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A Good Stretch

April 19, 2019 in LINKS

Stretching your body is a good thing. It’s highly recommended, especially if you’re active. Even if you aren’t, there are still health benefits to even the slightest movements with the body, especially mentally. While stretching is often something that experts insist on doing before exercising to prevent injury, you can try adapting that for your own lifestyle, such as stretching in the morning to help wake up and improve your mood before starting the day.

There are obviously a lot of ways to stretch and move your body, but if you want some guidance, we’ve included a couple of apps below that you can use as a reference or as a coach to instruct yoga-297527_1280you:

While you can’t do so literally, you can also stretch your mind as well. Mental illness can affect memory, especially working memory, and depressive thoughts can disrupt your ability to remember information as you’re learning it. Although it’s not a cure, taking some time out of your day to stretch your mind and do a couple of rounds of brain games can help improve your overall memory, and because they involve solving a problem, may even be a good source for relaxing and stress relief.

idea-305335_1280Just like the physical stretching, here are a few options for apps that have games that require a little bit of problem solving and thinking:

Do you incorporate either mental or physical stretching in your routine now? Have you ever tried playing brain games or anything like pilates or stretching to help relax? Let us know if you have any recommendations!

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#tbt: How Did Teens Use Social Media in 2007?

April 18, 2019 in Social Media Guide

While the lasting power of things on the Internet is permanent, the significance and popularity of some things are fickle. Even if Facebook is still up and running, notes and middle school achievement-3634485_1280photos buried somewhere deep down your feed, you probably don’t use it anymore – what was once one of the most popular website for teens is now only used by 51% of them, with only 10% saying they use it the most often. MySpace is pretty much nonexistent (as well as all the music on the website – one of the main features of the social network, and Tumblr has had a significant decline in users in recent years.

Social media sites aren’t the only things that are fickle on the Internet: the content posted on them are as well. There can be a million posts about the Ice Bucket Challenge one week, and not a single mention of it the next. The topics people talk about online are also changing, whether it be a movement, celebrity, or popular television show.

With that being said, how did teens use social media twelve years ago? 2007 was a different time: Snapchat and Instagram didn’t exist, and Facebook was primarily used by college students and high schoolers, not a single advertisement in sight. Vlogging wasn’t really a thing, and Youtube was there to provide meme-y videos and illegal uploads of TV shows split into three parts.

2007 was really the first time that teens were not just taking in media on social media, but were actually participating and creating their own content for it. These included blog posts and uploading creations like artwork and music. Adolescents who used social media were more likely to be girls in their late teens, compared to now where just about every teenager is on social media. Another major difference was that researchers had found that teenagers who were using social media and going online spent just as much time away from the screens too.

ipod-touch-2269621_1920The first iPhone also came out in 2007 – while this wasn’t the first smartphone, it started the idea that anyone can use the device in the palm of their hand to access anything they wanted, anywhere, with or without WiFi. Those that didn’t have iPhones may have had iPod touches, which still made the Internet that much easier to access.

There’s little information and even less studies done that talk about the effect of social media on adolescent mental health. This may be because social media was not as widespread, accessible anywhere, and exhaustive at the time, but it may also be because the dialogue surrounding mental health was different, especially when it came to young people.

There were distinct gender differences in how teenagers in the early 2000s talked about the issues they were going through (girls were more likely to tell their friends and boys their parents), but overall, neither were likely to seek treatment because of high stigma. Additionally, nearly half of 8th graders surveyed talked about mental illness as “something being wrong in the mind” and often had a negative view or interpretation of what it meant to be as a person with a mental illness. All of these could have affected how much teenagers disclosed online to the few platforms they had access to depending on what sites they used and how much they could control their privacy settings.

A lot can change in a year for social media, and a lot has changed in 12. Nowadays, people talk about anything and everything online, can connect accounts across social media platform, and have most likely talked to everyone they know in real life over some sort of social media. This can have its positives and negatives when it comes to talking about mental health – it can normalize it or you might be afraid of being judged by even just one person – but at the very least, the discussion around it and social media as a whole has changed.

What stood out to you? Do you notice any similarities about how technology was used in 2007 and today? How do you think social media may change in the next 1, 5, or even 12 years?

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Loneliness in Adolescents

April 16, 2019 in Educate Yourself

When was the last time you felt lonely? What about left out?

scott-webb-270034-unsplashA national study published this year showed that 39% of high school seniors said they often feel lonely in 2017, an increase from 26% in 2012. 38% of high school seniors also reported often feeling left out in 2017 compared to 30% in 2012. According to a national study from the health insurer Cigna in 2018, young adults between the ages of 19 to 23 are the loneliest.

