Wellness Center

April is Stress Awareness Month and a good time to think about the stress you’re under and how to manage it in a healthy manner. Stress is a normal response to life’s changes, pressure’s and challenges. Everything from everyday hassles to major life changes can cause stress. It can affect the body in many different ways. Physically, your hormones speed up heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, and metabolism. Mentally, stress can cause anxiety, depression, and irritability. As we're right around the corner from the last day of school and finals approaching, it is definitely a good time to learn techniques to cope with stress.

What can you do to manage stress?

• Talk about problems with others.

• Take deep breaths, accompanied by thinking or saying aloud, “I can handle this.”

• Set small goals and break tasks into smaller, manageable chunks.

• Exercise and eat regular meals.

• Get proper sleep.

• Focus on what you can control (your reactions, your actions) and let go of what you cannot (other people’s opinions and expectations).

Link for Tools to Manage Stress

• Stress: What Brings It On

• Self Guided Imagery 

• Stress Exploration

• Mindfulness Meditation

• Problem Solving

• Del Mar Wellness Center

February is Black History Month and there are numerous Black Americans that have contributed to the mental health field. From the website,  Mental Health America , here are some of those individuals:

    Bebe Moore Campbell  was an American author, journalist, teacher, and mental health advocate who worked tirelessly to shed light on the mental health needs of the Black community and other underrepresented communities. She founded NAMI-Inglewood in a predominantly Black neighborhood to create a space that was safe for Black people to talk about mental health concerns.

    In 1969,  E. Kitch Childs helped to found the Association for Women in Psychology. She was also a founding member of Chicago's Gay Liberation Front. In addition to being a leader for women in psychology and the LGBTQ+ community, she also owned her own practice in which she provided therapy to LGBTQ+ folks, people living with HIV/AIDS, and other marginalized members of her community. 

    Mamie Phipps Clark  was the first African American woman to earn a doctorate degree in psychology from Columbia University. She previously earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University. Her experience in college and specifically graduate-level courses helped her realize the shortage of psychological services available to the African American community and other minorities.

Random Acts of Kindness week falls on February 11- 17 this year. It is a week to celebrate and encourage random acts of kindness. Research shows that helping others can be good for our mental health. It reduces stress, improves our emotional well-being and even benefits our physical health. More specifically, doing acts of kindness have been proven to decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety while also improving self-esteem. 

The Wellness Center will be hosting a wellness lunch time activity on Friday, January 19. If you are interested in participating, you need to  register beforehand as there will be only a limited number of spots open. 

With the start of a new year, many people decide to set goals for themselves. While making goals for yourself can have a positive impact on your mental health, it can be hard to make progress towards them. It can be even more challenging if you struggle with mental health and lack motivation. However, there are certain ways to create goals that can better prepare you to achieve them. 

1. Identify Areas for Improvement

   1. Don’t overwhelm yourself by choosing too many goals. Having 1-2 goals is a reasonable amount. Choose areas in your life that you want to improve and not what you think other people want you to improve.

   2. Be optimistic. Try to reframe negative self-talk into positive self-talk. It will be challenging enough to make progress towards your goal(s) that negative self-talk will make it all the more difficult.

   3. If you have more than one goal, prioritize which one you’d like to focus on first. Break down goals. Breaking down goals into smaller ones, can make it more manageable to achieve. 

   4. Create S.M.A.R.T. goals. 

      1. Specific

         • simple, what do you want to achieve?

      2. Measurable

         • trackable in order to determine if progress is being made

      3. Attainable

         • identify a realistic goal

      4. Relevant

         • should be important to you and be motivated to work towards it

      5. Time-bound

         • putting a time limit of when goal should be accomplished

• Accept your feelings 
  • It is OK to feel WHATEVER it is that you are feeling. Don’t feel like you have to know what the “right” way of feeling is because there is no “right” way, there’s only what you feel. 
• Maintain healthy habits
  • Try to get a good amount of sleep, don’t skip meals, and try your best to keep up with any type of exercise routine you may have. 
• Set boundaries
  • If doing something or going somewhere might be triggering for you because it is a painful reminder, try to avoid them and/or replace them by doing something else instead. 
• Make time to connect
  • Spend time with the people you care about but also make time for yourself. Find a way to connect to your loved one(s) you’ve lost by doing something that reminds you of them.

• Bill Wilson Center (Centre For Living With Dying)
  (408) 850-6145
• Kara
  (650) 321-5272

• Straight Talk about Death for Teenagers: How to Cope with Losing Someone You Love by E.A. Grollman
• Fire in My Heart, Ice in My Veins: A Journal for Teenagers Experiencing a Loss by E. Samuel Traisman
• You Are Not Alone: Teens Talk About Life After the Loss of a Parent by L. Hughes
• The Grieving Teen: A Guide for Teenagers and Their Friends by H. Fitzgerald

• The LGBTQ Youth Space
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Phone: (408) 343-7940
    
• The Q Corner
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Phone: (408) 977-8800