Breathing Exercises

Today, teens are struggling with stress and anxiety issues due to peer pressure, social media, academic performance, and college preparation. This can cause teenagers to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms to manage their stress such as avoiding responsibilities, overeating, substance and alcohol abuse. There are healthier ways for teenagers to manage their stress such as drawing, listening to music, positive self-talk, meditation, yoga, and playing sports. Research also shows that breathing exercises help reduce stress at all age levels.

When people are stressed or anxious, they take shorter and more rapid breaths. By taking a few deep breaths can instantly calm and reduce stress in people. As a social work intern, I’ve been looking for practical tools to provide education and mental health services during my sessions with students. Many of my students have been struggling with stress and anxiety. So teaching my students how to take deep and slow breaths when they are feeling stressed or anxious can help them feel calmer at that moment. Breathing exercises can be helpful for students to use inside and outside of school. They can use deep breathing exercises before a test or even help fall asleep better. It can be easily used in their home, classroom, after school activity, anywhere. It is also a tool that can be used in the workplace after they graduate. I found three easy breathing exercises from Kids Health that can be implemented during counseling sessions or even at the moment a teen is experiencing a lot of anxiety or stress.

Reference

Teens Health from Nemours. (2019). Relaxation exercises: breathing basics. Retrieved from https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/relax-breathing.html

School Anxiety Strategies

School Anxiety Strategies

What to do when a student comes to your office and displays or describes physical behaviors of anxiety? Listed below is a mindfulness exercise where a student should describe 5 things about an item to help with anxiety.

Mindfulness Exercise – Notice 5 things

◦       Observe 5 things you can SEE and silently describe them to yourself in great detail.

◦       Observe 5 things you can HEAR and silently describe them to yourself in great detail.

◦       Observe 5 things you can FEEL and silently describe them to yourself in great detail.

◦       **Describe as if you were telling a person who has never seen, heard, or touched the objects before.

Next, is an anxiety kit that can be created for individuals or a group to utilize for anxiety activities for when a student is currently feeling physically anxious and displays this behavior- the activity listed above can be incorporated into the crisis kit (ex. Have a student smell the lotion and describe the scent, touch, how it looks, etc.)

Crisis Kit of Objects

◦       Scented Lotion

◦       Gum/mints/candy

◦       Fidget toy (stone, toy, cloth)

◦       Deck of cards

◦       Silly putty/play-doh

◦       Pen/paper/journal

◦       Colored pencils

◦       Activity workbook

◦       Crosswords, word searched, puzzles, hidden pictures

Anxiety Ladder – can be offered as an anxiety tool for the student to anxiety how they are feeling, at what level, and what skills they believe can help them at their certain level:

◦       Students identify different levels of their anxiety by creating an anxiety ladder.

◦       The ladder is a scale of physical sensation/urges/impulses/thoughts that students report that they experience when they have anxiety. (ex. Crying, dizziness, numbness, detached from self, tapping foot/shaking leg, fidgeting, nausea, racing thoughts, sleep problems, self-harm urges, verbal aggressive urges, impulsive behavior urges, isolation, nap/sleep, opting out).

◦       The scale is from 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst amount of anxiety that students have ever experienced.

◦       Students identify coping strategies that they feel best work for them when experiencing identified physical sensations.

This item of information can be connected to home-school-community linkages for the student and helping with anxiety.

Social Thinking: Chicago Metro Conference

Social Thinking Conference 

April 24-26

Social Thinking presents: Chicago Metro Area Conference

April 25-27, 8:30-3:45 PM

Conference led by a speech language pathologist, Michelle Garcia Winner, will also include other presenters. Organization that helps people develop their social competencies to better connect with others. They teach different skills and strategies that can be used in the classroom, home or community centers to help students with organizational skills and social emotional learning.

What is social thinking? Social thinking is the process by which we interpret the thoughts, beliefs, intentions, emotions, knowledge and actions of another person along

with the context of the situation to understand that person’s experience.

Topics Conference will cover:

Executive functioning: Tackle Homework and classwork with these helpful strategies!

(5^th graders – young adult)

Learn organizational skills, strategies to find motivation to tackle tasks, and strategies to complete homework.

Zones of regulation: A framework to foster self-regulation and emotional control (K-Young adult)

Learn the frameworks for self-regulation and emotional control, and executive functioning. It is a cognitive behavior approach that uses four zones (colors) to help students visually and verbally self-identify how they are functioning in the moment given their emotions and state of alertness.

Helping teens prepare for the real adult world (upper elementary – young adult).

This conference focuses on helping parents and educators prepare for and learn how to respond to the transition to independence. Discuss strategies that will help individuals develop a more mature social mindset.

The frameworks and strategies taught in these courses are developed from

Using peer-reviewed research and client family values. Also, it connects to research in fields that study how individuals have evolved and developed in order to function in society like: anthropology, cultural linguistics, social psychology, child development etc. 

This conference fits in the Promote a school climate and culture conducive to student learning and teaching excellence section of the School social work model. It is allowing the enhancement of professional capacity of school personnel by providing them with an opportunity to further their knowledge on social emotional and executive functioning skills that could be applied within special education classrooms.  

Link to Brochure: Brochure