evening routine.

So like unplugging, not continuing work for the evening, not ruminating while I'm in bed, and I'm putting my pajamas, showering, doing my skincare routine, my hair routine. Reading before, better watching a TV show. So all of these moments that put a lot of emotional resilience in the bank because they do boost my mood.

They make me feel happy and safe and a, a sense of peace. And so having those moments built in on a daily basis. And then anything additional I'm doing, like I mentioned, maybe I'm like going on a walk. I'm spending time outside. I'm doing a workout, like these other moments of self-care are really just adding more positive moments in the bank, even if they aren't done on a daily basis.

So having a good foundation established where you don't even have to think about it, but going through your daily routine does reduce your stress level. It does reduce your emotional reactivity. Can be a great way as a college student to get self-care and mental health moments in, even if you have a really busy schedule.

The next question is how did not get burnt out from classes, extracurriculars in socializing? This is very similar to the last question I answered, and so I'm gonna build off of that so you have that foundation. The idea here, I've talked about this a couple times in the podcast, but it's keeping yourself on a positive trajectory, so, We've heard of the 80 20 rule, whether it comes to like exercise or diet or routine.

I really love applying this to mental health and that 80% of your day, your relationships, your thought patterns, your emotions are either neutral or positive. I. And ideally you'd want them to be positive. There's this really interesting concept in marketing where when people are like grad, a store or customer service or how much they enjoyed a product, when you are calculating the net score of , how great is this thing, they completely disregard.

I wanna say it's like five through eight. Or four through seven or something like that. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's because it's okay. It's average, but it's not anything to write home about. A customer's not going to be shouting your praises or being a repeat customer cause they're like, I guess that was all right.

It was like, right, exactly what I thought it was gonna be a solid 7.5, but if you're below five, you're below average. And we know that as humans, from an evolutionary perspective, we feel our negative emotions more strongly. We are already positioned to pay more attention to those negative emotion, thoughts, experiences, and less to the positive ones.

So anything that's below average, you're like, that is gonna bring down My Yelp review, it's gonna bring down this customer's belief about this product, this customer service, this store, whatever it is. And it has to be really stellar and really great above an eight for that to even count into this equation.

And I think the same thing is true for mental health. If you're living your whole life is like a seven, you're like, Okay. Things aren't bad, but they're not great. They're not amazing. I'm not like, I absolutely love life. This is phenomena. You're like, I'm just kind of bouncing along.

I'm living life. But it's maybe not anything groundbreaking. And then when you're looking back at your day, your week, your month, you're like, well, it wasn't bad. But when you're like, what are these things I'm most grateful for? What are these things that were just so amazing and really a part of my life worth living?

It's more difficult to pull those moments. And so I think that can be true for your mental health as well. And this 80 20 rule, With the 80%, you're of course going for positive moments, but when you're going through your day and you're like, this was fine, it, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either.

Remembering that when you're in a low moment, you probably won't look back on that 7.5 and be like, see, this is why life is so great. It wasn't bad, it wasn't good, but like this moment is what makes life. Really a phenomenal experience is this is what I have to look forward to, and that can be helpful when you're in those more positive moments to plant those seeds of joy. And positivity and your life worth living, and I think that can kind of be helpful just to keep in the back of your head so that when you do view those moments, you're like, well, I haven't been having a bad week or a bad month, but I guess it hasn't been really great either. remembering that kind of.

Internal metric we have where we're already predisposed to focus on the negative more than the positive. And then as humans, when it's anything between like a five and an eight, you're just gonna write it off as neutral. So you're, again, you're gonna pay more attention to the five and below or the eight and above.

So what can you do to really hone in on those positive moments when you can? So anyways, all of this to say the 80 20 rule is a great way to approach your mental health where. We just think about it mathematically. If we think about it logically, which I'm a big logic person. I love the pros and cons. I love knowing what's happening and when.

