Weekly Wellness Newsletter
Another week down! (Week of May 18-22, 2020)
Check Outs Begin...
A Message from our Principal
Hello Mustangs!
Hopefully, you are finding ways to enjoy the Spring Season. As the school year starts to draw to a close, I hope that you are able to reflect upon some good memories from the year. Even though the time was cut short, it is important that we focus on the positive things that have happened and look to all of the possibilities that the future holds.
Stay safe and take care!
Sincerely,
Ms. Cahoon
Helpful Information Dealing with the Ongoing Stay at Home Order
Coping with Coronavirus (COVID-19)
What a strange time, huh? Things are changing day-to-day, and there’s a lot we don’t know and can’t control. For me, this means interacting with my clients and their families via email, phone, and video calls. So, I wanted to offer some suggestions for kids and adults to help deal with the stress and anxiety that is happening right now.
Coping Skills to Try
LABEL YOUR FEELINGS
First, recognize what you are feeling. Some days will be better than others. Some days, you’ll feel scared. Others days you’ll feel better. It may change throughout the day. That’s completely understandable at this time. And different people will have different feelings and reactions to the same information.
Why should we bother labeling our feelings? Clinical research has demonstrated that one way to help regulate your emotions is to identify them. In other words, once you can identify your feelings, it becomes easier to manage them. As Dr. Dan Siegel says, “When you name it, you can tame it.”
ACKNOWLEDGE WHAT YOU CAN AND CAN’T CONTROL
There are some things you can control and some things you can’t. And situations like this one can highlight for us how many of the things we can’t control. It is important understand the things you do have control over and the things you don’t have control over in your life.
Instead of focusing on those things you have no control over, you can focus on what you CAN control, and that is YOU. You can control how you act, what you say, what you do, how you behave, how you respond to someone.
Think about the sentence: How can I make this better?
MAKE A PLAN
Now that you are focused on what you can control, let’s make a plan. You can use the problem-solving steps to make a plan to solve problems.
IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM
For example, I miss my friends.
GENERATE IDEAS TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM
The next step is to generate several ideas for solving an issue. Not all of them will work, but you’re not trying to pick out ones that will and won’t work during this step. Right now, it’s just about generating ideas.
Send them a card
FaceTime my friends
Email them
Call Them
Play a game online together
Watch the same TV show and call each other to talk about it
PICK OUT A FEW IDEAS FOR SOLVING THE PROBLEM AND USE THEM!
Perhaps your friend doesn’t have a phone, so you can’t FaceTime. But maybe you can email or play a game online together, or call them to talk.
DO SOMETHING FUN
Play is a natural stress reliever for kids. I would encourage everyone to use their favorite distraction coping skills right now. Why? First, it helps your brain. When you are in fight, flight, or freeze mode, your emotional brain is in charge. By doing something distracting, you’re giving your brain a chance to switch back so that the thinking part of your brain can come back online.
There are going to be times in your life when you have gone over things in your mind, you’ve identified all the things to explain how you are feeling, but you STILL can’t get it off of your mind. That could be happening to you right now. You may find yourself thinking about these issues, and unable to focus on anything else - at that point, it makes sense to use a distraction skill. In my house, here are some of my favorite distraction skills:
Puzzles
Sewing
Knitting
Reading
Watching TV
Listening to Audiobooks
Coloring
(Credit: Copingskillsforkids.com)