The same study from this year shows how our activities have changed too. From the 1970s to 2017, the percent of 12th graders who met with their friends almost every day dropped from 52% to 28%. To be exact, they got together 68 fewer times per year (that’s 1 or 2 fewer times per week). They also went on dates 32 fewer times a year than in the 1990s. High school seniors spend less time on paid work and the same amount of time (or less) on homework and extracurricular activities than they did in the 1980s and 1990s, so having more work may not be a huge factor for young Americans’ increasing social isolation.

What’s wrong with feeling lonely? Feeling lonely is different from being alone – it is an intense, uncomfortable emotion that makes you feel isolated and as if no one understands you or what you are going through. While not a mental illness, it could be related to anxiety and depression. It also has the same impact on death rates as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

darion-queen-1334795-unsplashHow do we explain this trend in loneliness? Some say technology use has a hand in this in two ways. First, as social media takes the lead in younger generations, it gives a sense of closeness and connectedness, which can replace face-to-face contact and ironically makes us increasingly alone. Second, social media can represent all the things we could be doing but are not, thus feeding our FOMO.

However, social media alone has not been found to be a predictor of loneliness, especially if one makes the effort to follow up with in-person contact. Rather, it’s argued that when technology is used to the extent that it replaces relationships is when it becomes problematic.

It’s a worrisome sign when some Americans prefer their smartphone and gaming more than socializing with friends. Through these virtual relationships, young people may start to hold unrealistic expectations of achievement and accomplishment, as other social media users post only the very best and happiest part of their lives which becomes interpreted as their norm. This replaces taking the time to relax and be who they are. A conscious effort needs to be made to save us from loneliness. Psychologists and other experts in the field have a few easy tips to ease the loneliness in our day-to-day life:

  • Eat healthfully
  • Get 7-8 hours of sleep
  • Exercise regularly
  • Maximize your human contact in a day
  • Join groups based on shared interest (a religious organization, book club, therapy, classes, pets, volunteering, fitness centers, meet-ups, and others)
  • Monitor alcohol and drug use

Do you feel lonely or left out, or know anyone who does? What are some tips that you can share to ease these feelings? Share your thoughts and experiences below!

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What is Somatization?

April 12, 2019 in LINKS

Have you ever experienced an upset stomach, a tight chest, clammy hands, or any other physical reaction when you’re stressed or depressed? The mind and body have an incredibly strong connection, and when you’re feeling an overwhelming amount of emotion, your brain can process it as being in danger even if the situation isn’t life-threatening, and initiates the fight-flight-freeze response.

brain-2029391_1280This is called somatization, or the way your body reacts to what it thinks is danger, even though nothing seems to be physically wrong with you. The video below, produced by the Kelty Mental Health Resource Center in British Columbia, Canada, explains this in more detail. Reading about the science behind it can be a little overwhelming, including how the nervous system is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system (it can feel a little bit like biology class), but the 7 minute video breaks it down, with cute animations and animals to keep you entertained.

The video shows different situations where people can experience somatization: pressure from an upcoming test or game and the feeling of rejection from people you care about. While these aren’t places where things are necessarily life-threatening, they can have an intense effect on you, especially if these are things that cause you stress or are particularly emotional about. This intensity is what makes your brain see this situations as dangerous to you, and that’s how your body reacts.

Learn more below!

Do you experience physical reactions when you’re feeling upset or depressed? What kinds are they? What do you do to help them, if anything?

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Selfies

April 11, 2019 in Social Media Guide

An easy target for those criticizing how adolescents use technology today is by mimicking them taking a selfie. The image can feel much more familiar than you may want to admit: your phone in your hand, arm stretched out in front of you as you angle and turn both it and your head as you try to find the most flattering shot. You take a few, get unhappy with nearly all of them, then repeat the process with different lighting, by changing your hair ever so slightly, and so on.

wahyu-setiawan-1176211-unsplashSome have raised their concerns about how selfies promote vanity. For example, in a survey conducted among plastic surgeons, a little more than half said that their patients’ motivations was to look better in selfies. There have been reports that selfies promote narcissism, but some argue that people who already have more narcissistic traits are more likely to take selfies to fuel it. Selfies can be a way for adolescents to explore who they are (something that youths have historically been doing), and as a way of boosting their confidence and self-esteem, and some studies have shown that teenagers feel better about themselves when they take selfies.   

