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we're delighted to share our participants' final projects, where they share a mental resilience strategy they learned during the exchange. The final project for MERGE is a collaborative effort to build a mental health resilience strategies website that participants can share with members of their communities. Each team built an entry introducing a stress-relief technique or strategy through text, images, audio, or videos to explain their technique.
we're delighted to share our participants' final projects, where they share a mental resilience strategy they learned during the exchange. The final project for MERGE is a collaborative effort to build a mental health resilience strategies website that participants can share with members of their communities. Each team built an entry introducing a stress-relief technique or strategy through text, images, audio, or videos to explain their technique.
The strategies for dealing with stress section features projects that covered topics including journaling, meditation, and positive affirmations.
The strategies for dealing with stress section features projects that covered topics including journaling, meditation, and positive affirmations.
Mariam Nasser
Mariam Nasser
Journaling is a new promising approach in psychology. First, we must know that journaling is a practice that helps you meet your goals and improve your mental health. Journaling is a very good tool to remember feelings, thoughts, and insights. It can be in many ways, you can put it in the way you prefer it. The outcomes can vary widely, but all the outcomes in their different ways help you to improve the quality of your life.
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Nour Marzouk and Salma Smougueni
Nour Marzouk and Salma Smougueni
Journaling helps to control your symptoms and improve your mood by helping you prioritize problems, fears, and concerns. Tracking any symptoms day-to-day so that you can recognize triggers and learn ways to better control them.
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Yara Ghazy, Malak Hatem, and Souad Saaden
Yara Ghazy, Malak Hatem, and Souad Saaden
Morning meditation means charging ourselves for a beautiful day. Morning is the foundation of the day. Meditation helps to build a strong foundation for the day using the pillars of love, happiness, health, and success. The еndоrрhіnѕ rеlеаѕеd bу meditation аrеn’t juѕt gооd fоr уоur еmоtіоnаl wеll-being. They’re also еnеrgу boosters. Mоrnіng mеdіtаtіоn mаkеѕ you fееl more awake and alert. It also helps on improving your productivity because it gives clarity and direction.
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Hanan Mohammed and Kaitlyn Sullivan
Hanan Mohammed and Kaitlyn Sullivan
Through setting aside a designated time each day for journaling, research has confirmed that it helps improve mental health. Writing can be as long as an hour, or as short as five minutes, and you can write whatever you want. Freedom of expression can be a great way to look at this - you can quite literally write whatever you feel like.
Hanan: In Egypt, there is almost no mention of mental health and its strategies because people always jump to the conclusion that it is a metaphysical demonic force. I do not deny that new generations have begun to accept the idea that the human mind gets tired and is treated just like the body, but this understanding is slowly developing and we cannot see its results in reality.
Kaitlyn: In the U.S mental health is rarely talked about specifically amongst older generations. It’s improving, but it’s still taboo. I think the more we can talk about it and learn about it, the more we’ll be able to overcome these barriers.
To view the full project, click here
Tenaya Lin
Tenaya Lin
Mental health is as important as physical health as the state of your mental well-being affects the rest of your body. Exercise and mediation are other methods often recommended to maintain good mental health but for people who don’t find them effective or easy, journaling may be extremely helpful.
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Salma Abbas, Anna Maria Azar, and Emilia Godinez
Salma Abbas, Anna Maria Azar, and Emilia Godinez
Journaling, as in expressing one’s thoughts and feelings through writing, has been proven to be a great coping tool to attain as a habit since, according to psychology, many people are prone to indulging in the unhealthy habit of overthinking and bottling up their emotions when dealing with stress, making them more susceptible to depression and anxiety.
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Basant Osama, Bouthaina Yasser, and Juliet Katz
Basant Osama, Bouthaina Yasser, and Juliet Katz
Overall, the journaling process is a way to reflect on your own, individual emotions through writing in a safe space accommodating to you. The greatest aspect of the journaling technique is that there isn’t one specific style or format in doing so. Individuals are able to decide on various means of journaling and select which method suits them. There is no rigid guideline on what is considered journaling, as long as one is reflecting on their thoughts and emotions.
