Achieving mental and emotional health

1. Achieving mental and emotional health Unit 3: Developing your Self-Esteem Expressing Emotions in Healthful Ways

2. Lesson 1: Developing your Self-Esteem Friday: • What are some factors that impact teens’ self-esteem? • What are some traits of people with high self-esteem? • What are some traits of people with low self-esteem? Monday: • What role do you think self-esteem plays in leading a healthful life? • If you feel good about yourself, do you think you will make good decisions about friends, diet, exercise, sex and abstinence; dangerous habits like smoking and drinking? • If you feel good about yourself, you will want to take care of yourself?

3. What are some traits of people with high self-esteem? • People with high self-esteem are realistic about their strengths and weaknesses • They are able to set goals and work toward them with optimism and humor • They feel competent in areas they consider important • they do not take other people’s negative impressions of them too seriously

4. What are characteristics of people with low self-esteem? • People with low self-esteem have a hard time honestly evaluating their strengths and weaknesses and often have an unrealistic, overall negative impression of themselves • They take other people’s opinion of their strengths and weaknesses more seriously that they should • They do not feel competent in areas they consider important • They tend to be pessimistic.

5. How do we build our self-esteem? • The first step in building self-esteem is taking a realistic look at your strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes. • This helps you know what goals are realistic to pursue, what aspects of your personality and lifestyle need improvement • Self-knowledge helps lay the foundation for high self-esteem. • Choose friends who value and respect you • Focus on positive aspects about yourself • Replace negative self-talk with supportive self-talk • Work toward accomplishments rather than perfection • Consider your mistakes learning opportunities • Try new activities to discover your talents • Write down your goals and the steps you will take to achieve them • Exercise regularly to feel more energized • Volunteer to help someone • Accept the things you cant change, and focus your energy on changing the things you can

6. Negative Self-Talk Activity: In groups or 2-3 complete the following activity

7. Activity • You are going to complete a personal inventory to help you achieve better self-understanding! • Afterwards take the information you have learned about yourself to create a drawing and a short essay that illustrates who you are. • Volunteer to share. Reflection: • What have you learned about yourself? • How can you apply this information to your daily lives? • How does this affect goals you have set of yourself? Understanding your own strengths, weaknesses, and preferences is essential in boosting your self-esteem!

8. Personal Inventory School Subjects • I like ______________. • I do not like ________________. • I am good at __________________. • I am not good at _______________. • I am good at this subject, but I do not like it: ____________. • I am not good at this subject, but I like it: _______________. Activities • I like __________________. • I do not like ________________. • I am good at _________________. • I am not good at _________________. • I am good at this activity, but I do not like it: _________. • I am not good at this activity, but I like it: ____________. • I prefer being involved in individual activities _____ or group activities ___. (Check one.) Relationships with Friends and Adults (Check the statements that apply to you.) • I am generally well liked: ____________. • I am generally not well liked: ___________. • I have a group of friends: ________. • I prefer having one or two friends: _______. • I am a leader: ___________. • I am a follower: _________. • I prefer people who like the same things I like: ___________. • I prefer people who like different things: _____________. • I have the support of significant adults in my life: __________________. • I have the support of a group of peers: ______________________. Food Preferences • I like to eat ____________. • I do not like to eat __________. • I do ____ do not _____ eat a balanced diet. (Check one.) Relaxing • I relax by __________. • I like relaxing alone _____ or with other people ____. (Check one.)

9. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: a ranked list of those needs essential to human growth and development, presented in ascending order, starting with basic needs and building toward the need to reach your highest potential.

10. People who do not have their needs met in healthful ways may be motivated to get them met in unhealthful or inappropriate ways. • If a child is constantly being scolded for misbehaving, what might they have learned? • How will this be carried over into the teen age years and adulthood? Your Needs, Your Personality

11. This is at the bottom of Maslow’s Pyramid. • Level 1 Physical & Level 2 Safety • To satisfy Hunger, Thirst, Sleep, etc. • Need to be secure from danger • When denied these, one can become physically weak. • How can this affect a person? • Does everyone have these most basic needs in our country or world? Physical Needs

12. To be loved, to belong, and be valued or recognized. • After we meet our basic needs, our natural behavior is an attempt to meet our emotional needs. • Let’s look at these Emotional Needs individually: 2. Emotional Needs (192)