I love being organized. So when I think about my mental health, if I were to spend 80% of the time talking really negatively to myself, being anxious, being stressed, being burnt out, being overwhelmed, and 20% of the time being happy and feeling connected and motivated in general, my life and my mental health will be on a negative trajectory.

That's kind of just how it's gonna work. Whereas if I'm talking more positively to myself, I have healthy relationships, I have healthy habits. I'm using effective coping skills 80% of the time and 20% of the time it's like, Ugh, I just am having this negative thought pattern. I'm really down on myself. I had an argument with a friend.

Whatever it is, you're still in a positive trajectory. We have low moments. We all struggle from time to time, but in general, you are improving and your mental health is on an upward trend. And because we're doing so much in the 80% when we're feeling motivated and we're like, yes, I'm building my life worth living.

I'm using the coping skills. I'm in a good mental HUD space, and you can invest in yourself in that way, you're giving yourself a lot more emotional resilience for the 20% when you have a bad day, when you're burnt out, when you're stressed, when you're overwhelmed.

So the idea here is planning that 80% and setting your schedule up to keep you in that 80% as much as possible. And if you're in that positive trajectory, the burnt out will be less present and you're less likely to have that occur. So your morning routine, your night routine, your meals, spending time with friends, what can you control?

You can't control what your teacher's gonna put on the test. You can't control when the tests are in your schedule, when you'll have a tough day, but you can control the way you're talking to yourself, how much sleep you're getting. Are you getting exercise? Are you spending time outside? Are you investing relationships?

Are you starting assignments early so you're not procrastinating and overwhelmed towards the end? Really focus on what you can control and when you can control it, try and put it in that 80 bucket. I know that's hard. I struggle with it a lot. It's like do as I say, not as I do. Because of course I have days where I'm like, Hmm, it's the 20 is happening.

I don't wanna do that. I know what I should do, but I'm still not necessarily making that decision. But if I were gonna give the advice of like perfect best case scenario, what would I do? That would be it. And I have found that in general, I feel like I'm less burnt out than my peers from time to time

cause I do feel like I have a good balance and I do have a routine that continues to build me up, whether it's motivation or energetically. in turn, I have more that I can give to things I'm passionate about, whether it's classes, relationships, the podcast work, et cetera.

Next question is how to deal with the feeling that time is going by too quickly. I feel like college has been going by really fast. This is a common experience and I literally, like as I was moving out from Penn this year, I was like, I feel like I just moved in. I'm definitely not a junior next year.

What I go back to is that time flies when you're having fun and it's a really good sign if it feels like things are moving quickly, because I remember how time would move, specifically when I was at the therapeutic boarding school, I went to. And a day was like a year and a week was like an entire decade in a month was like unheard of.

And I was there for 14 months, but it felt like an eternity. Time just went so incredibly slowly. And even if it was like, oh, I'm gonna see my family next week, it was like that was so incredibly long until I was gonna see them. And getting through every day was just, again, a long period of time because it was just such a negative and.

Unhappy environment. It was tough to go through the motions, and so when I'm at college or I'm going through life and I'm like, wow, I'm 20, do I need to reprint the podcast? Like that went by so quickly. I've been doing this for four years, , When I have these moments of like, wow, things are going quickly, that's such a positive for me.

It's such a good thing to know that I am getting through my days with ease. My weeks are flying by because I have goals I'm working towards and I have things I'm looking forward to, and I'm not being bogged down by negative emotions or stress or burnout or emotional exhaustion or unhappiness. So while it's.

sad. It's like you want things to last longer because you're enjoying them. I take so much relief and reinsurance in the fact that time is flying because it means that I'm truly happy and enjoying things and that it's, it's a good environment to be in. So I, that's not really necessarily great advice, but it's something mentally when I'm like, wow, things flew by.

I'm like, that's great. I'm really, really happy that things are flying by because time flies when you're having fun.

Next question is what to do if the work feels like too much. Is it okay to drop a class or rearrange your schedule? To better accommodate your mental and physical needs? Absolutely. I think that this was something that I became aware of freshman year, and it wasn't that I had too much on my plate, but the way I was structuring things was really ineffective.

