Negotiating Relapse

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.


recoverytrajectoryRecovery from mental illness is not always a straight line in an upward trajectory. In fact, the path to recovery is almost never straight and easy. There isn’t necessarily even a discernible end goal—a point that you’ll reach when you can say, “I’m done recovering.”

Everybody struggles with relapse. I’ve had small relapses that are simply bumps on the road, but I’ve also had relapses that I’d categorize as huge, staggering roadblocks. Each and every one of these has taught me more about myself.

A few things I’ve learned in my journey of recovery:

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Starting The School Year On A Positive Note

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.


schoolyearThis is my final year at college and I have been a little bit stressed knowing I have a bit less than two weeks until the school year begins. I feel unprepared and anxious for the year ahead. To help calm my nerves, I have been giving myself reminders and hopefully it can be helpful to share them with you!

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Online Diagnosis Tools: Helpful or Harmful?

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.


Screen Shot 2018-08-05 at 10.57.50 PMSomething I’ve been thinking about recently is the role the internet plays in diagnosis of mental health issues. There are plenty of self tests for mental illnesses on a variety of websites. But are they accurate? People often joke about WebMD saying they have cancer no matter what they enter into the surveys, and that just checking the site causes more anxiety. Such websites can be harmful for people with mental illnesses like OCD who worry excessively about health, but can they also be helpful? In this blog I will lay out the pros and cons of online diagnosis tools for mental illness, along with some tips for those who decide to use these resources.

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Prioritizing Yourself

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 for us to share.

One of the most important things I have learned on my mental health journey is that it’s okay to be self-centered. In fact, you NEED to be self-centered to some degree. It’s so easy to get caught up in the lives of everyone around you and lose sight of your own path.

At the beginning of 2018, I decided to make myself the focus of this year. While this doesn’t mean I neglect my friends and family, it does mean that I stop breaking my back doing things that don’t bring me joy. Here are some of the important steps I’ve taken to accomplish this goal:

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Tips for Starting a Journaling Practice

We have published a few short posts about benefits of journaling. Done regularly, this practice has physical benefits—for example, it really helps strengthen the immune system. Emotionally, it helps us to organize our thoughts, explore and articulate our emotions, and better appreciate our lives by helping us focus on positive experiences and attitudes.

You may ask, What parent has time to spend on journaling? With any regular practice—as with yoga, exercise, meditation—it can be hard to overcome the idea that we don’t have time to do what may be good for us. There are some effective strategies that can get you started, and you may wind up asking yourself how you’d for so long overlooked the pleasures of this way of spending a few minutes with yourself every day.

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How to Help Your Teen Deal With Emotional Outbursts

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 for us to share.

As someone diagnosed with depression, I will sometimes have outbursts. Everything catches up to me at once, and I will feel so sad and frustrated. All I want to do is sit in my room and cry. However, that’s typically not a viable option. The longer I’ve dealt with outbursts, the more I’ve learned about how to stop them in their tracks. For this post, I’ve compiled a list of what helps me, in hopes that it can help someone else!

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The Musical Cure

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.


classic-classical-music-close-up-697672The violin is a beautiful wooden instrument with a rich tone and a wide range of pitch. It can have different musical voices depending on the techniques used. It is the first-ever instrument that I learned (the annoyingly squeaky plastic recorder doesn’t count!). I started violin lessons through my elementary school when I was in third grade. To be honest, I only started lessons to get out of being in class! When I first started playing, I was not very good. In fact, I was quite awful! When my bow hit the strings it sounded scratchy and out of tune. But once I started taking additional lessons outside of school I could see myself starting to improve.

Soon, I started to really love practicing. I thought it was awesome how I could play my favorite Christmas and Hanukkah music, Irish fiddle music, and Hot Cross Buns. Day by day my tone and pitch improved. Before I knew it I was rising to the front of the school orchestra, auditioning for other groups, and playing solos at recitals. But with this came stress: I wanted to be the best and thus violin practicing become frustrating. Though I was fueled by the competition it also made my stomach hurt. I just wanted to sound absolutely perfect.

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Helping Your Child Back to School

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 for us to share.

Sometimes it can be hard for students to go back to school after the holidays, especially for students with anxiety like myself. The rapid transition from the relaxation with friends and family to the hustle and bustle of MANY assignments can be overwhelming. However, there are a few things that can help with the anxiousness of starting a new semester.

For example:

  1. Get a planner. Getting a planner is the first step to becoming organized in college. Writing out when your assignments are due gives you a picture of when stuff needs to be done. This gives you a strong idea of what is happening around you academically versus feeling as though you don’t know what is going on, which would produce more anxiousness.
  2. Make to do lists. It is so frustrating forgetting to do something that you really needed to do. Making to do lists could assist you in not forgetting those important things. Also, being able to cross items off your to do list after you completed them makes you feel accomplished and productive!
  3. Give yourself breaks. Academics are extremely important; however, if you do not take time for yourself then you will burn out. Giving yourself a break can be doing whatever relieves your stress and brings you joy including hanging with friends, exercising, or simply taking a nap. After giving yourself a break, you will feel less anxious, more relaxed, and will be ready to get back to the books.

backtocollege

These three tips are what I use when I begin a new semester and I continue to do these things as the semester progresses. These three items help me stay on top of my academics and help ease my anxiousness.

What are some things that help your child go back to school after a break?

Mental Health America put out this simple checklist to help parents make sure they are ready when their child returns to school.

Discussing Mental Health Through… Memes?

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.


CharlieMemes are an undeniable staple of Internet culture. If you browse around many websites and social media platforms, you will almost certainly come across image macros, Tumblr posts, viral tweets, and other content that has been circulating the web.

The majority of modern memes are captioned photos that are intended to be funny, “often as a way to publicly ridicule human behavior.

Memes have become a method of describing different experiences and aspects of our lives in a humorous way—including mental health. In fact, mental health is one of the most common meme subjects that I’ve seen on the Internet.

On the surface, making jokes regarding mental health may sound distasteful. But when someone with a mental illness creates a meme about their condition, it may add a little laughter to their own day or even help others to understand what goes on in their mind.

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Looking at Substance Use

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.


16720279-abstract-word-cloud-for-substance-use-disorder-with-related-tags-and-termsSociety often looks negatively at those with substance use problems. There is a stigma and a false belief that those struggling with substance use are making a conscious choice to spiral downwards. It is rare that society considers the factors that may lead to a substance use issue—such as a poor mental state.

Actually, it is not uncommon for a person struggling with a mental health problem also to have a substance use difficulty as well. Many of those who are fighting depression and anxiety may use drugs or alcohol to escape or cope with the struggle within themselves.

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