Short messages on Mental health, stress and anxiety issues from Respect Yourself, the guidance site for young people to help make good decisions in life.
Getting help means you’re strong enough to admit that you can’t handle it on your own. And no-one since the dawn of time has ever handled everything in their life all on their own.
Mindfulness meditation involves sitting silently and paying attention to thoughts, sounds, the sensations of breathing or parts of the body, bringing your attention back whenever the mind starts to wander.
It can be helpful to take a mindful approach if you realise that, for several minutes, you have been “trapped” in reliving past problems or “pre-living” future worries.
Connect with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours, at home, work, school or in your local community. Think of these as the cornerstones of your life and invest time in developing them. Building these connections will support and enrich you every day.
Research by the New Economics Foundation has shown that people who introduce the following five steps into their lifestyle can improve their mental wellbeing: Connect, Be active, Take notice, Keep learning, Give.
People who choose the way they think about things, are at peace with the past, live in the present, and are optimistic about the future; and as a result are generally happier.
While you’re learning to identify and challenge your thinking patterns, it’s a good idea to write down the changes that occur in a diary or notebook to help you to develop your skills. This helps you see the advantages of working on your thoughts, and motivates you to keep at it.
To develop an awareness of thoughts and feelings, some people find it helpful to silently name them: “Here’s the thought that I might fail that exam”. Or, “This is anxiety”.
Mindfulness isn’t about making bad thoughts go away, but about seeing them as mental events. Imagine standing at a bus station and seeing ‘thought buses’ coming and going without having to get on them and be taken away. With gentle persistence this is possible.
You don’t have to take abuse from anyone. No-one deserves to be abused. You are allowed to walk away, to stick up for yourself, to say “I understand that you are hurting, but I can’t allow it to hurt me in return.”