Selfies aren’t just an individual activity though. Social media gives us the opportunity to share the photos we take of ourselves with others. The frequency in how often people put images of themselves online can affect those who are already vulnerable to or may already be diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). It doesn’t help when filters start coming into play. Because of the ways that certain filters soften and blur the face, sometimes adding a little bit of makeup or slightly changing features, it can cause people, especially adolescents, to fixate on what they consider to be “improvements.”social-1852362_1920

Photoshopping used to be the go-to method to “enhance” photos, but the software can be expensive, it takes time, and there are a lot of features to navigate. Meanwhile, you can simply swipe through filters on Instagram and Snapchat to see what looks the most flattering, and tools like Facetune make the editing process a lot quicker. This “Snapchat dysmorphia” has led to an increase in people requesting things such as plastic surgery and fillers to change their look, and instead of bringing photos of celebrities or others they want to resemble, they bring in photos of themselves with a certain filter.

However you feel about them, no matter how many you may or may not take, selfies are here to stay. There’s a healthy way of going about how you perceive yourself and others when both taking and looking at them, and like most things on the screen, what you see very rarely represents reality.

How do you feel about selfie culture? Do you post or take them often? What other ways do you think taking selfies and posting them can positively or negatively affect mental health?

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Productive Anxiety

April 8, 2019 in Be Positive

Having anxiety can mean that completing even the simplest task seems impossible. Even simple tasks like opening up that initial tab to start researching for a paper or just taking a deep breath can be terrifying, because taking that first step forward to begin something you’ve been dreading can be so intimidating.

jeshoots-com-523925-unsplashThe feelings associated with anxiety and during an anxiety attack – rapid heart beats, being on edge, having trouble concentrating on anything – can take over the actual task at hand making it seem like you’re never going to get those things done. It doesn’t help either that those who have Type A and perfectionist traits are likely to have some form of anxiety, and can get so stressed about doing something exactly perfect that they can get too anxious to even start. This can also make them even more anxious because of the guilt they have for not working.

Despite all of this, if you have anxiety, you can still accomplish the things you want and have to, despite these overwhelming feelings. One good tool is to organize yourself: writing down exactly what needs to be done and the steps you need to get there can put things in perspective, and for all you know, it’s likely that there’s even less that you have to do than you thought!

You can also try “anxious reappraisal.” Anxiety and excitement are both arousing emotions, making your heart beat faster and gets your office-1859379_1920adrenaline pumping. However, where excitement is a fun feeling, anxiety…isn’t so much. Anxious reappraisal reframes the negative feelings about a task by having you say that you’re excited out loud. Those who repeated “I’m excited” before doing a task came across as more confident and calmer compared to those who said “I’m anxious” before doing the same thing. The people who said “I’m excited” were still nervous, but saying the sentence out loud reframes the activity as something to look forward to.

Other ways to make your anxiety productive can include thinking of the good things that doing the task will accomplish, finding a mantra to motivate you and repeat when you feel your anxiety spike, and even hiding your phone. Your anxiety may not just be about your assignment, but could also be tied to expecting a notification or missing something online, and putting your phone away can help you focus more on your assignment and focus less on potential distractions.

Trying to get started on any task is difficult, especially when it’s one that you consider to be important and want to do well on. There’s no perfect way to go about combating that anxiety, but these are some tips you can try to help with that first step.

Do you have any tips about how to get started on an important assignment when you have anxiety? How can you get excited about things that stress you out?

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Weekend Viewings: Social Animals

April 5, 2019 in LINKS, Social Media Guide

allef-vinicius-ig-seteales-104792-unsplashAnyone can be an influencer and have a large media presence. Some people stumble upon it, and some people don’t want it at all. Some create an account with the purpose of trying to get high traffic and sponsorships, while some just happen to have a post go viral and find themselves dealing with the outcomes, both good and bad.

hans-vivek-230955-unsplashInstagram helps foster creativity. Like any other social media platform, there are a fair amount of influencers, but Instagram stands out because it gives you a space to show off your artwork, photography, and design expertise, whether it be the lunch you ate earlier that day or a photo of yourself in front of a mural that perfectly matches your outfit.  

The 85% of teenagers going onto Instagram at least once a month most likely do so for different reasons. There are some trends on Instagram for teens – there are meme-and-theme accounts, timing is important, and they want to do their best at making their grid look aesthetically pleasing. Teens use Instagram in their own creative ways, especially for self-expression, and sometimes the results can be extreme.

