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Opposite Action

December 7, 2021 in Educate Yourself

A great skill from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is “opposite action.” Opposite Action is based on the principle that our urges and behaviors are motivated by emotions, and that – when necessary – we can choose to act in opposition of what our emotions are telling us to do.

For example, if you are experiencing fear, you might feel the urge to hide or run from a situation. If you are experiencing anger, you might feel the urge to yell at someone or break something.

In these situations, it’s important to ask yourself, “does my emotion match the situation?” and “would acting on my urge improve the situation?”

Sometimes your answer to these questions will be YES. If you are being chased by a tiger, you are probably experiencing fear, and the fear is probably making you want to run away. In this scenario, your emotion matches the reality of the situation and your urge to run will help you stay safe – all good things!

But what about when our emotions don’t match the reality of the situation? Or when our urges to act are not helpful? What about when our urges to act are actually harmful, unsafe, or reinforce negative emotions?

This is often the case for those of us who struggle with our mental health. Your depression might be telling you to stay in bed all day and isolate yourself from friends and family. Your anxiety might be telling you to stay home from that party you’ve been looking forward to. Time for some opposite action!

Rather than giving into the urge to isolate, you might call a friend to make plans or go for a walk outside. Rather than missing out on that party, you might put on your favorite outfit, grab some friends, and head on over. By doing the opposite of what your emotion wants you to do, you’re actually changing your thought patterns and becoming more resilient. Pretty cool, huh?

Have you ever utilized opposite action in the past? What are some instances where opposite action might be helpful?

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Where Do LGBT+ Youth Look for Mental Health Support?

December 2, 2021 in Social Media Guide

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Although the internet is most likely the preferred method for pretty much anyone trying to learn more information, whether it be news stories, recipes, or advice from those who have gone through similar experiences, it’s particularly important for LGBT+ youths.

The Trevor Project released a new national report recently about LGBT+ youth mental health, and while some of the results they found, while upsetting, may not seem surprising (for example, more than half of LGBT+ youth experienced depressive symptoms in the past year, have faced discrimination, and felt that the recent political climate and COVID has negatively impacted their mental health or sense of self), they also included some information about how LGBT+ youth use social media.

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One of the ways that LGBT+  youth use social media is through a means of support for the above items. Online community is an important aspect for LGBT+ people on social media, since it gives them a place to talk to and be with others who understand what they’re going through and can provide advice, and it gives them a chance to explore their identity before they’re comfortable enough to come out to those they know in real life. Most LGBT+ youth reported that they had access to social media spaces that supported their identities: 69% said they used social media for LGBT+-affirming spaces, compared to 50% at school and 34% at home.

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And while major social media sites like Youtube and Facebook have been criticized – especially recently – for how they moderate LGBT+ harassment on their platforms, LGBT+-affirming spaces on social media can include finding information too. This could include watching Tiktoks or YouTube videos about gender transition or joining private groups to see how other LGBT+ youth cope with the mental health issues they may be going through and how it ties in with their identity.

There’s a comfort for people to look for information and help online in general, but for LGBT+ youth, this comfort also comes with the feeling of safety, without feeling like they have come out to those they know in real life in order to seek the treatment that they may need, especially if they aren’t sure how those people will react. Of course, it’s equally as important to consider your safety on social media too when looking for a community or for information, but there is also an anonymity tied to it that can make navigating your identity a little bit easier.

What sources have you used online to learn more about mental health? If you identify as queer, are there any that specifically talk about LGBT+ mental health?

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Apps You Depend On

November 18, 2021 in Social Media Guide

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You know those moments when you’re hanging out with friends or family and all of a sudden you look around and everyone is on their phones, not talking or looking at each other? It can be amusing, but also a good reminder to put down our phones and be present. And while we all need to check ourselves from time to time, the reality is we depend on our phones a lot.

In the world of balancing our health, well-being, work, school, family, friends, commitments, errands, intentions and more, there are definitely some apps out there that serve as reminders and help keep us organized and on top of it all. Whether it’s scheduling, keeping up on our health, or a useful tool for school, there’s no doubt apps can serve as a reminder and help us live a healthier life.