Not only is journaling a great space to clear your mind and let out any emotions that may be taking over, but it is a strategic way to reduce anxiety, cope with depression, prioritize one's problems and concerns, recognize your individual stressors, and provide better opportunities for positive self-talk. Journaling evokes mindfulness as well, allowing the writer to remain in the present while combating their stressors or reflecting on their thoughts.
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Alaa Abdelfattah and Takwa Ben Hamed
Alaa Abdelfattah and Takwa Ben Hamed
One of the healthy ways to deal with any overwhelming emotion is to find a way to express yourself. Sometimes our loved ones are overloaded by their own stresses, or they can’t offer the right kind of support and may even make us feel worse. Other times, our secrets feel too vulnerable to speak out loud.
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Noor Alwash,
Judith Gibson,
and Zahraa Alkabeh
Noor Alwash,
Judith Gibson,
and Zahraa Alkabeh
Journaling about your feelings is linked to decreased mental distress. In a study, researchers found that those with various medical conditions and anxiety who wrote online for 15 minutes three days a week over a 12-week period had increased feelings of well-being and fewer depressive symptoms after one month. Journaling is a different experience for everyone, journaling is an activity of trial and error.
Journaling in the morning can help you set your intentions for the day or you can use it as a reminder for what there is to be grateful for in life, starting your day in a positive way.
To view the full project, click here
Tifaf Asmae and
Meriem Ksilli
Tifaf Asmae and
Meriem Ksilli
The topic of our final project is Positivity and affirmation. Affirmations are positive statements that reinforce positive thoughts and attitudes. They're usually said in the present tense first person. Positive affirmations are defined as statements that affirm something to be true. So, positive affirmations are positive phrases that a person repeats to themselves to describe how they want to be and they are used to challenge and eliminate negative or unhelpful thoughts that would hold one back.
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Sondos Aldomiati, Nadeen Mostafa, and Cece York
Sondos Aldomiati, Nadeen Mostafa, and Cece York
Building our resilience requires us to cultivate a positive mindset. Speaking affirmations aloud to ourselves can strengthen our resolve. Practice positive thinking by focusing on the good things, practicing gratitude, opening yourself up to humor, starting every day on a positive ritual in which you start each day with something uplifting and positive such as telling yourself that it’s going to be a great day.
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Haneen Hosny, Lojayn Abdelhafiz, Elizabeth Frost, and Hannah Williams
Haneen Hosny, Lojayn Abdelhafiz, Elizabeth Frost, and Hannah Williams
The topic for our final project is meditation and how to use meditation to handle stress. Meditation in and of itself has many strategies from positive affirmations to yoga to encourage mindfulness that can lessen the effects of stress. During meditation, brain scans recorded an increase in activity in regions directly correlated with decreased anxiety and depression, along with increased pain tolerance.
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Elzhraa Kamel, Malak Adnan, and Rand Hussein
Elzhraa Kamel, Malak Adnan, and Rand Hussein
Meditation is a kind of complementary medicine for the mind and body. Meditation can create a deep state of relaxation and a sense of peace. As you meditate, you focus your attention, clearing out the string of cluttered thoughts that can crowd your mind and cause stress. This process may improve physical and emotional health. Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on paying close attention to what you are feeling and feeling at the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing, guided imagery, and other practices designed to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.
To view the full project, click here
Emma Sleiman
Emma Sleiman
Acknowledge the fact that you're not the only one who has passed through this
Remember that others can learn from your journey and that one day, you'll look back at your writings, thanking yourself for what you did!
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The MENA-USA Empowering Resilient Girls Exchange (MERGE), implemented by Global Ties U.S., is supported by the Stevens Initiative, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by the Aspen Institute. The Stevens Initiative is also supported by the Bezos Family Foundation and the governments of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
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