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“Guilty Pleasures”

January 24, 2022 in Be Positive

Sometimes we watch, read, or listen to things that we might be embarrassed to admit. These are often known as “guilty pleasures,” or the things we’re ashamed of admitting that we like. It may be because these are considered to be tacky, basic, or are things that are often made fun of by the general public. So when we do admit that we enjoy these things, we quickly want to defend ourselves – hence calling them as “guilty pleasures” when talking about them out loud.

This shame and fear of being judged is incredibly common, especially during adolescence, and especially for those who have a mental illness. The need to be liked and accepted by others are incredibly human traits, and most of us will adapt ourselves in some way so that those around us see us in a positive way.

Mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, however, can make those who show symptoms more sensitive to how people perceive them. For example, it’s the tendency to overanalyze other’s actions and think that these actions are all in response to what you’re doing, and if there’s any sign that they’re annoyed, displeased, or showing any other negative emotion, your brain tells you it’s because of you.

So when there is something that we can control, like choosing to talk about what kinds of media we consume for example, we either keep it to ourselves, or when it does slip up, quickly defend ourselves by saying that it’s a “guilty pleasure.” It’s a way to protect one’s self from being judged since you’re showing self-awareness that you know it’s not that great. However, even if you don’t admit to consuming that media out loud, that fear of being judged can still consume you and make you feel bad about yourself. This can affect you even wanting to consume that content in the first place, even if it makes you happy.

This process of detaching what you enjoy from others’ opinion of you can be difficult.  What you enjoy is up to you, however. Sure, books, TV shows, and music are ways to create bonds with others, and those may be the way that you start conversations and build friendships with people, but what you consume should ultimately be for you.

These are things that make you happy, and the fear of what others think of it should not dictate how and if you should consume it.

Do you have things that you consider to be “guilty pleasures?” Are there shows, books, music, or movies that you’re afraid to talk about enjoying? Have you ever pretended to like something because someone you admire liked that thing?

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An App to Consider: Liberate

January 21, 2022 in LINKS

Mental health affects everyone differently, but our backgrounds and identities can have us bond over similar experiences and feelings based on our cultures and how others perceive and interact with us.

Take race for example. Although non-white people cannot be categorized into an entire category, people of color’s experience with racism and the stigma within their own communities have been shown to have a negative impact on their mental health. Most resources for mental health treatment are designed with white people in mind, and most therapists (86%!) are white who may not understand the nuances and ways that race affects one’s mental health and symptoms of mental illness.

Liberate

We covered meditation podcasts last week, but this week we wanted to highlight a meditation app created by and specifically geared towards BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color). Liberate includes over 200 meditation practices for users to explore, but unlike standard meditation practices, these are led and narrated by people of color, so they feel a little more familiar to those listening to them. They also offer resources that talk about experiences that affect people of color, including internalized racism and microaggressions. Sessions can last between five to 25 minutes, and users can leave feedback after each one about how it helped them for other users to view.

The app is free, but the full version requires a paid subscription. You can explore the free version and even try the 7-day free trial for Liberate Plus if you want to try out the app.

Liberate is available on both iPhones and Androids.

If you’re a person of color, have you ever tried out treatments specifically for your race? How do you think your identity affects your mental health?

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Finding Coping Skills that Work

January 19, 2022 in Educate Yourself

Coping skills are an important way to manage mood, stress, and difficult emotions. People always talk about how useful coping skills are, but often fail to mention that it can be difficult to find coping skills that actually work for each individual person. Everyone has unique needs; something that helps one person feel better may not work as well for someone else. Sometimes even when we do have strategies that work well for us, particularly difficult or stressful situations can arise that render our go-to skills useless.

One way to ensure that you have an arsenal of coping skills in your back pocket at all times is to make a list. Brainstorming coping skills ahead of time – before you find yourself in crisis – can help you down the road when you are feeling too overwhelmed to even begin thinking about how to help yourself feel better. A great way to do this is to make a list of coping skills that have worked for you before and some new ones you feel open to trying.

You can organize your list however you feel it would help you most in the future. One idea is to categorize coping skills by levels of distress. For example, you might choose to use a stoplight color scheme, where red coping skills are ones you use when you are the most distressed, while green coping skills may be for times that you are feeling stressed out but are not yet in crisis mode. Yellow coping skills would fall somewhere in between.