13. Everyone needs to give love and feel that they are valued and loved in return. • Babies who are denied both physical or emotional may be stunted physically or mentally, they may fail to thrive and some even die. A. The Need to Be Loved

14. Everyone has the need to belong. • Humans are social beings and need to be around and interact with other people, therefore giving one a feeling of belonging or a valued member of that group. • When we are mentally healthy, we tend to meet these needs in positive ways that benefit ourselves and those we are connected with. • If we isolate ourselves from groups or friends, we are considered mentally instable. B. The Need To Belong

15. We all need to have a feeling of value or worth. • We all need to achieve – to have ourselves and others recognize that we are of worth and that we are a contributor to the world. • We all must have something we do well, and that it is recognized by others. C. The need to be valued and recognized.

16. This is the next level up from the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. • This is actually Artistic Needs. • The appreciation of something that is beautiful in its many forms and fashions. • In this, we also feel the desire for order and balance in our lives. • Our senses are constantly stimulated by the rhythms, forms, and colors around us, which canaffect our behavior and mental health. Aesthetic Needs

17. The Need for self-actualization • This is at the top of Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs. • This means to reach one’s full potiential, being the best you can be. • Having goals that motivate and inspire you and it is a life long process. 4. Self-Fulfilling Needs

18. How do we work towardsSelf-Actualizationduring the teen years? Volunteering to help others Making specific education and career goals Beginning to work towards those goals

19. It’s important to understand that: That not all of your needs can be met all of the time. You may have some needs met only partly and still thrive to satisfy the higher ones. Even people raised in EXTREME CONDITIONS can create lives for themselves that reach toward self-actualization.

20. Activity: Your Hierarchy of Needs Activity: Create your own Hierarchy of Needs. Use the magazines provided and cut out pictures that represent your needs for each part of the triangle. Glue each picture in the appropriate section of the triangle.

21. Lesson 2: Developing Personal Identity and Character • Journal: • What are some characteristics that make you unique? • Do you think your identity will stay the same throughout your life, or do you think it will change? • What are some specific ways that teens can demonstrate good character? • Who is your support system? • What are some situations in which you contribute to the community?

22. Your Personal Identity • Your personal identity is your sense of yourself as a unique individual. This makes up your personality (a complex set of characteristics that make you unique)and your CHARACTER! • Character: the distinctive qualities that describe how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. • What are characteristics of people with good character? • Why is your character important? Sassy Bossy Hawt

23. Traits of Good Character • By demonstrating the traits below, you show others that you have INTEGRITY, a firm observance of core ethical values • Trustworthiness: honest, loyal, reliable • Respect: considerate of others and accept their differences • Responsibility you use self-control; accountable for your choices and decisions, and do not blame others for your actions • Fairness: you play by the rules, take turns, and share; open-minded • Caring: kind and compassionate, express gratitude, forgiving, help people in need • Citizenship: advocate for a safe and healthy environment; obey rules and laws, and show respect for authority.

24. How to work toward a positive identity 1. Recognize your strengths and weaknesses 2. Demonstrate positive values 3. Develop a purpose in your life 4. Form meaningful relationships (constructive criticism) 5. Avoid unhealthful high-risk behaviors 6. Contribute to the community

25. Activity Constructive Criticism Skit

26. Lesson 3: Expressing Emotions in Healthful Ways • Journal: • List all of the emotions • What are some common emotions experienced by teens? • What is an example of an emotion that can be challenging to express in a positive way? • What are some specific ways that you manage your emotions? • What are mixed emotions? Give an example

27. Stats dealing with Emotions and Teens • Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adolescents have experienced an “anger attack” that involved threatening violence, destroying property or engaging in violence toward others, according to new research. • According to SafeYouth.com more than 1 in 3 high school students, both male and female, have been involved in a physical fight. 1 in 9 of those students have been injured badly enough to need medical treatment. •  "A high percentage of teens -- nearly one-half -- had experienced some traumatic event in their adolescent years," he reports. Some 40% had witnessed violence in person. • Nearly one-fifth of the nation's teens are suffering from emotional disorders. • Those who witnessed violence were three times more likely to be involved in substance abuse. • Those who had a physical assault were twice as likely to have clinical depression. • Sexual assault victims were 80% more likely to suffer from PTSD than other teens.

