When the brain and nervous system keep you from studying in college

Stress and the brain. The cause and effect are analogous to oil and water, or ketchup on eggs (yuck!).

Stress shuts down the mental processes a college student needs to execute daily tasks. Period. We could sum it up with this one sentence but if you are like me, you want to understand the HOW? and the WHY?

Here is what happens when an overwhelmed college student tries to study in the midst of cognitive overload, emotional dysregulation, and stress.

First of all, let us acknowledge that "stress"  is inevitable in college, and serves a critical role in learning. Students need some level of stress to produce and execute. This level of stress does not shut down the brain; in fact, it does the opposite. 

Eustress is both motivating and necessary for productivity and performance.

This level of stress is necessary to present, apply, perform, and produce in college. An example is needing to study for two tests in one day, and having a presentation due the following day along with an eight page paper due the next day.  Some level of stress levels are necessary for this kind of preparation, motivation, and performance. 

In coaching sessions here at Students Stress Less Coaching college students are asked to scale their stress levels each week. We aim to keep a moderate rating (a 5-6 on a scale from 1-10), fully acknowledging when there is a direct cause of the increased stress.

To understand how studying and learning are effected by stress, for purposes of this post, we are referring to unmanaged, unregulated, high levels of stress and anxiety that impair the mental processes college students need to plan, organize, learn, retain, focus, make decisions, problem solve, and sustain attention.

Here is the basic brain science behind why studying is ineffective and inefficient when stress, anxiety, and overwhelm are high in college.

The brain's cerebral cortex (the gray outer most area wrinkle matter) makes up about half of the total brain mass and allows for large amounts of information to be processed by nerves cells within. 

Within this brain area there are four lobes, collectively working together so students can learn, make decisions, manage emotions, remember, think, reason, and create personality. One of these lobes, the prefrontal cortex (behind your forehead), is the CEO of your thoughts, actions, emotions, and directed behaviors.

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for a set of cognitive functions or skills called executive functions. These mental processes support the abilities to plan, focus, sustain attention, hold information, juggle many tasks at the same time, remember, direct behavior, organize, see time in real life, set goals, and move toward them, and manage emotions. 

Here is where it gets interesting.

In addition to the prefrontal cortex, there are two other brain areas that play a huge role in not being able to study or focus when experiencing quality and quantity stress. These two brain areas are "behind the scenes", but very central to being able to recognize and respond to college stress.

The amygdala ("walnut" in the center of the brain) is the brain's watch dog or guard. Its sole job is to keep you safe from threats. However, it can not determine what is a real threat (a semi-truck coming at you) or a false threat (studying for a test). It barks loud when it senses that studying or working Multivariable Calculus problems is the task at hand. It also growls when you are hungry, tired, experiencing a break-up, see a car crash, and many other circumstances. The amygdala takes its job very seriously because it only has one job.

When the amygdala barks, the second brain area called the hippocampus ("seahorse" structure) quivers, shakes, and shuts down. And guess what?

The hippocampus is responsible for learning new information, regulation emotions, forming memories, forming words, and moving information from the short-term memory to the long-term memory. The hippocampus is highly effected by stress, trauma, mental health.

Together these two brain areas regulate the human stress response.
When the brain spends all of its energy attending to the stress, the executive function department closes. This is a primitive response.

When the human stress response, also known as the Fight-Flight-Freeze response, is activated, students experience avoidance, procrastination, emotional dysregulation, increased mental health decline, the inability to make a decision, the inability to notice time, distraction, inability to move through simple tasks, psychological stresses like overthinking or excessive worrying, an unlevel mood, and poor concentration. No learning or studying is possible until the stress response is neutralized.

College is not designed to be easy on the student. Managing hardship is woven in to the fabric of college life. This is called mental resilience. Studying and learning in college is (by design) a stressful experience.

This is the core reason why practicing stress management and emotional regulation helps with overall mental health in college.

Studying effectively and efficiently largely depends on how well a student regulates stress, adjusts responses to stress when overwhelmed, and bounces back from "hell weeks". When the executive function capacity is diminished because of cognitive overload, cognitive demands, multiple expectations, and academic challenge, students have to do a personal intervention, because, stuck-ness is not a landing pad in college. It's actually a launch pad for failure and mental health challenges. 

The First Step:
There are effective responses and coping actions for the stressed college student who does not want to shut down when school is hard.

Being able to activate the parasympathetic nervous system through an amygdala-based coping strategy is the starting point. Once the nervous system is regulated, the student can try a cortex-based coping strategy.

​Through the accommodation of collegiate coaching (stress management, life, and executive functioning) college students learn this foundational approach to connecting the brain and body in times of overwhelm and shut down, so that executive function skills "come back on-line" in the midst of stress and anxiety and learning and studying are effective.

 

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