Supporting Our Valued Adolescents: A place to learn, share your strength, be positive, and grow.
When we are stressed, it can feel like our brains our scrambled and it can be difficult to sort through all the noise. Life can get very busy, and it can be overwhelming keeping up with everything. Setting SMART goals can go a long way in helping us to stay on track. Sometimes though, it’s helpful to have all our thoughts and things to do in one easy-to-access place. While planners are extremely helpful, it isn’t always possible to keep one on us.
Quite often, the first piece of advice we receive when trying to change our sleeping habits and to get a better night’s sleep is to put our phone (and all other types of screens and technology) away. Experts recommend that adolescents get at least 8-10 hours of sleep a night, and, to ensure staying asleep, to avoid screen time at least 30 minutes to 1 hour before you plan to call it a night.
Mindfulness is a state of nonjudgmental awareness of one’s thoughts and feelings. It is about being present in the moment and observing your thoughts without getting wrapped up in self-judgement or worries about the past or future. Mindfulness can be used as a means to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. What are some ways that you can incorporate mindfulness into your everyday life?
All-or-nothing thinking is just like what it sound:s when we view things as black or white with no gray in between. All-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion or negative thought pattern that influences how we feel.
Dr. Kristin Neff, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at University of Texas at Austin, has spent much of her career researching self-compassion. What is self-compassion? How is self-compassion helpful? How can we get better at having compassion for ourselves? Read on to find out!
How many social media accounts do you have? A Pew research study from 2021 found that about 75% of adolescents aged 18-24 use Instagram and Snapchat, and an additional 50% use TikTok, creating considerable overlap between the multiple social media sites that adolescents may be using.
We’ve talked about expressing and writing down gratitude plenty of times before. No matter how big or how small, being able to name anything positive can have an impact on your mental health and wellbeing. Whether it’s being able to acknowledge the good things at the end of the day or being able to look back and read them if you’re feeling down, remembering that there are always good things that can happen, even when it doesn’t feel like it, and knowing there’s a light when things feel bleak can make the biggest difference.
It may be hard for some to remember the last time that they got a proper, full night’s sleep. Schoolwork, jobs, and extracurricular activities are just a few things that can contribute to an adolescent’s hectic and busy schedule. Simply put, there aren’t enough hours in the day for people to do everything that they want, and they often sacrifice the time they should be using sleeping to get everything else done.
It can be easy to put on music that matches your mood when you’re not feeling your best. The best way to describe it is by thinking of the phrase “misery loves company,” or that having something (or someone) that feels just as bad as you are makes you feel slightly less alone.
For a number of reasons, young people today are incredibly privileged to have access to empathetic and thoughtful therapists. However, for children of South Asian immigrants, it can be awkward at times to bridge the culture gap with a therapist from a different background. Many scenarios South Asian youths want to discuss in therapy are deeply tied to their cultural identity. Therapists can help navigate these experiences, but South Asians often find themselves giving a lot of context and education.
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