As midterm season rapidly approaches, students will be subjected to mass amounts of coffee, lack of sleep and tons of stress.

Cerritos College partnered up with the Department of Mental Health to bring in Maria Cevallos to host a stress and relaxation workshop.

Cevallos has been involved in stress relief for the past 18 years and enjoys educating the public on stress-related topics.

She has been interested in being a social worker since she was 16.

The workshop was put together by the Cerritos College Re-Entry Resource Specialist Shannon Estrada and she tries to put together at least two workshops during each semester, one that deals with stress relief and another that helps with individuals dealing with depression.

The workshop took place on Monday, Oct. 19 and was open to students and even faculty members that were interested in coping with stress.

“I wish more people would have come,” Estrada said about the attendance at the workshop.

It started with everyone breaking up into groups and discussing what each person does to cope with the stress this was used as an icebreaker to get everyone comfortable with one another.

Each person was then asked to share what it was that stresses her or she out in front of everyone.

The majority of them responded with work, school and family/kids as being a major cause of stress.

Student Lisandra Romero said, “I am very stressed with work and school and I thought this workshop was very helpful.”

The workshop informed the attendees of the common causes of stress such as work, relationship difficulties, financial problems, major life changes and even being too busy could be a factor.

Cevallos also informed the cognitive symptoms that could be associated with stress such as memory problems, inability to concentrate, poor judgment, seeing only the negative, anxious or racing thoughts and constant worrying.

She continued to educate on the physical symptoms of stress such as aches, pains, chest pain, rapid heartbeat, frequent colds and even loss of sex drive.

Everyone goes through stress including Cevallos who said, “I have my own stress, and my techniques do help.”

Her techniques to deal with stress included deep breathing, meditation, exercise and most importantly laughter.

She also talked about a strange technique where she has individuals clinch their butt cheeks together to help with relief stress.

“This technique helps deal with impatience,” Cevallos said.