When you feel depressed or anxious, it can feel like you are just lost in your thoughts. A type of therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps to teach you how to change your thoughts. The idea is that by changing your thoughts, you can change your mood and how you deal with day-to-day events. CBT is one of the most effective therapies for depression and anxiety in young people.
- CBT describes a cycle starting with an Event.
- A person responds to the Event with a Thought.
- This Thought leads to an Emotion.
- Then that Emotion leads to further Action.
Out of all of these responses, the easiest to change in the cycle are the Thoughts, because they can come from an underlying belief system: one example of such an underlying belief system is, “I’m not good at anything.” This belief system is overly negative. CBT helps train you to think more rationally by using evidence, rather than feelings or beliefs.
Like in this comic strip:
For example, maybe they have a lot of skill in math and science—but when it comes down to it, they could spend all their days just drawing with a charcoal pencil. People have many sides to them. And in one snapshot of their lives—they are one way—at another stage they might have left certain things behind and now there are new adjectives to describe who they are.
I took a Pilates class this past semester at school, and in our last class our instructor posed us a question: What does self-care mean to us?
By doing what’s best for your mind and body on a regular basis, you can mitigate some of the tension in your life and feel even more ready to take on each day.
If you are told your child may have a mental illness, you might project onto their future pictures of other family members (or even of yourself) who have struggled with mental illness.
Your child and you can feel pretty vulnerable when you talk to a therapist. Think about it—you are telling them your deepest thoughts and you are not sure what they are thinking! You might not know what a therapist is supposed to do or act like if you’ve never seen one before. So how do you know if things are going well in therapy?
Do you remember when you were young and had tough topics you wanted to talk to your parent or caregiver about? Sometimes it is important to reflect on those times and realize your child is going through them too. Today, we posted an article on our SOVA site (for adolescents) about talking to their parents using the listed tips below. We think they are also good tips for parents!
Have you ever thought about what the source of your child’s depression symptoms are? Have you discussed with them why they think they have depression?
As many as one in every five teens experiences depression during adolescence, but their symptoms often go undiagnosed and untreated because they lack access to mental health specialists.
Human beings all crave the feeling of belonging. We want to have familial relationships and friendships that support us and make us feel good. However, when we start to feel others no longer want us, we experience the weight of loneliness and isolation. This is especially true with adolescents. 
I started my first diary when I was 12 years old and I haven’t stopped writing since. My diaries from middle school focus a lot on my friends, my crushes, shaky attempts at poetry, and how much my sisters annoy me. Nowadays my writing is a bit different. I still write about my relationships and I still write poems but I also write about living with mental illness. For me, writing has always been a really healthy way for me to process my feelings, rehearse how I’d talk about them, and then provide structure so I can share my story with the world. Over time I’ve grown from a writer who mostly writes for herself, to one who shares it with other people—but this was a process! The decision to share your writing is a serious decision that you need to think about.