You can personalize your coping skills as much or as little as you would like. Some people prefer to just write “call a friend” on their list, while others might want to list out names of specific friends to reach out to. You can include details about specific breathing exercises you prefer, books you like to read, recipes you like to cook, or favorite TV shows and movies that help you unwind.

Once you have a list of coping skills, make sure that it is accessible to you in times of need. You can create a list in a note on your phone, write skills on Popsicle sticks to keep in a jar on your desk, or even make a collage representing your coping skills to hang on your wall.

The key to coping skills is finding coping skills that work for YOU!

What are your favorite coping skills? Are there any new ones you’ve been wanting to try? Share down below!

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Catching Up on Sleep

January 14, 2022 in LINKS

Truthfully, the chances that your sleep schedule aren’t the best are quite high. Adolescents in high school and college, despite needing a sufficient amount of sleep, do not get the recommended 8ish hours of uninterrupted sleep per night. There are tons of reasons for this: technology, caffeine, and just being too busy are just a few factors, to name a few.

Another big one is mental illness. Depression and anxiety can lead to using technology and endlessly scrolling on phones as a coping mechanisms, and mental illness symptoms can be triggered by the stress that comes with school and having too many things to do. Overall, it’s understandable why sleep hygiene is so poor in youths today.

We’ve shared a lot of the common tips to help manage sleep before, including making sure you don’t use a screen at least half an hour before bed and keeping your phone away from you, so you have to get up out of bed to turn off the alarms that you’ve set. We also wanted to share a couple of resources that have compiled some of these tips together into a checklist, so if you’re someone who likes to have a reference and likes to plan things out, these might work for you. 

Sleep Check!
Sleep Hygiene Checklist
Sleep Hygiene for Teens
Sleep Strategies and Checklists

While these might be designed for out of your age range, feel free to play around with them and adapt them into something that works for you! You can download them on your phone, print them out and keep it next to your bed, or copy and paste the tips that apply to you most and create your own checklist.

What is your sleep schedule like? Have you ever made an effort to try and change it? How often do you wake up each night? Are there any specific things that you know have affected your sleep?

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“I don’t like this”

January 13, 2022 in Social Media Guide

Between explore pages, recommended posts, ads, and For You feeds, it can feel like you don’t have as much control over the content you want to see on social media. Over the past couple of years, social media platforms have started to rely more heavily on algorithms, which are processes that use things they know about you (like your following list, items you’ve liked or commented on, etc) to try and guess what else you’d like to see.

However, algorithms aren’t human and don’t actually know you. As a result, they’re probably going to recommend things you definitely don’t want to see. This can include the mundane, like a recommended Instagram account for an influencer you just don’t want to see, to the triggering, like a TikTok going into detail about the negative effects of COVID on society. 

You should be in control of what you want to see, though. Most platforms give you the option (though they sometimes may make you do a little more work) to hide or adjust these recommended posts. For example, many platforms have a “…” in the upper right hand corner with a list of options about how you feel about the recommended post. For platforms like Instagram, you can even hide suggested posts on your feed for up to a month at a time. For accounts that show up on your account that have you questioning why the algorithm thinks you want to see them, you can block the account entirely.

Even if it’s your feed, you may feel guilt. Even if you don’t know the person who’s randomly on your feed, you might feel bad that, in a way, you’re disliking their content. You may also feel guilt for showing that you’re not interested in content about world events, because it may seem like you don’t care about important issues. At the end of the day, your feed is for you, and it’s not always about the subject of the content, but how it’s presented. For example, algorithms may think that you like health because you follow workout and cooking accounts from a variety of people of all sorts of body types and backgrounds, but because the algorithm thinks you’re interested in health, will end up recommending food-shaming and diet accounts that can be incredibly triggering. You may actually be interested in health and wellness, but the shaming posts are not the kind of content that you want to see.

While it’s impossible to completely get rid of recommended posts and poorly-suggested TikToks, you still have some power over your feed. Your “for you” is quite literally, for you, and you should have the ability to manipulate and control it so you see what you actually want to see.

What kind of content do you like and follow on social media? Have you ever used the block or “not interested” buttons? When do you use them?

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The “Magic Wand” Question

January 4, 2022 in Educate Yourself

Sometimes, when we try to make goals for ourselves, it can be challenging to envision our world without our problems. The Magic Wand Question (also known as The Miracle Question) has its basis in Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT) and is now often used as a goal-setting technique.

There are different versions of the Magic Wand Question, but it essentially asks:

“Suppose tonight, while you slept, all your problems were solved. When you awake tomorrow, what would be some of the things you would notice that would tell you life had suddenly gotten better?”

