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Remember when you were a rugrat? The only responsibility in your life was catching Saturday morning cartoons and getting lost in the supermarket. That was before you grew up and learned the meaning of stress. And it kills. Literally. Stress is linked to the leading six causes of death, not counting obesity. What’s more, it comes in many shapes and sizes. Luckily, all you have to do is identify it. Our Less Stress guide will take care of the rest.

Cause: BOSS
Do you ever feel like you’re being screamed to death by your higher op? Perhaps these emotions aren’t completely unmerited. According to a study of 6,000 British male office workers, the Archives of Internal Medicine reported that employees who thought their bosses treated them “unfair,” were 30% more likely to suffer heart disease, which is the leading cause of industry-related deaths. Translated into non-scientific terms, your Napoleonic boss may be justifying his imperious and abrasive nature at the expense of your life.

Treatment: Piledriving your boss through a wooden table is one effective recommendation. But strategies that involve the preservation of your job and civil liberties entail less costly alternatives. Try employing conscientious techniques such as an aerial imagination of windsurfing Hawaii’s tropical valleys or visualizing Alaskan mountains, nude sans the frosty cool snowcaps. Momentary glances at familial pictures and anticipating your favorite TV show after work can also invigorate your energy with newfound purpose.

Even going as far as perceiving a problematic situation as comical is encouraged if it means sustaining your sanity. Psychologist Michael H. Kahn advises occasional five-minute breather sessions to rejuvenate your cerebral and anatomical welfare. “Think of what happens at a sporting event,” he says. “They take timeouts, they have quarters, halves. All of that allows the players to take a mental and physical breaks so that they come back, they’re reenergized.” This paradoxical suggestion might appear counterproductive as it takes away more time from your already airtight schedule, but Kahn promises you’ll return with a pristine sense of vitality, resulting in higher productivity and lower stress levels.

Cause: SCHOOL
Coming across the terms “school” and “cool” in the same sentence is as realistic as discovering the lost city of Atlantis in your toilet. If there’s any word that can be correlated with “school,” 70% of Marlborough High students agree it’s “stress.” Alarmingly, this seems to be the general consensus for most education-oriented individuals. College junior Natalie Shafir says, “When I think about school I stress out because teachers don’t seem to take into account how many other classes I’m taking. I’m striving to get nothing less than an ‘A,’ because I want to do my best, and if I don’t make the ‘A’ I feel really let down and depressed.”

Treatment: Believe it or not, acknowledging stress is the first step to alleviating it. Due to the frenzied lifestyle mandated by modern academic standards, most students fail to trace their poor health to stress. Some of the symptoms brought about by scholastic stress include fatigue, skin breakouts, hair loss and acid reflux. Continuing to ignore these warning signs can lead to depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and acceleration of death.

Once you recognize stress, learn to manage it. This is a self-absorbed world, and if you don’t ensure your own health, your professor isn’t going to do it for you. Start with common sense. For instance, you wouldn’t cave into peer pressure and crash a midnight party if you haven’t finished tomorrow morning’s six-page term paper.

Place your priorities into perspective and reconfigure your life to incorporate recreational activities between the draconian series of classes, internships and jobs. Squeezing time for sports and hobbies that have nothing to do with school can also shatter the routine cycle of studious exasperation. Finally, establishing contacts will allow you to divide the work load with your colleagues, thus drastically cutting the time it takes to complete non-essay-style homework assignments and ultimately help relieve the excess buildup of educational steam.

Cause: FAMILY
Dealing with the pressures of an overbearing boss or an overwhelming school is enough to send a Jedi Knight to the Dark Side. At least there’s Home Sweet Home, a necessary retreat to unpack the backbreaking load of society’s impossible expectations. Right. Granted, family stress is inevitable. The key is how you handle it.

Treatment: Maintaining peace and harmony is vital to establishing stability in the household. Disagreement in the family should never erupt into screaming contests. When temperatures rise, emotions take siege of your ability to respond in a relaxed and smooth manner, escalating an otherwise fruitful reciprocation, into an all’s-fair-in-love-and-war fiasco. Even family members, who didn’t actively participate in the argument, are struck down by the erratic barrage of Para bullets and ubiquitous flash bangs, compelling them to feel just as hurt and confused as the contestants. Avoid this worst-case scenario.

Set a cool and controlled environment for productive discussions. If there’s a bump in the road, sit down and talk it out like Gandhi. Wait for each other’s turn and resolve the anomaly with maturity. And unless the family member in question is fifteen yards away, refrain from shouting.

So you didn’t file the papers your boss demanded with fifty other things, or maybe you got a “B” in Organic Chemistry when you really wanted the “A.” Look on the bright side: you were born with a face and your limbs are still intact. Kudos. And suddenly a fleeting thought reminds you life is pretty fair compared to the Baby Born Without a Face or… the Baby Born With Missing Limbs (media is great.) Stop stressing out and start letting go of the compulsion to “get everything done.” You’re not Superman, and even if you were, you wear your underwear on the outside and you’ll eventually get killed by Doomsday. After all, perfection is a belief. Not a scientific fact.