If your child is starting their first year in college, chances are, you’re thinking about a lot of things. Where to buy dorm items, getting in touch with their roommate, preparing for a completely different kind of class schedule, learning the campus, and so on. It can be pretty overwhelming, and definitely stressful. Continue reading Ways to Make Starting College a Little Easier
We’ve all done it: we get a message from someone and whether we intend to or not, never respond. We’ve all had the opposite done to us too: we send a message to someone, and they just never respond.
Being left on read (or being ignored when sending a message to someone) isn’t exactly the best feeling. Tons of thoughts and questions can go through our head. Did I say the wrong thing? Should I have worded this better? Am I being annoying? Do they not want to talk to me? Do they even like me? Continue reading Being Left on Read
The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.
This past year has been my hardest one yet. I have been through a breakup of a toxic relationship, a death of a family member, a dangerous roommate situation that led me to having to move home with my parents unexpectedly, and a consistent depression that has been tough to beat. Continue reading Small things you can do to help you feel better
We all feel some kind of way about food. You may have heard the phrase that some live to eat, while others eat to live. While it’s a necessity, some find pleasure in eating, or at the very least, taking photos of food that looks nice to post on social media. Continue reading The Hunger-Depression Cycle
Words carry meaning. This seems obvious, after all, we use words to communicate, and the way we phrase things and choose what and how we say them can make a big difference. This isn’t just limited to how we communicate with others, but how we talk to ourselves too. Continue reading The Power of “I Will”
We all have a tendency to turn to our phones when we’re bored. It could be when you’re waiting in the hallway or at your desk waiting for class to start, on public transportation, or just in bed killing time before sleeping. While this often tends to be us lingering on social media sites, there are tons of apps to explore, with some being more beneficial than others. Continue reading Playing Puzzles for Stress Relief
Because of the predictably social feature of social media, using these sites and apps have had an influence on how we interact with others and how we want others to see us. One recent study looked specifically at Instagram and researched just what drives us to interact with others on the app, focusing specifically on our desire to belong.
Teenagers and adolescents have well noticed that their generation’s mental health and wellbeing is a priority, saying that they feel that mental illness is the biggest problem among their peers. Continue reading When Students Take Action for Mental Health
We talked last week about the effects of self-deprecating humor, or when you make jokes about the things about yourself that you consider to be negative. There’s also teasing and mocking, where you’re not the one making negative jokes about yourself, but it’s someone else saying these things about you to you. Of course, teasing is meant to be lighthearted and is distinctly different than bullying. At the surface, it’s not meant to be harmful or to make anyone directly feel bad, and is often meant to be done between people who trust each other and are comfortable around. Continue reading When Does Teasing Go Too Far?
The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.
Summer can be a lonely time. We may not get to see our friends from school everyday and a lack of structured activity can lead to long days spent alone at home. This can lead to a persistent feeling of isolation – it certainly has for me. As a college student, I have friends who live out of the state and return to their homes for the summer. I do have local friends, but planning activities with them is difficult – we have to navigate around our work and vacation schedules, and more often than not, our plans fall through. For a while, I felt hopeless about this situation. How could I ease this heavy loneliness when it was nearly impossible to see my friends? I talked to my therapist about this, and she suggested that simply getting out of the house and going someplace new could help. Continue reading Turning Alone Time Into an Adventure