Some follow-up questions can include:

  • How will you know that all your problems were solved?
    • Think about what you would see, feel, think, or do
  • What will others notice that makes them aware things are different or better?

No matter how silly it may sound, thinking about how your life would be different if a “magic wand” solved all your problems gives us a clearer picture of what our future goals may be. Sometimes when sad, it feels like things will never get better or solutions are impossible. The Magic Wand question allows us to explore a new future we may not have imagined before. 

Have you ever tried the “Magic Wand” Question? How might you use it in your daily life?

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Verifying Mental Health Experts on TikTok

December 23, 2021 in Social Media Guide

Although entertaining, TikTok can also be an incredibly educational social media platform. Because of how short videos can be (from mere seconds to 3 minutes), TikTok can be an incredibly accessible tool and source of information.

Depending on what your algorithm looks like, you may have gotten some sort of TikToks about mental health and psychology. Like every topic on the millions upon millions of videos on the fairly young platform, the style of these can vary. One common type of video includes the “put a finger down” style, where the creator will list items that you put a finger down if you relate to, and reveal what it means if you have more than a certain number of fingers down.

Even these kinds of videos can vary – you may find out that the creator considers you to be a picky eater, or that you match the qualities of a crow. These kinds of styles are very common with “diagnoses” however, where the creator, likely with no or unverifiable qualifications, will tell you what kind of attachment style you have, if you have ADHD, or will tell you something about yourself because of something from your childhood, such as being too nice now because you were ignored as a kid by the people you love.

Using the Internet to explore your mental health and get answers without having to go through the often-complicated process of seeing a doctor and getting treatment isn’t new. In fact, it can be a great way to learn more about your mental health (think of SOVA for example!). TikTok can also be a great resource, but because of its popularity and easier way of going viral compared to other social media platforms, and the ability for anyone’s video to show up on anyone’s algorithm, misinformation can spread like wildfire. 

Videos where someone is shocked to find out that “excessive reading as a child is considered dissociative behavior” can gain hundreds of thousand of likes and views can cause young viewers in particular to question their own childhood if they also read a lot, and because of this “fact,” will now think they also have dissociative behavior patterns. Similarly, those who put more than five fingers down because of common habits they have may now think they have a personality disorder.

While there’s nothing wrong with using the Internet to explore your mental health and learn more about possible diagnoses, it is important to get it from the right sources. And the right sources do exist on TikTok – you just have to do a little more digging to get there. Don’t trust every mental health video that appears on your For You Page, for example. If you genuinely want to know if the diagnosis or mental health concern they’re talking about does relate to you, see if the person creating the video has a verified account, or go to their page to see if they have a website linking to their credentials (don’t always trust their TikTok bio!). You may need to Google them to confirm their legitimacy too. You can also use the search function to learn more about certain diagnoses, but you want to make sure to repeat the same verification process too.

Do you use TikTok? What kinds of videos show up on your For You Page? Have you ever seen videos about mental health?

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by Moderator ★

black profile of a person facing to the right. There is a blue circle around profile and a black background for the picture.

Challenging Cognitive Distortions

December 21, 2021 in Educate Yourself

Cognitive distortions are negative thought patterns that often lead to feelings of anxiety and depression. Distortions are typically conclusions that we jump to without considering all of the available evidence. They can be irrational and distressing.

There are many types of cognitive distortions, including:

All-or-Nothing Thinking

Also known as black-or-white thinking, all-or-nothing thinking is when an individual thinks about themselves and their behaviors in absolutes or extremes. Some examples of all-or-nothing thinking include thinking that you are a failure when you do not do as well as you wanted on an exam, or feeling like a failure when you miss one workout. Another example of all-or-nothing thinking is thinking “I am never good enough,” or “I always mess things up.” after making a small mistake.

Catastrophizing

Catastrophizing is when our minds jump to the worst case scenario. Examples include, “if I don’t pass this exam, I will never graduate and my entire future will be ruined,” or “if this relationship doesn’t work out, I will never find love or happiness.”

Emotional Reasoning

This is when we interpret our emotions as truth or fact. An example of this might be, “I feel like no one likes me; therefore, I must be unlikable,” or “I feel worthless, so I must be worthless.”

For a list of different types of cognitive distortions, click here.

