“Most people are in this kind of survival, and they’re taking on an anxiety of a physical stressor like something’s going to kill them.”

Graduate Wellness is an initiative Helm started two years ago with the help of many other university programs’ collaboration.

The initiative’s workshops and programs deal with graduate students in particular, but the advice they have can be universally used.

Helm said there are two major ways to combat stress-induced fight-or-flight and create a better well-being — through coping or through relaxation.

Coping is used to increase the awareness of stress, enabling you to work toward a peaceful resolution, Helm said.

Lisa Davidson, a consultant and coach for the MSU Health4U program called Emotional Wellness, said one way to cope with stress is to realize that it is fueled by the mind and not the circumstance.

“My stress in the moment isn’t because I have a flat tire, but it’s because of the thoughts that I’m having right now about the fact that I have a flat tire,” she said. “We actually create our stress from the inside out.”

Davidson said that thinking out the situation can calm the stress.

“Instead of responding to the circumstance of either fight-or-flight, you could actually respond to it with common sense, wisdom, grace and effectiveness,” she said.

In addition to this stress-recognition technique, Helm said other ways to cope with stress include humor, communication and time management.

As for relaxation, Helm said there are two different techniques that include simply slowing down, or the exact opposite — exercising.

Both techniques attempt to return your body to homeostasis, which Helm said is the natural state of our bodies.

While slowing down is possibly the first step in relaxation, Helm said exercise is equally important because it lets go of anxiety.

Helm said that exercise also can have an equally as powerful as many high-power antidepressant medications.

Biosystems engineering senior Aaron Work said exercise is his favorite way to de-stress.

Work said that after running or going to the gym, he is able to relax easier.

All of these techniques, while useful for students, will remain helpful for the rest of students’ lives, Davidson said.

“Learning about this is important because no matter where you’re at, life is going to happen,” Davidson said. “There’s a never-ending supply (of) external circumstances that are going to happen to a person.”