This is where Social Animals comes in. The documentary was directed by Jonathan Ignatius Green and was released back in December, following the stories of three teenagers: a pageant girl from LA, a photographer from NYC, and a high schooler living in the Midwest. All their stories and experiences with the social media platform are different, but there are still noticeable trends as you watch the movie. They all use it as an outlet for something and find a purpose behind it, but they’ve also experienced harassment and rumors through the Internet, some to a harmful degree.

There’s no clear bias in the film about if social media is really good or really bad, and simply interviews the three teenagers about how they use Instagram and the consequences that have come with it. Their backgrounds and upbringings have no overlap, but the film shows the effects that social media is having on Gen Z, not just on how they interact with others, but how they see themselves.

There are also a couple of interviews with the director if you want to learn more about the process and his views on social media and its effect on adolescents.The first one even includes two of the teenagers!

The documentary is about 90 minutes long and is available on Netflix, iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon Prime.

Warning: the movie discusses mental health, but one of the adolescents talks about self-harm and her suicide attempt in detail including her parents’ reactions. If you plan to watch the movie and are sensitive towards the topic, please view with caution.

Have you ever watched any videos about social media? If you have an Instagram, why did you start it? What kind of experiences have you had? If you watch the film, tell us what you think of it!

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Withdrawal without Social Media

April 4, 2019 in Social Media Guide

Although adolescents are aware and think that they spend too much time with technology (especially their phones), it doesn’t look like they have any plans to reduce their use. There are stories about people taking a break from social media through a cleanse or even going off the grid completely and the benefits that come with them, but like any significant change in your habits, it can be an uphill battle to get to the positives.chat-2389223_1280

game-1926905_1280Because of how often people – and adolescents in particular – spend time on social media, it may get to the point of addiction. This isn’t just limited to the “typical” social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. Video games and the addiction that they can cause have also been a subject of discussion. The reason that so many adolescents spend time online can vary, but they may be hesitant to quit for reasons like FOMO, the escapism it allows them to have from everyday life, and the connection they have with their friends on the platforms.

It’s understandable why people want to take a break or completely quit social media. Depending on how often you use it though, there’s likely to be an adjustment period. Withdrawals are often associated with those trying to quit items that are more harmful and dangerous, such as drugs and alcohol. However, we can potentially experience these symptoms to some degree whenever we start reducing (or flat-out quitting) the things that play a huge part of our lives.

ethan-haddox-482609-unsplashIt’s okay, and completely natural, to feel these kinds of symptoms if you’re trying to reduce how much you use social media. Whether its apps, video games, or both, going a few days without them can disrupt your body and mind and make you feel moody and itching to go back on social media. You may find yourself unlocking your phone and your fingers automatically going to where your social media apps were located before they were deleted. You may feel like you’re missing out on conversations that everyone else might mention when you talk to them in real life or through texting, and literally fidgeting because you aren’t sure what to do.

If you’re trying to use social media less, it’s okay and completely normal to experience these minor withdrawal symptoms. Nearly half of adolescents today say that they are online almost constantly, so it’s a drastic change to go from using something all the time to a little bit and not at all. Life changes are rough to get used to, but if they’re things that can help you feel better about yourself and make you more productive in a healthier way, it’s worth that climb up that hill.

Have you ever experienced withdrawal symptoms from not using social media before? What kind of feelings were these? How long did it take until you began to experience them?

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Creative Arts Therapy Feature: Dance/Movement Therapy

April 3, 2019 in Educate Yourself

Do you enjoy the arts? Have you ever wanted to see how getting creative can help you mentally? This feature is just one in a series of entries exploring the different types of creative arts therapy. You can learn more about other outlets here!

Created in the 1940s by Marian Chace, dance/movement therapy (DMT) is a psychotherapeutic intervention using movement and dance to support intellectual, emotional and motorleon-liu-642086-unsplash functions of the body. In a session, the therapist responds to movements, assesses body language and nonverbal behaviors and emotional expressions to develop interventions to address the specific needs of the client. DMT was founded on 4 core premises:

  • Movement is a language
  • Mind, body, and spirit are interconnected
  • Movement is functional, developmental, communicative and expressive
  • Movement is an assessment tool and primary mode of intervention

DMT sessions can vary depending on the therapist and the group dynamic. One style of session is the “Chacian group.” This group follows a semi-structured style of intervention. Participants engage in a warm-up where they are invited to dance to the music while standing in a circle. This is followed by an improvised movement experience in which the therapist notes the movement of the participants and creates opportunities for movement synchrony and expansion. Participants also engage in expressive, functional and/or communicative moments. A typical “Chacian group” session ends with a cool down and the therapist asking the clients to talk about their movement experience and helping them to gain insights from the movement.

