Anne Arundel County Public Schools, MD Family Academy, 1 Feb 2022

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From YouTube: Coping Skills for Kids & Teens

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Today we are going to talk about coping skills for kids and teens. I hope you can find what works for you.

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I am jennifer moore and I am the school psychologist at chesapeake high school. I have worked in anne arundel, county public schools in high schools for 10 years. I love helping students find what coping skills work for them and I look forward to teaching them to you too.

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So what exactly are coping skills? Coping skills help us get through difficult times. They can give us an important break from mental and emotional distress, and sometimes they are literally life-saving.

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Today we are going to go over six different categories of coping skills. We will cover distraction, grounding emotional release, self-loving care, thought, challenge and access your higher self.

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Distraction as a coping skill means absorbing your mind in something else. Some examples of distraction would be having conversation with friends and family listening to music reading, working on a puzzle, watching tv playing video games, learning something new cleaning and tidying gardening, working on arts and crafts, playing sports, drawing cooking your favorite meal and journaling.

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There are pros and cons to every type of coping skill distraction works because it gives your heart and mind a break, it's great for short-term relief and it calms a crisis.

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However, distraction doesn't resolve the underlying issue and it only is short-term relief.

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Grounding as a coping skill means getting out of your head and into your body and the world for this you want to use your body and your senses. You can breathe deeply count to three and breathe in for three hold for three and then breathe out for three.

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You can smell fragrances, slowly, taste, food notice, the colors around you walk on the grass barefoot, squeeze clay or mud, run your hands under running water. Do yoga meditate or exercise my favorite ways to ground myself is to use my five senses.

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I stop and I look around and I notice something that I can see something that I can hear something that I can smell, something that I can taste and something that I can touch in that exact moment, and that usually brings my emotions down to a place where I can think grounding is great as a coping skill, because it reduces physical anxiety.

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It helps slow or stop disassociation, which means feeling numb, floaty or disconnected grounding can be difficult because sometimes it's actually better to stay a bit disassociated. That's how your mind protects. You.

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Emotional release as a coping skill means get it out. You can yell scream or run you can scream into a pillow. You can try a cold or hot shower. You can let yourself cry or just sob. You can try to put on a funny youtube video and let yourself laugh, try cranking up some music and start a dance party.

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Emotional release can be great because it releases the pressure of overwhelming emotions.

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Emotional release can be hard because it is hard to do in some situations and others might not understand. It also might feel odd to you. My favorite emotion release is crying in the shower.

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Self-Loving care as a coping skill means taking care of yourself. Here you need to find the things that you love.

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You might want to massage your hands with a cream that smells nice, make yourself a bouquet of fresh flowers, manicure your nails cook, a special meal or get food from your favorite restaurant, clean your house or just make your bed take a bubble bath or long shower.

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Brush your hair, buy yourself a small treat or take a nap self-loving care is great because you can make yourself your own best friend and support worker. You really deserve it.

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Sometimes self-love and care is hard because we feel like it's superficial, even though it's really not, we do deserve to be loved and take care of ourselves too.

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Thought challenge as a coping skill means really using your brain to challenge those thoughts and feelings. You're having here, you might want to write down negative thoughts that you're having and list all the reasons why they might not be true.

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Imagine someone you love having those same thoughts. What advice would you give them thought challenging can be great because it helps shift long-term, negative thinking, habits and trying to be more logical can help reduce extreme emotions.

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The hard part about challenging your thoughts is the more emotional you feel the harder it is to do this, especially with the emotion of shame. It can be very hard, but if you can work on challenging your thoughts, this will help you shift your long-term thinking habits over time.

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The last coping skill category we're going to go over is accessing your higher self. Here you can help someone else when you're feeling low you can smile at strangers and see how many spiles you get back. Give compliments volunteer, do randomly kind things for others.

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Pat dogs at a local park join a cause, ask for a hug and give hugs too accessing your higher self reminds us that everyone has value and that purpose can be found in small or large things.

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It can get hard because you don't want to get stuck trying to save everyone and forget about yourself, but accessing your higher self and helping others can truly shift your mood.

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Next, I'd like to invite you to my virtual calming room, I created this calming room. While we were on virtual learning, so that students and families could pop in anytime to learn about coping skills, you can click on each picture in the room and a different coping skill will pop up. For example, if you want to do some emotional release, you can click on the couch.

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To distract yourself, you could click here and do a word search. You could click here and watch a lava lamp. You could click on the colored pencils and do some coloring.

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My favorite way to distract myself is to watch the plants grow.

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To ground yourself, you could click here to learn some guided meditation. You could click here to listen to a water fountain.

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You could also click on the fire if you'd like to listen to file crackling or if you like, to hear calming ocean waves.

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If you click on the poster that says a to z of ideas and ways to help you cope a video pops up with coping skills from a to z, if you'd like to do beginner's yoga, you can click on the yoga mat and a yoga class will pop up for you.

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If you'd like to learn how to do deep, calming breathing click on just breathe.

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From there you can click on any of these pictures and learn more about coping skills. I will make sure to post the link to this virtual calling room at the end of this slide so that you can always access it.

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Thank you for joining me today to learn about coping skills. I hope you can find a few from each category that work for you I'll leave you today with a few coping skills resources.

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Please remember that what works for one person may not work for someone else, so find the coping skills that work for you. Thank you.