My freshman fall semester, I took . A writing seminar about children's language acquisition. I took a communications class about children and media. I took Intro to Psych and I took Spanish. And so Spanish was kind of different. It was working in different , mental muscle. But the communication class, the psychology class, and the writing seminar were very similar because Intro to Psych has the language acquisition unit. It talks about these mental processes, children in media was about adolescent development and then the writing seminar, which is like going really deep into language development and writing and psychology. And so while I really do love psychology and adolescence, it was so much of the same thing that mentally I was getting really burnt out from doing this over and over and over again.

Hours a week, all in the exact same subject area. And so in other semesters, I really did course correct and I was like, okay, I love my psychology classes, but I can't take five, or I'm gonna be like, I can't mentally do this. So I'm like, I have a com class. I took a philosophy class. Maybe there's a math or a STEM class thrown in there and structuring your schedules that those things are spaced out and you're not burnt out in one area and having more energy to give in another.

But this also is true for timing. I remember second semester freshman year, I also made a big mistake and I put like four classes in one day, which if you're a high schooler listening to this, you're like, um, are you kidding me? I have eight in one day.

And I'm like, trust me. I didn't think that the high school schedule was that bad. And then you get to college and you have four classes in one day and you're like, I can't do this. Maybe we're getting weaker because we don't have that daily schedule, and maybe we just are now mentally and physically out of shape from going through that routine.

But regardless, I think college students can relate. If you put all your classes on one day, You're like, this is the worst decision I've ever made. Part of it is listening to a 90 minute lecture and taking notes and not engaging and going to the next one and being, I cannot absorb any more information.

But regardless, I had to learn from that because I was so burnt out and mentally tired and struggling to show up how I wanted to to those classes. And so if you are finding yourself burnt out, especially in the first weeks of class, listen to that. See if you can switch timing, see if you can switch the classes you're taking.

There's always a next semester, unless you're like a second semester senior. But there's always things to come. And so if you're like, this is really going to hurt my mental health to continue down this path. Course correct, and you can still have these experiences at a later time, but the summary there is, it is absolutely okay to adjust and pull back and join less clubs.

Spend more time by yourself, restructure your schedule. Ask for help from professors if you are feeling mentally or physically burnt out. And then I also go back to building up that emotional resilience. Look at your schedule and what you do have control over, and what can you do to give yourself the best chance of success and put more in that 80 bucket and keep yourself on a positive trajectory.

Next question is, what can you do freshman year to set yourself up for success? So many things. The first thing that comes to mind is a good sleep routine. If you can get yourself like on a really optimal going to bed and waking up routine, if you can get that down freshman year and just stick to it, you'll be so much better off than if you're like pulling all nighters and really changing when you're waking up and going to bed. Sleep has the biggest impact on how you're functioning on a day-to-day basis. So do what you can to set that up for success as soon as you get to college.

other things here, I think that morning and night routine that I mentioned are kyiv. You can have those as bookends to your day no matter what classes you're taking, no matter what friendships you have going on around you, no matter what the stress levels are, you have that thing that you can rely on and count on and come back to.

Another thing is to really lean on the support systems that you've built in high school. You have parents, you have family members, you have friends from home. Like these are friendships and relationships that have you through an immense amount of stress and change during high school.

Just because you're at college doesn't mean you still can't utilize them and lean on them for support. So as you're building up this new community at college, lean on the relationships you already have and go to them for support. Like we just talked about in the last question.

Figuring out what works for you as far as timing for classes, what days you have your classes on, how you're distributing the classes that you're taking, with regards to the subject matter that they are. If you can figure out what your balance is freshman year, you can have an optimal schedule for the rest of your college experience, and that will be a game changer.

And then friendships. I think if you can start to plant seeds and build relationships for people that you wanna spend time with for the rest of your college experience, you have a much longer runway to strengthen those relationships, solidify them, and have a really amazing community of relationships.