However, if not careful, we can become overly attached to our phone (and the apps we use). Read more about nomophobia here.

What apps do you rely on the most? If you were doing an app cleanse, which ones would you get rid of from your phone? Leave a comment below!

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Being Heard

November 17, 2021 in Educate Yourself

Feeling unheard is an experience that affects a lot of teens and young adults. A new report from Mental Health America surveyed over 1,900 people aged 14 to 24, asking them about mental health and the support they want.

Young people consistently reported using their hobbies as a way to improve their mental health. When asked what they wanted, teens said that access to mental health professionals and more breaks at school would improve their mental health. The survey also showed that young people want to learn more skills to support their mental health.

There are many things that can make young people feel like they can’t speak up about their needs. For example, some do not want to feel like a burden or a source of stress for their families. While parents can be stressed, they likely want to make sure their child is okay and help them feel better. Communicating about emotions is a good way to learn more mental health skills and could give the chance to connect to mental health professionals.

Not everyone has a family member they feel comfortable talking with about their feelings. Fortunately, there are more and more outside programs available to help teens with mental health. Some options include Mental Health Kingdom, which offers peer support through Discord, and Mindful Minute, which focuses on mind-body practices.

How do you want to be heard if you want to talk about your mental health? What stops you from opening up? Have you ever talked to your parents, or another supportive adult, about your mental health?

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Positivity During Thanksgiving

November 8, 2021 in Be Positive

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You’ve probably seen a lot of posts and ads about giving thanks, especially now that November, and the holiday season in general, has started. This time of year is often one meant to be filled with joy and positivity, sharing events with loved ones and making memories.

It can be difficult to have these feelings however, especially with mental illness. This in addition to the stressors that can pop up during the season, particularly if your relationship with family members can be tense, finances can be an issue, or social anxiety spikes with the increase of shopping crowds and relatives (and not to mention feeling conflicted about the history of the holiday too). While it’s meant to be celebrated, it’s hard for some to be positive during this time of year, especially if they feel like they need to meet these exciting, celebratory expectations.

Positivity is an individual feeling, and can still be experienced, but just in different ways. If you find yourself having a hard time experiencing Thanksgiving the way it’s “meant” to be celebrated, you can still find ways to enjoy the break for yourself. The Huffington Post, for example, has a few simple strategies specifically for staying positive for Thanksgiving. These include thinking about personal things that you’re grateful for, using “Let It Go” meditation, and incorporating positive thinking in your daily routine.

There are other ways to find ways to cope with mental illness and negativity during the week too. Sometimes all you need is those few days off to recharge, whether it be meeting up with old friends or catching up on a show. If you’re able to, now’s the perfect time for some retail therapy, or maybe you find cooking and baking to be therapeutic (whether it’s to help with Thanksgiving dinner or to have it just for yourself).

Ultimately, you can enjoy Thanksgiving and celebrate it – you get some days off from school and there’s a chance of good food in some way – but there are other ways to find enjoyment in your own way too.

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Do you think it can be difficult to be happy during the season? What do you to to relax over the break?

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Staying Awake as an Act of Rebellion

November 3, 2021 in Educate Yourself

Most of us do not like being told what to do. It can be as minor as a parent telling us to do an easy chore, or someone you don’t know that well telling you how to do something. This even includes your own brain: for example, you may tell yourself to start that homework assignment or put your laundry away, and instead…you would rather not.

Another example is something called “revenge bedtime procrastination.” If you find yourself staying up late, even though you know you need to go to sleep, and continue to stay up late anyway, you likely are engaging in revenge bedtime procrastination. In short, the idea behind revenge bedtime procrastination is that your brain keeps you awake to make up for lost time. Spending the majority of your day at work and/or school – things you likely aren’t the biggest fan of – may make you feel that you need to spend just as much time on yourself. Thus, when the day itself is winding down, your brain continues to be active so you can do things for you.

