Lesson 3: Our Thoughts

Mental Fitness

Mental fitness is defined as a state of well being and having a positive sense of how we feel, think, and act. It helps people understand that just as we can improve our physical health by moving our bodies, we improve our mental health by strengthening our minds.

Mental Fitness is not about memory games or thinking puzzles, but rather exercises that keep you mentally well and build up your resilience to stress. Just as it’s easy to opt for the couch and Netflix rather than exercise, it’s also easy to feed negative thoughts and behavior patterns that evoke feelings of sadness, worry, and anxiety.

We know you are more likely to get sick when we don’t exercise or nourish our bodies with proper nutrition. Similarly, if we don’t practice healthy cognitive practices, the more likely it is for your mental fitness to decline.

How does Mental Fitness work?

It’s about strengthening the neural pathways that lead to the most realistic and objective thoughts. It’s about breaking patterns so that you experience positive emotions more regularly than negative ones.

The more we feed negative thoughts and behaviors, the more likely they will occur. This is due to the neuroplasticity of our brains. Science has proven that humans have an enormous capacity to constantly rewire our brains throughout our lives. Thoughts that evoke certain emotions cluster together via neural pathways. This means that every time we allow a negative thought to repeat, it strengthens. It seeks to strengthen neural networks that make you feel mentally healthy.

The result is feeling more confident, resilient, and energized by improving your mental fitness. It’s natural to feel sadness and worry but by strengthening your mental fitness, it will become more difficult for sadness to progress to depression and worry to spiral into anxiety

Lesson Part 3: Worry Garage

Materials

Individual Worry Garage Template (one sheet per student per week)

How?

1. The worry tree is a great tool so students can see everyone worries. However, we need to teach our students to help learn if they have any worries how they can ‘park their worries’ in the ‘worry garage each day’. This is a helpful way of acknowledging the worry but not letting it take over their day. Once it is parked they can get on with their life and deal with the worry later.

2. This can be used as an everyday practice and at the end of the week ask the students to look through their worries and draw a line through those that are no longer worrying them. The ones that are still a bit of a worry they can make a plan to deal with them.

3. Discuss different ways of dealing with worries such as –journalling, talking to a friend, talking to an adult, mindfulness, focusing on something else, being positive, thinking positive thoughts, challenging those worrying thoughts etc.

4. They can then write how they will deal with their worries.

Lesson Part 4: Thought Distortions

Material

Words to Watch Our For Reflection Worksheet

Background

The more anxious we are and the longer we are anxious, the more likely we are to thinking in patterns that are distorted adn no longer reflect the reality of our situation. Here are some examples of how anxious people tend to see the world.

BLACK AND WHITE THINKING

Black and White thinking is all-or-nothing approach. Things must be either all bad or all good rather than seeing them as complicated.

DISCOUNTING THE POSITIVE

This thought distortion involves looking only at the negative and failing to see the positive. The result is a pessimistic, anxious view of the world.

CATASTROPHIZING

Catastrophizing measn seeing everything as a disaster, or making big assumptions based on minimal evidence.

EMOTIONAL REASONING

In the heat of the moment, when we are particularly emotional, it can be hard to think clearly and rationally. Something feels real or like it's true and so we believe that it must be real or true.

PERFECTIONISM

Many anxious people suffer from perfectionism. They feel anything they can't do perfectly is not worth doing it all.

How?

1. Read out the scenarios provided and get students to identify the thought distortion.

2. Ask reflection questions attached and brainstorm other scenarios they have been a part of.

3. Hand out reflection worksheet to have students become aware of words associated with certain thought distortions.

4. Debrief ways to stop these thought distortions and tools to use when finding in these ways of thinking. Let it Rain Mindful Practice.

Lesson Part 5: Let it RAIN

Mindfulness is not about calming the storm, it is about finding the calm in the storm. If we consider panic attacks as hurricanes, tornadoes and blizzards of anxiety all in one, peace and calmness can look very far away. Every hurricane and tornado has what is called the eye of the storm, a calm point at the center. Welcome the RAIN, which with practice helps us through difficult situations.

R ecognize what is happening. It means identifying what is happening and knowing it for what it is. Recognition can take away some of the power of the storm.

A llow and accept. In terms of a panic attack, it means allowing your body to do what it does and waiting for the storm to pass. Accepting a situation does not mean liking it, it means not denying reality or running away from it. Try not to judge yourself for what is happening.

I nvestigate with kindness. You are not in danger but your body and brain are trying to protect you, and they just happen to be overreacting. What is the truth in the moment? Are your thoughts continous and negative? Whose voice is telling the story, who is listening and do you have to believe it?

N on-identify. Non-identification means "Don't take it personally". Your feelings are emotions not facts, and your thoughts don't define who you are as a person. You are the only one that is listening.

RAIN has been used in a panic attack, but it can be helpful any time. It allows us to find calm in storm, a safe haven as it passes us by. Use it in a busy day or week or when you know you are walking into a situation that is going to challenge you or may build into the internal storm.