Throughout your college experience.

Today's episode is brought to you by Teen Counseling. If you are in college and wanting mental health support from a professional, but you don't know where to begin that process, this is for you. Teen Counseling is Better Health's branch of online therapy, specifically for teens and young adults. So what you do is you go to teen counseling.com/you persisted.

You fill out a form about what you're hoping to work on, whether it's depression, anxiety, stress. Burnout college, navigating that transition, and they won't match you with a clinician that specializes in that area. And from there, you start your therapy journey. They offer text talk and video services, so depending on what level of support you're looking for, they meet you where you're at.

And the great thing about teen counseling is that you don't necessarily have to deal with referrals or long wait times or wait list to get into a provider. And I know firsthand going to college in another state and in another city I. Finding mental health professionals and doctors in general is a whole situation.

It's a lot of work, especially if you're like Ubering from place to place. It's a whole process. I get it. I know it's so overwhelming, especially as a young adult. So if you are looking for a therapist or a mental health professional in college and you don't know how to do that and you would like something that is online and really easily accessible, check out teen counseling.

Again. You can go to teen counseling.com/she persisted to start or continue your therapy journey today.

Next question is advice on maintaining your mental health during the college application process in dealing with rejection. This is so tough and it is one of the most incredibly stressful and overwhelming periods of time as a high school student and in life because you've been told this in your whole life.

Like, where are you gonna go to college? You have to do your college application, where you're going to college will determine your future, will determine your job. It will determine your friends. Like I think a lot of the messaging we've receive in society is that this decision and this application, there's a lot that is coming down to it.

And like I mentioned towards the beginning of this episode, a lot of things are the same no matter where you end up at school. And so no matter where you end up, it will be okay and you can thrive and you can pursue what you're interested in and build great friendships and have a great time and really enjoy your, your college experience. So with that caveat and that reminder, what I would do specifically,

Is kind of reframe how I approach rejection and acceptance and really as much as you can mentally saying, if I don't get into this place, it's because I wasn't meant to. I wasn't meant to go to this school. I wasn't meant to be in this class and be in this community and take these courses. And that can be tough because I know when I was.

Looking in high schools, I had this experience where I had these schools that I really wanted to go to and I didn't get into them, and then I would reapply, didn't get in. And I knew, I felt was like, this is where I'm supposed to go to school. This is what is essential for my success so I can have a good social life and get into college.

And It didn't happen. I, I didn't get in. There's nothing that you can do about it. And it's a really challenging position to be in where you feel like you know what's best for you. And the universe is saying, but that's not what's happening in this position. And that's where you mentally have to really reinforce that for whatever reason, this was not meant to happen.

And. You were meant to go to a different school, and I think this can be true with friendships, with any kind of rejection. If you can just remind yourself that for whatever reason, this just wasn't supposed to happen, no matter how excited you were, no matter how passionate and committed you were to pursuing this path in life.

Just reinforcing the idea like, you know what, but this really wasn't supposed to happen for whatever reason. This was like the bad path. This was not supposed to happen. This is not in my journey, and that's okay. And that's a really hard thing to navigate, especially when you are so tied and attached to an outcome with college applications.

And that's a D B T scale that is used. Somewhat frequently called non-attachment outcomes and releasing that emotional tie and all of that emotional energy around wanting a certain thing to happen and accepting that a lot of the times we don't have control over what the outcome will be. You can put together the most perfect essay and the most perfect.

Transcript and letters of recommendations and for whatever reason, sometimes it doesn't work out and you're not meant to go to that school. And so doing what you can to release attachment to outcomes can be helpful in advance of getting that decision. And I think also going back to that mental script, if this wasn't meant to happen, this wasn't meant to be.

And what is ahead for me is so much better and aligned and. What is supposed to happen? So just to give you like a little quick excerpt of how non-attachment works, non-attachment means that you were able to live your life , outside of another person or another decision. So non-attachment is the practice of being open to change without clinging to material things or people in order to fulfill yourself.

It means that you were able to live your life outside of the other person or the external thing, and it ultimately takes the pressure off and allows you to be without depending on anything or anyone to feed your soul. Clinging onto things like relationships, jobs, material goods, colleges simply does not make considering they're constantly evolving nature.

And the other kind of idea here is that you are being open to an outcome but not attached to it. This comes from Buddhism and is very much in the mindfulness module, but you are hoping you have your best case scenario, but you're not attached to it, and absolutely tied to that outcome.

A little bit more pulled from D B T and then we'll move on. But being attached to outcomes has many negative consequences as well. If you are attached to an outcome, you won't hear things that are inconsistent with the way you want them to be. In addition, you may end up with unnecessary happiness trying to make something work that no matter what you do, just isn't going to work.

Begin paying attention in your life to whether you are being attached or open to an outcome. Furthermore, observe yourself with open-minded curiosity. it is always good to hope for the best. However, it is never wise to expect the best. Remember, be open to outcomes, not attached to them. Ugh, I love that.

We love D B T. There is a skill and a mindset shift for every life situation in D B T and. I think that is a helpful little piece of messaging if you're navigating this. I would also throw in a cope ahead. So that's the skill where you like think about what emotions, thoughts, and behaviors might come up if you get a rejection.

How would you cope with that? What skills would you use? Who would you call? Who would you talk to? Would you go on a walk? Would you listen to music? Would you reframe that mindset? Go through the motions mentally. And make a plan of how you're gonna cope. Another thing that I think is very important, I think this is different from a cope ahead, where you're setting yourself up for success with regard to coping skills, is not suffering twice.

In the mental health world, there's this idea that if you're ruminating and thinking about something that might happen, you're suffering once. When you are going through the mental process of like, what if I get rejected? What if they say no? How am I gonna tell my family and friends and respond to this rejection?

And then when you actually do get rejected, you're going through it twice. And so if you can avoid that initial rumination and going through that whole thought spiral like this is. What it's gonna feel like when I open the letter, this is what it's gonna feel like when my family's around me and responding to that.

This is what it's gonna feel like when I have to text my friends and say, I didn't get in. This is what it's gonna feel like when I'm going to school the next day. And if you can avoid that suffering mentally, and even if it does happen, you're only suffering once instead of suffering twice, but still cope, because I do feel that's very effective for setting yourself up from a mental health and coping skill perspective.

Two more questions. The second to last question is advice on dealing with stress around finals and exam season. This is incredibly challenging and I think it's something that a lot of students deal with and don't always deal with effectively. I come back to something I said in an episode this fall around final season Where it's either a marathon or a sprint, and a lot of the times in life, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And so you're taking slow and steady steps towards the final goal. With final seasons, you can kind of treat it as a sprint because they're that guaranteed break. You're going home for winter break.

You're taking time off. You don't have classes. You can truly like mentally recharge after the fact. So if you are studying more, if you are having these days that you're just like in front of the textbook at the library and you can't do that for weeks on end, but you can do it for 48 hours, go for it. I think you can lean more into that sprint area, but with that means that you also have to.

Increase what you're doing for your emotional vulnerability. So if you're spending way more time studying, if you're spending way more time withdrawn from friends because you're really focused on preparing for a test, if you're sleeping less, if you're eating more junk food, you're going to have to do more to maintain your mental health.

And so maybe that means hopefully, Having a good sleep schedule. Maybe it means being more cognizant of how you're talking to yourself, what mental processes are taking place? Are you more anxious? How can you cope with that anxiety rather than letting it run wild? Maybe it's doing more distress tolerance skills around the exam itself, or anxiety you're feeling about how you're going to do on the test.

And then long-term emotion regulation skills. So building mastery over what you're learning, coping ahead for the exam itself, accumulating positives in other areas of life, and again, focusing on what you can control so you can still not lose all aspects of your mental wellness and mental balance as you are doing that final push during exam season.