This has been getting more attention because of the pandemic, but staying up to make up for lost time is nothing new. Unfortunately, however, your body may be too tired or you may not have the opportunity to do much, so even if your brain wants you to continue to stay awake, the activities you do are not likely to be productive. If you find yourself staying up late and putting off going to bed, you’re likely going to spend that time mindlessly scrolling on your phone or watching TV. For some, especially those with anxiety, staying up late also puts off the idea that the next day is going to arrive, and the routine of school, work, and other assignments is unfortunately going to continue. Staying up late is the mind’s way of putting it off as much as possible, even if those tasks are going to start at the same time no matter what.

As we know at this point, sleep deprivation is both mentally and physically damaging, despite trying to make up for lost time. We have tons of articles about how to manage your sleep and set more appropriate habits that you can try out to get the healthiest amount. When it comes to revenge bedtime procrastination specifically, try to remember that no matter what, the next day is inevitable, and the scrolling on your phone isn’t worth getting half the amount of sleep that your body needs. Unfortunately, accepting this is easier said than done, but you can also set goals for yourself to give time just for you each day during the week to do whatever makes you feel productive and happy.

Do you find yourself staying up late for no reason? What do you do? Do you know why you like to stay up late? Have you noticed your sleeping patterns change since the pandemic?

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Can Schools Influence Stigma?

November 2, 2021 in Educate Yourself

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Our environments can have a powerful impact on how we view things, especially in how we view the things about ourselves. Because adolescents spent a lot of time in school, their teachers, their classmates, and the content that they learn can influence how they interpret information. This also includes mental health: conversations with peers and the ways that teachers talk about their expectations on students can have subtle, but lasting effects.

Overall, there has been a general movement to include more education about mental health in classrooms. This includes training programs to address youth mental health for school personnel, and states like New York and Virginia now make it mandatory to include mental health instruction in classes (New York in all grades from kindergarten to 12th grade, Virginia in 9th and 10th grade).

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There are other ways for students to change their views on mental illness in school, but outside of the classroom where they are directly taught about it. How the school reacts to student stress, how the teacher interacts with the students, overhearing conversations between classes, and even posters in hallways can have an influence. School is so much more than just an education, and everything that goes into the school experience and how students function in schools can be defined as “school climate.”

School climate can be categorized into safety, engagement, and environment. Students, parents, and teachers answered questions in a survey about what they thought about their schools and these categories, and also answered questions to assess their knowledge about mental health, specifically with depression. There was a significant relationship between school climate, knowledge about depression, and stigma, showing that the more “positive” the school climate was, the less likely that students held a stigma about mental health and the more educated they were about the topic.

A positive school climate, based on the results, meant things like students feeling that their teachers cared about them and that they felt safe at school. This kind of climate, combined with mental health programs in classes, can help adolescents feel more comfortable talking about mental health and if they have a mental illness, not just because they are learning about the facts, but they know that they are in a space where they feel respected.

How do you think schools can help students learn more about mental health? How can schools adjust their environments to normalize mental health?

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The Act of Smiling

November 1, 2021 in Be Positive

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You might have heard the phrase that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. The amount of muscles that it takes is up for debate (some places say it takes 13 to smile and 33 to frown, some say 22 to smile and 37 to frown) and it’s not really a fact – it hasn’t even been proven to be true – but the mentality remains: it’s better to smile than it is to frown, and takes less effort.

Happiness itself isn’t a choice; mental illness can make it difficult to feel positive and happy, but just the act of smiling can make a difference. Just like deep breathing or going for a walk, this action sends messages to your brain to help lift up your mood. Laughing also has the same effect, but sometimes that can feel like too much effort at times (after all, forcing laughter can feel so awkward). Choosing to smile and making yourself lift the corners of your mouth upwards activates the release of hormones like dopamine and endorphins, which can make you feel better and combat stress.

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Then of course, there’s the common belief that smiling is also contagious. This goes both ways: by smiling, you might inspire someone around you, whether you know them or not, to feel a little happier and smile themselves, or you can surround yourself with people who have a smiley disposition and feel the effects of being around that.

It might seem silly to try smiling at nothing, but it can be a boost of energy and positivity by using just a few muscles (13, or 22, or whatever number it is depending on who you ask).

Have you ever tried smiling without any reason? What do you think of the idea? What makes you smile?