28. Emotions and Teens • Approximately 20% of adolescents have a diagnosable mental health disorder. 5 • Many mental health disorders first present during adolescence. 6 • Between 20% and 30% of adolescents have one major depressive episode before they reach adulthood. 7 • For a quarter of individuals with mood disorders like depression, these first emerge during adolescence. 8 • Between 50% and 75% of adolescents with anxiety disorders and impulse control disorders (such as conduct disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) develop these during adolescence. 9 • Suicide is the third leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults. 10 • Suicide affects young people from all ages, races, genders, and socioeconomic groups, although some groups seem to have higher rates than others

29. EMOTIONS: signals that tell your mind and body how to react • Happiness • Sadness • Love • Fear • Guilt • Anger

30. How can you recognize your emotions and express them in a positive way? Ask yourself these questions: • Why do I feel the way I do about this event? • Will this event matter later on in my life? • Why should I wait before responding? • What can I do to feel better? • Who can I ask to help me deal with my negative feelings?

31. Do you have a support system?Activity • Make a list of adults at home and at school that you could approach if you had a problem. • Next to each name, write special qualities that make the person a good source of help (e.g., is a good listener)

32. Responding to Difficult Emotions • Some people choose to manage difficult emotions by avoiding situations that make them uncomfortable. • These are called Defense Mechanisms – mental processes that protect individuals from strong or stressful emotions • Sometime you may use these unconsciously as a way to protect yourself from intense emotional pain. • Relying on defense mechanisms too long can keep you from facing and solving what is actually upsetting you

33. In Sigmund Freud's model of personality, the ego is the aspect of personality that deals with reality. While doing this, the ego also has to cope with the conflicting demands of the id and the superego. The id seeks to fulfill all wants, needs, and impulses while the superego tries to get the ego to act in an idealistic and moral manner. • What happens when the ego cannot deal with the demands of our desires, the constraints of reality, and our own moral standards? According to Freud, anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that people seek to avoid. Anxiety acts as a signal to the ego that things are not going right. As a result, the ego then employs a defense mechanism to help reduce these feelings of anxiety. Sigmund Freud

34. Defense Mechanisms • Repression: involuntary pushing unpleasant feelings out of one’s mind. Repressed memories may appear through subconscious means and in altered forms, such as dreams or slips of the tongue ('Freudian slips'). Example: A child who is abused by a parent later has no recollection of the events, but has trouble forming relationshipsor You can't remember your close friends funeral. • Regression: Returning to behaviors characteristic of a younger age, rather than dealing with problems in a mature manner. For an example an adolescent who is overwhelmed with fear, anger and growing sexual impulses might become clingy and start exhibiting earlier childhood behaviors he has long since overcome, such as bedwetting; You and your roommate have get into an argument so you stomp off into another room and pout • Denial: unconscious lack of recognition of something that is obvious to others. For instance, a student who gets a bad grade on a test “So what? Grades don’t mean anything to me. I didn’t even study for that test anyway.” Or a person who is a functioning alcoholic will often simply deny they have a drinking problem, pointing to how well they function in their job and relationships. • Projection: attributing your own feelings or faults to another person or group; For example, a person who is rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude.

35. Defense Mechanisms • Suppression: consciously and intentionally pushing unpleasant feelings out of one’s mind; The effort to hide and control unacceptable thoughts or feelings You are attracted to someone but say that you really don't like the person at all • Rationalization: making excuses to explain a situation or behavior, rather than taking responsibility for it. “I didn’t tell the teacher because I knew she wouldn’t have done anything about it.” or I always study hard for tests and I know a lot of people who cheat so it's not a big deal I cheated this time. • Compensation: making up for weaknesses and mistakes though gift giving, hard work, or extreme efforts; people overachieve in one area to compensate for failures in another; • For example, imagine that a young boy experiences feelings of inferiority because he cannot makes as many baskets as his peers do when they are playing basketball. Because of these feelings of inadequacy, he pushes himself to overcome this weakness.He signs up for basketball practice and start practicing on his own everyday after school. Eventually he becomes an even better basketball player than many of his friends. • However, compensation can also prevent people from trying new things or attempting to address shortcomings. For example, let's imagine that a young college student experiences feelings or inferiority because she has few close friends. Everywhere she goes, she sees her peers engaging in animated conversations with their friends. She compensates for this feeling by saying to herself, "I may not have many close friends, but I have excellent grades!" Instead of seeking out social connections, she throws herself into her schoolwork and spends little time having fun or attending social events. In this instance, compensation has actually prevented her from overcoming her feelings of inferiority.

36. How to Handle Fear, Guilt, and Anger?