Tag: mental health skill-building

Reduce Your Anxiety and Boost Your Mental Health: New SEL Resources

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NOW OPEN! The aws Studios Store!

Parents, grandparents, teachers and educators!

You can count on the effectiveness of the SEL resources in the aws Studios Store! As a mental health educator and curriculum developer, hundreds of students, young and old tested and approved my activities and curricula.

Furthermore, I am excited to provide you with my most popular SEL resources and curricula.

Check out my new store here!

SEL resources currently on the shelves at the aws Studios Store:

“Circle of Community™” is a fun team-building activity that can be used with any group or team, in the classroom or in the home! “Circle…” shows teams/groups how to work together, keeping conflict to a minimum giving groups/teams a better chance of reaching their goals or going for a win.

Picture shows cover of one of the SEL resources at the aws Studios.art Teachers Pay Teachers Store
Another picture from an aws Studios.art SEL resource in the TPT store

“Reframe It™” is a fun game that builds empathy and an understanding of child and parent behavior or why kids and parents do what they do!

The engaging and interactive game offers players a chance to think about ways to modify their reactions to problematic or challenging behaviors and offers ideas on how to alter the environment for more positive behaviors.

Particularly, this game is for parents, Parenting Educators and their parent groups. In addition, it plays well with pre-teens and teens.

“DIY Hardcover Picture Book”:

A one-pager on how to craft your own hardcover picture book. Great for art class! Plus, it’s a FREE download.

Picture from an aws Studios.art picture book used for an SEL resource art project

To purchase the resources at the aws Studios Store, you will need to make a FREE Teachers Pay Teachers account. Anyone with a FREE Teachers Pay Teachers account can purchase materials at the aws Studios Store!

Like the aws Studios Store, give me a Rating or Review or Ask Me a Question! Check it out here!

A Mental Health Toolbox for Social and Emotional Health and Well-being

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Even if you are at risk for mental illness, you can maintain your social and emotional well-being by learning and practicing mental health skills.

At the 2022 Mental Health America conference last week, “Forward Together – Recovery, Healing, Hope,” Kristen Harootunian, a young adult from Minding Your Mind, told a powerful and hopeful “story” titled, “Changing Minds: Stories Over Stigma.” Kristen related her experience with health, mental illness, substance abuse, and her subsequent recovery.

Mental Health Toolbox

  • First, young people should connect with 1-3 trusted adults. They could be parents, teachers, counselors, clergy, family members, or friends.
  • “Letting people in and meeting help halfway”:  Kristen talked about how she thought she had to do things on her own and was alone in her struggles. When she opened up to her friends, she wasn’t expecting their support. Instead, they listened and gave her love and compassion. In therapy, Kristen found she wasn’t alone – that many young people deal with struggles similar to hers. Getting help with her emotional health or “letting people in” was what she needed to survive.
A grumpy onion. He could use a toolbox!

Five positive coping skills

  • Kristen’s five positive coping skills:
    • Exercise,
    • Walking,
    • Reading,
    • Connecting with family and friends
    • Journaling: When asked how she was doing, Kristen usually responded with, “I’m fine.” But actually, she was hiding or masking her true feelings. Writing or journaling helped her express her feelings, including guilt (of her mother’s death), shame, substance abuse, pressure, isolation, emptiness, trauma, anxiety, sadness, guardedness, grief, and tiredness. Getting these feelings down on paper helped her work through them and, for the most part, out of them.
Looks like a trusted bunch of celery?

How about you?

Creating a toolbox of mental health skills isn’t difficult. It’s easy and can be a fun use of time. How about you? Do you have a toolbox of skills to help you maintain your mental health? Are they like the tools in Kristen’s box, or are they different? I would love to hear about what’s in your toolbox in the Comments section below!

Thanks for tuning in, and feel free to share this post to help boost mental health skill-building everywhere!

“Square breathing or box breathing,” a technique to help calm our bodies and brains down when starting to feel anxious:  4 beats inhale, 4 beats hold, 4 beats exhale, 4 beats hold, and repeat.

Kristen says these tools help her maintain her recovery, but, as she alludes in her presentation, they would have been helpful to know at an early age to provide strategies to protect against mental illness.