Coping with Graduation Anxiety

It’s that time of year. Graduation is just around the corner for many high school, college, and postgraduate students. It’s an exciting time full of celebration, goal completion, and exciting next steps. But this time of transition can also be a time of significant anxiety for graduates. 

The research tells us that graduation actually is correlated with an increase in anxiety and depression symptoms in students approaching graduation, confirming that this life, transition, while perceived to be exciting, can actually be stressful and mentally taxing to the point of exacerbating anxiety, and depression symptoms. (1)

This phenomenon is so prevalent that a group from West Virginia University coined the phrase post commencement stress disorder, as a way of determining the unique stresses and anxieties that are found in students after graduation. (2)

So, if you are struggling with the idea of anxiety, as you approach post-graduation life, here are four things that may assist in managing these anxiety symptoms during this transition point. 

Identify and set your boundaries. 

Brené Brown, a prolific, writer, and researcher identifies boundaries as a simple statement of what is it is not OK for an individual. (Here is one of my favorite educational tools from Brené Brown on boundary setting.) Boundaries during these transitional time periods may be specifically important to consider, define, and implement. Part of the transitional process after graduation includes a lot of uncertainties, potentials, possibilities, and unknowns. And it is extremely common for people, with every good intention, to ask a ton of questions about these unknown elements of your upcoming life. If you do not want everyone asking every week after every job application  is submitted or every interview, let them know that you will reach out if you need help or if you have updated to share. 

For many people, these questions, requests for updates, and constant monitoring of these next live developments can actually increase the stress that they are experiencing, which can also increase their anxiety related to these events. How many people mean to offer support through these acts, if you find them, stressful, it may be incredibly important to set some boundaries around what you share with others, and how you inform them of potential opportunities that are not yet solidified.

Be selective with who and where you get support from. 

Support can come from many different places and take on many different forms. It is important that you select who, and where you receive the most helpful support. 

For example, if your roommate has been offered a six-figure job from an internship, while they may wish you all the best, they may not be the person that’s able to offer the best support while you’re submitting what feels like hundreds of job applications each week. Think about the people in your life who tend to offer the kind of feedback and responses that are most helpful for you. Think about the people who tend to listen and offer feelings and non-judgment. These are the people that are probably most helpful to bring up conversations related to graduation uncertainties. Getting the right type of support from your people is a key step in managing your anxiety symptoms.

Have an understanding of the differences between your needs and wants. 

This is a really hard one for many people. From the time that we are very young, we are taught to dream big, shoot for the stars, and go for what we want. And yes, these are important aspects of vision casting, and ultimately reaching long-term goals. However, during times of financial stress, difficult job markets, and other economic challenges, knowing the difference between a want and a need in terms of employment can be an important thing to define. 

We may want a certain salary, but what is the baseline that we would need to survive in the city that we are considering living? We may want to have a position that allows us to develop a certain skill set, but what is the need in terms of résumé building for our future plans? A job search recruitment website estimates that people change their jobs every 3 to 5 years. (3) So when considering your first job with your new degree in the workforce, it is important to remember that this may not be your forever position and that there are opportunities to attain some of those goals and wants later on.

Explore all of your options and maintains some awareness of all those options, even the less-than-ideal ones. 

During times of stress, the worst thing that can happen to the human brain is feeling stuck, or without options. As human beings and living creatures, who are wired for survival, the perception of being without options can be incredibly stressful and detrimental to the well-being of that individual. So remembering and identifying all of the options that an individual may have can be an important part of managing stress in the midst of a transitional time. 

When I say explore all your options, I mean ALL of your options. It may not be your favorite thing to move in with a family member for a few months of transition time, and that may be your last resort option, but it is an option if you have that resource available to you. It might feel like a loss to take a part-time job just to pay rent for a month or two, but that is an option. Uber, DoorDash, and other on-demand job opportunities are available for transitional points if there is a gap in the time you graduate and when a start date may be.  So when considering all of our options, write them all down even the ones that are not so probable or not so desirable. At a minimum, it will keep your brain out of a place of feeling stuck, which is the last place we want our thoughts to wander when we are working to manage anxiety.

Transitional times like graduation and beginning careers can also be in a great time to bring a professional on board to help you manage the transition with as much health and wellness as possible. If you were interested in managing your anxiety symptoms with the help of an anxiety therapist, our team would love to help! We employ highly trained therapists who are able to assist in the management of many mental health concerns. Whether through online therapy or in person at our Arlington, Texas-based therapy group, we would love to connect with you and support you along your journey Into your next steps.