But I also, again, go back to these mindset shifts and I think that no matter what grade you're in, and no matter what class you're taking, there's a lot of pressure put on exams in your final grades and your gpa, and I think we just have to reframe how we think about that and remind ourselves that while pursuing academic goals, if that's important to you, that's a very valid goal, and it makes sense why you want to pursue this GPA or this grade in that class because it is part of a path towards the future. It also is important to remind yourself that while this is on the path to the future, not getting that grade or not getting that score on the test or not getting that GPA isn't going to derail you from pursuing that goal and really referring the idea that everything is riding on this one test or this one score, or this one piece of performance that isn't.

All encompassing of you as a person and your work ethic and your ability to do well in life.

And the last question in this episode is how do you deal with all the pressure to know what you want to do after college and balancing classes and internships, et cetera? Ugh, such a good question, and I think this is something that you see all the time, especially during summer, where people are doing these crazy internships, they're working at these huge companies, and there are so much pressure with what you're doing with your time, and it's like you would think like, okay, summer's the break, like during the school year is when you're stressed and taking classes and trying to perform and execute, but.

Summer can be stressful as well, especially when that conversation comes into play. Well, what are you doing with the future? What steps are you taking to pursue that goal long term and.

What I do is focus on all the steps I've taken thus far and how far I am on the path towards my future. So when I think about, okay, I wanna be a clinical psychologist, I could go down one path of like, well, why am I not doing this thing this summer working this specific job, or in this specific position?

Or I can think of, okay. I wanna be a clinical psychologist. I wanna work in the mental health field, and I am at a phenomenal psychology program. I worked in a lab with an amazing group of individuals that are doing research on depression and anxiety, and I have this podcast I'm really proud of that I'm investing in every single week and investing in extreme amount of time and effort, and I'm really proud of that.

And so, Focusing on all of the things you've done thus far and that you're not starting at ground zero. So even if you're like, I'm not taking a step today, or this week or this month, you're still not nowhere when it comes to pursuing your goals, if that makes sense. So that's one thing that I find helpful to reframe.

I also think it's important to remind yourself of the idea that if you're feeling jealous or guilty about not taking the path that someone else is, is thinking about if you really would want to live that life. So if you're like, oh my gosh, this person is doing this crazy finance internship in New York and they're at this huge company and they're gonna be this crazy consultant.

This is a very Penn specific example, but then you'd be like, but do I wanna be a consultant? Do I wanna be working a finance job? And it's like, no, I absolutely do not wanna be doing that with my life. That would probably be my worst nightmare. And so really putting yourself in that position and being like, well, do I wanna be doing that internship?

Is that a field that I want to go into? And is that something that I really would wanna dedicate the next 50 years to? And a lot of the times the answer is probably going to be no. And if the answer is yes, you do want to pursue that goal, and that person is doing exactly what you wish you were doing with your life, can you learn from them?

Can you ask them questions? Can you take a similar path? Can you get tips from them on how they landed that internship or how they found the position or what advice they have for going down that road. So what can you learn from these moments of guilt or shame or jealousy or whatever emotions are arising around all the pressure to perform and figure out.

What you have to do in the future, and I also think that it's really important to remind yourself that a lot of cold students don't know. What they're doing with their life, what their next step is, what they're doing after graduation, what internship they're doing this summer.

A lot of people are like, I'm trying things out. I, I'm trying to figure out what I wanna do, but they don't have the answer yet. And you're so young. There is still so much that you can do in life and so much time to figure out what you want to do that you can kind of take that pressure off and take a lot of reassurance in the fact that other college students are thinking the exact same thing. So that is my little all over the place q and a about mental health in college and college applications and all of the things. I hope this was helpful again, all over the place.

A bit of a wrap bag of questions. But I do hope this was helpful, and if you have questions you want answered on the podcast in the future, I will leave the Google sheet below. You can also always DM them to be on Instagram. I put up question boxes every so often. I hope this was helpful. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

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