Other sessions might focus on increasing body awareness in a subtler way. The therapist will work with clients to develop an awareness of micro-movements that happen when talking, standing or sitting. This approach is based on the idea that emotions begin as sensations in the body. Therefore, an increase in body awareness and the ability to identify sensations leads to greater control and regulation of emotions. The therapist might ask the client to embody a posture or gesture, repeat it, make it smaller or larger or just to simply stay with the movement.

staging-258631_1920Lastly, more creative and expressive sessions exist in which clients choose to create dance or movement sequences that come from inner sensations or concerns. In group sessions, participants might work together to create a movement piece, using problem solving, teamwork, and communication skills.

While there are a variety of session experiences one may have when participating in DMT, the important skills learned from the intervention are the same. The participant learns how to develop and trust their own ability to present and respond empathetically and truthfully. They also learn how to translate nonverbal movements into insights that can be used for recovery.

The efficacy of DMT has been supported by numerous research articles. In a study looking at the treatment outcome of 10 weeks of dance/movement therapy intervention, dance therapy was found to be effective in improving short and long-term quality of life. A meta-analysis evaluating the effectiveness of DMT and the therapeutic use of dance for the treatment of health-related psychological problems suggested that DMT and dance are effective in andre-hunter-62014-unsplashdecreasing clinical symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Positive effects such as increased subjective well-being and positive mood, affect, and body image were also found (another study found that in adolescents with mild depression in the DMT group had a plasma serotonin increase and dopamine concentration decrease. This suggests that DMT may be effective in improving psychological distress in adolescents with mild depression.

DMT is used to treat physical, psychological, cognitive and social issues. People who are treated with DMT range all the way from those that suffer from cancer, arthritis and autism to those who are dealing with anxiety and depression. The positive effects of an increased quality of life paired with the wide variety of people who can benefit from DMT make this therapy option a great one!

Have you ever tried DMT? Is it something that you’d like to do? How do you think that moving – and dancing especially – can help with your mental health? What other ways do you think you can incorporate dancing and moving into your daily routine for your well-being?

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No Pranks Here: Why Laughter can be the Best Medicine

April 1, 2019 in Be Positive

suslikk-1154131-unsplashAs you try to navigate today and avoid some of the more obvious pranks like plastic wrap over the toilet seat and more-clickbaity posts online than usual, you can also try to remember that April Fool’s Day itself is all about laughing. Because the holiday dates back all the way to the 1500s, the origins are a little muddy, and no one quite knows how the tradition of pranking began. Popular theories include tricking some people into believing that New Year’s Day was still on April 1st after the Gregorian calendar was adopted and moved the day to January 1st, the beginning of spring, and the vernal equinox. Regardless, today is when people are on high alert, while others want to create laughter – though who they’re trying to get to laugh may differ.

We recently wrote about how the activity of laughter can have mental and physical positive effects (check it out here!), but the list goes beyond those that we kah-lok-leong-262965-unsplashhad briefly mentioned. Laughter is known for being contagious, which can help create a sense of togetherness and community, which can make you feel safer. It changes the way your neurons communicate with each other, doing so in a way that can help your memory. In general, it’s difficult to find the negatives in having a good, genuine laugh, especially if you’re doing so in a place you’re comfortable in, with people that make you happy, or both.

Whether or not pranks are funny is debatable (after all, they’re “humorous” because they trick and potentially embarrass others), and because they’re the main feature of April Fool’s Day, it can ironically make today feel a lot less amusing than any other day. Instead of make relationships strong like laughter can do, pranks can test them instead.

xenia-bogarova-654935-unsplashIf you like pranking, do it in a harmless way, and are comfortable in the relationships you have with the people you pull them on, the activity can still create laughter and all the benefits that come with it. When done right, pranking can also create self-reflection on how you react to certain events and is often used in a way to bring people into a group (going too far however is hazing, which has severe consequences both physically and emotionally).

You can play a role in how you go about today. You can play harmless pranks if you enjoy it (the Internet has been known to do this for the past few years), but if you don’t, you can still use today to have a good laugh without potentially hurting yourself or others. Enjoying yourself and laughing can do wonders for your body and mind, and while sometimes it can feel like the hardest thing to do when your mental health isn’t at its strongest, finding that one thing that helps you crack a smile can feel like the best feeling in the world.

What do you think about April Fool’s Day? Have you ever played pranks before? What other funny things can you think people can do today that don’t involve pranking?

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