Notes from the Counseling Department

As March draws to a close, our thoughts turn to spring and flowers and warm sunshine and end of term grades and, for our 8th graders, high school choices and MCAS testing...Oh no!  I can just feel the stress building!  We have all heard about how dangerous stress can be and how harmful it is for our children (and ourselves) to be under consent pressure. We've heard the links between stress and heart attacks, between stress and high blood pressure, between stress and suicide.  Stress, no matter how we look at it, tends to be seen as harmful.  The truth is, stress isn't all negative.  While what we call it has changed over the years, psychologists have always looked at stress as multilayered and multidimensional.  There are some kinds of stress that are mostly negative and can have deeply enduring impacts.  Abuse, neglect, poverty, and exposure to violence are examples of this kind of stress.  When these occur, and are continuous, it can build into something called toxic str