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Getting Better Sleep without FOMO

October 28, 2021 in Social Media Guide

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.

There are plenty of reasons to explain why you should avoid your phone, computer, tablets, and TVs before bed: the bright light keeps you alert and makes you less tired (but more tired in the morning), REM sleep (where memories are processed and has ties to problem-solving skills) is decreased, and of course, using screens delays sleep as a whole because you’re engaging with content in some way.

But like all habits, distancing yourself from your phone before bed is easier said than done. For a generation of youths that communicate online as much as, if not more, communicating face-to-face, putting phones away, along with the conversations, social media platforms, and friends that come with it, can be nerve wracking. 

We’ve talked about FOMO and social media breaks before. Because technology and social media is so crucial to how many youths communicate today, it’s easy to feel like anything could happen and that you can miss something important without your phone for just a few seconds, an hour before sleeping, and even longer than that. Not having your phone charging next to you means that you might miss a conversation in a group chat, an email, or even a notification about something you don’t care about at all. The excitement of social media, regardless of what the content is, and just the fact that there is always content to see, makes us want to stay on and makes us afraid that we’ll miss something important, even if it’s most likely not.

If you’re trying to get a better night’s sleep but are having a hard time parting from your phone to do so, just know that all that content will also be there in the morning. Most of the time, there isn’t anything groundbreaking that requires us to stay up expecting an alert at 1AM. Putting your phone away right before bed can also be the first step to take if you want to distance yourself from how much you use and rely on social media as a whole.

If anything, keeping your phone away may make it easier to get out of bed! If you use your phone for your alarm and have it far away from you, you have to get out of it to turn it off, instead of pressing snooze a bunch of times and/or staying in bed scrolling aimlessly on your phone, just like you did the night before, giving you a less groggy and grumpy start to the day.

Do you have trouble sleeping at night? Where do you keep your phone when you’re getting ready for bed? Have you ever considered keeping your phone away before bed? If you have, or do keep it away, has it made any difference in your sleep?

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The Struggle in Finding Treatment for POC

October 26, 2021 in Educate Yourself

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Stigma towards mental health and mental illness has always been present, but the way that stigma is expressed and the level of stigma can depend on a variety of things. One of those ways is how stigma can differ among different races: posts here have covered how stigma acts as one of the barriers for people of color to seek treatment, including African-Americans, Asians, and Native Americans, for example.

Between the increase in mental health awareness and health literacy (especially among young people, who are more active online and in social justice causes), young people of color may feel more comfortable and open about seeking treatment. The process to not just find a therapist that fits them, but being able to afford one, can be a difficult journey, though.

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In a field where the majority of practitioners are white – 86% of psychologists are white, which is more than the US population at 62% – it can be hard not just for minority youth to find a therapist representative of their race, but one that can relate to the experience of being a racial minority in general.  While this may not be the case for all minority youth, some may feel hesitant about what their white therapist may think of them or feel like they have to translate their experiences to have their therapist understand exactly why they feel a certain way because their therapist never experienced those things themselves.

There’s also the argument that the way that therapy and mental health treatment is designed in the United States is specifically for white people. There has been a call for more culturally adapted treatments and more options for kinds of treatment: for example, one study saw that Asian-Americans’ brains responded more to problem-solving therapy (PST) compared to more traditional CBT. 

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Even if minority youth find a therapist that they do like, it can be even more of a struggle once they take cost into account. People of color – African-Americans, Latinx people, and Native Americans in particular – are more likely to be at or below the poverty level (and significantly more likely in some states) in comparison to white people. People of color also have lower insurance coverage rates and have lower-tier levels of insurance that can make affording mental health treatment even more costly.

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So what can be done to help people of color, minority youth specifically, get the treatment that they feel fits them the best at rates that they can afford? At the very least, young people of color becoming more vocal about their mental health could lead to an increase in those wanting to study psychology and enter the mental health field, thus diversifying the field. While that may seem like that’s farther down the line, it’s still a sign that things are changing.

If you identify as a POC, have you ever tried to seek treatment? What sorts of things do you look for when finding a therapist? What issues have you run into?

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