Recognizing these cognitive distortions is a great first step towards changing them. It can be hard to stop these thought patterns when your mind has become so accustomed to them. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to challenge these thoughts when they arise:

  1. What is the evidence FOR this thought?
  2. What is the evidence AGAINST this thought?
  3. Am I drawing conclusions without enough evidence?
  4. What would I say to a friend who was having this thought?
  5. Am I making judgments based on feelings rather than facts?
  6. Am I making assumptions about other peoples’ thoughts and feelings?
  7. Is there an alternative way to think about this situation?
  8. Will this matter a year from now? Five years from now? 10 years from now?

Do any of the cognitive distortions above resonate with you? If so, how do you challenge them?

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How to Tell Whether a Website is Trustworthy

December 16, 2021 in Social Media Guide

Sometimes it can be hard to figure out what information on social media sites comes from reliable and credible sources.  Just because something sounds true does not mean it is. Here are some tips on how to decide whether a site is trustworthy before you share it with others, use that information to learn more about a topic, or apply health advice to yourself.

  • Academic journals (for example, Journal of Adolescent Health) that feature respected authors who are well known in their specific fields.
  • Links to websites of established institutions, such as Mayo Clinic, Department of Justice, and universities and their affiliated organizations.
  • Materials published in the last 10 years (when more recent information is available)—anything older than that is probably outdated and less reliable.
  • Byline: Is the article written by a real person? Google the author’s name and sometimes you find out that the author doesn’t really exist.
  • Check the date: Sometimes websites will recycle an old story by pasting a new headline on it, but if you search on the subject, you’ll find that it’s an old story—and unreliable because it’s not recent.
  • Is it real satire? Satire is a type of writing that uses exaggeration and humor to expose people’s vices, and it’s usually clearly labeled as such. But some people don’t get the joke, and they repost satirical articles as credible information.
  • Is the site’s mission clear? You should be able to see a clear idea of who the site’s audience is, an informative and unbiased mission, and signs that the information is regularly updated.
  • Look for websites ending in .edu, .gov or .org (For example, https://www.healthykids.org). Sites that end in .com are more “commercial.”
  • Finally, rely on the fact-checkers. There are some well-known fact-checking sites whose mission is to debunk false information. Two of the most well known are Snopes and FactCheck.

(Source: FactCheck.org.)

How do you decide which online outlets to trust? Do you have any other helpful hints? Where do you get your information about mental health?

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Coping Cards

December 15, 2021 in Be Positive, Social Media Guide

Positive Affirmations have taken the internet by storm. Chances are you’ve seen them on Pinterest paired with a picture of beautiful scenery in the background. You might be wondering, though, do these positive affirmations work?

Positive Affirmations have the power to help combat negative thoughts. However, the results are mixed. Some may not find broad positive affirmations helpful as they may seem like they don’t fit their situation.

Coping Cards with more personalized statements can be a practical alternative when things get tough.

What are Coping Cards?

Coping Cards are just what they sound like; cards with helpful, self-esteem-boosting statements we can say when feeling anxious or sad. The neat thing about Coping Cards is that you can make unique ones at home.

 All you need are:

  • Notecards, cards, or post-it notes
  • Writing tools (pens, pencils, markers, etc., get creative!)

How to make Coping Cards:

  • Write in your own words.
    • Writing it in your own words will make it easier to remember.
  • Make it personal.
    • Tailor it to what is most relevant to your experience.
  • Keep it realistic.
    • It isn’t realistic to never make a mistake or feel anxious. The pressure to be perfect can generate more anxiety or sadness.
    • Some examples of more realistic coping statements are: “It’s okay to be upset” and “Making a mistake doesn’t make me a bad person.”
  • Keep it present.
    • Write them for the present and use them in the here and now!
  • Make it positive.
    • Write something that is uplifting or practices compassion toward yourself. If it’s hard to think of something, try writing kind, brief statements that you would say to a friend.
      • An example could be: “I deserve to feel okay right now.”
  • Be creative!
    • Don’t be afraid to decorate your coping cards! 

Some examples of coping statements are:

  • I accept myself as I am.
  • I am doing my best.
  • I’ve survived this before, and I’ll survive this too.
  • I can take as small a step forward as I choose.
  • I am valuable because I am human, alive, and unique.
  • I am worthy of love.

Coping Cards aren’t meant to be a magical fix, but they can be a helpful reminder when feeling overwhelmed or down.

Have you ever made coping cards? If so, what was your experience like? What are some things that help boost your self-esteem?

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