Self Care
Name 5 activities that can be used for self care
Staff Discretion
Playing with this can help regulate and manage anxiety
Stress Ball, Fidgets
True or False: Medication is the only way to treat mental health challenges
False.
Therapy, counseling, self help also help
Working on ______ skills is a great way to get more out of your relationships. This helps to express thoughts, emotions, and boundaries with other people.
Communication (or Interpersonal)
Give 3 examples of positive self-talk
Staff discretion
On average, most adults need this many hours of sleep a night
8 Hours
Definition--The practice of purposely bringing one's attention in the present moment without evaluation. People often meditate or go on a walk in order to practice this.
Mindfulness or Grounding Techniques
(5-4-3-2-1 coping skill)
Melatonin is a medication that helps with what?
Regulating sleep
This is about recognizing your experiences, beliefs, and perceptions for what they are, often without offering judgments or believing that things should be different.
Acceptance (or Radical Acceptance)
You can replace an automatic thought with a ________ thought, to challenge anxiety and respond effectively
Alternative or positive
Having enough vitamin ___, which we can get from the ____, helps you fight diseases and boost mood and self esteem.
Vitamin D
The Sun (or certain foods)
This is a coping skill that you can do anywhere. It blocks stress hormones like cortisol from being released and triggers a relaxing response from the body. It can also decrease blood pressure and heart rate.
Deep Breathing
Some anti-depressants work by increasing the level of ______: the chemical in your brain associated with mood, happiness, calm, and focus.
Serotonin
This is the term used for a person's ability to manage emotional distress. It also involves being able to make it through an emotional incident without making it worse.
Distress Tolerance
Situation --> Thought --> Emotion --> ______
Behavior (or action)
Looking at screens (phone, TV, computer) before bed can affect your sleep negatively. This is because...
Because of this, we should try to put screens away an hour before we try to go to sleep at night.
Screens give off "blue light" that can mess up your natural "circadian rhythm"-- meaning your brain still thinks it's daytime.
This is an acronym for a set of coping skills that involves changing your temperature or getting short bursts of exercise in order to calm down.
TIPP Skills
(Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, Progressive Muscle Relaxation)
After starting a new psych medication, how long does it take for it to become effective?
2-4 weeks
This is a quick, effective way to reduce, or soothe, the intensity of negative emotions. It often involves using the senses in order to calm yourself down when no one else is available.
Self Soothing, or Emotional Regulation
Name 3 unhelpful thinking styles, or "cognitive distortions".
These are the thinking traps we often get caught in when we overthink and worry about a situation, leading to negative emotions.
Mental Filter, Disqualifying the Positive (Magnification and Minimization): focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive
Jumping to conclusions: making assumptions without enough evidence
Personalization/Blaming: blaming yourself or others for things that are not your or their fault. Or the reverse.
Catastrophizing: exaggerating the importance or consequences of a situation-- thinking worst case scenario.
Black and White/All or Nothing: seeing things as either good or bad, with no middle ground
Should-have and must-have statements: imposing unrealistic expectations or rules on yourself or others
Overgeneralizing: drawing broad conclusions from a single event or experience
Labelling: attaching negative labels to yourself or others based on limited information
Mind Reading/Fortune Telling: Assuming that there will be a negative outcome, or assuming you know what someone else is thinking/feeling.
Emotional Reasoning: Believing that if you think or feel something, it must be true.
On average, the brain stops developing at what age?
25
Team Play:
Write as many coping skills that you can think of in 2 minutes.
OR
List 15 coping skills in 2 minutes.
Staff Discretion
If you experience unpleasant side effects, you can talk to your doctor and they may want to test out a different medication or dosage. Name 3 possible side effects of psych medications.
• Nausea
• Insomnia — inability to get to sleep, or difficulty staying asleep
• Drowsiness
• Constipation or diarrhea
• Headaches
• Increased sweating
• Dizziness
• Loss of appetite
• Stomach pain
DBT stands for what?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
CBT stands for what?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy