After adding up my score on the Holmes-Rahe Scale I had a total of 146, this implies that I have had a relatively low amount of life change and have a low susceptibility to stress-induced health breakdown.  I’m quite happy with this score as it means that my stress levels haven’t been too high over the past year.  Well actually, although the scale tells me that my stress levels have been pretty low, I know for a fact that they have been much, much higher over the past year.  As much as I think the Holmes-Rahe Scale is a useful tool, it doesn’t take into account the stress from other life events such as exams, personal anxiety or depression as examples.  I think if these were also options on the scale, my score would be much higher, as I struggled with exam stress not once but twice last year and I was also affected by some anxiety issues as well which caused stress in other areas such as holidays, social interaction, finishing high school, moving away from home, starting at university and even going out in public.  More recently however I have been stressing about University work and the upcoming exams, as well as having these exams to study for, I have also been stressed over the Literacy resit that I have to do as well.  It gets to the point where I stress so much about having to study for all these exams that I end up doing no studying at all and I begin to lose sleep too, which is not good!  Relieving stress is something I find quite difficult, because I live away from home I don’t really get the chance to confide in my family and I don’t want to burden my friends because I know that they have their own problems to deal with and exams to study for.  So really the only way I have to get rid of stress is either to bottle it up or to comfort eat, which is also not good.  That’s usually my way to resolve stress that has built up over time but I have some other ways of relieving stress as it happens, for example giving a presentation.  This is where I either take deep breaths in fresh air, fidget (wring my fingers), bob my leg up and down or sometimes if I’m really stressed I’ll dig my fingernails into the backs of my fingers or the palm of my hand.  I know that some of my tactics are not the greatest but they seem to work for me, which is all that really matters.