Building Mental Toughness St Finbars Catholic Primary School, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Building Mental Toughness

St Finbar’s Catholic Primary School, Glenbrook Monday, 11th September 2017

Anoushka Houseman Wellbeing Coordinator: Programs & Initiatives Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta

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What is Mental Toughness?

Being able to:

• cope with and bounce back from difficult experiences
• adapt to challenging situations and experiences
• maintain a sense of hope and positivity
• believe that you have the ability and resourcefulness to

get through these experiences

• persevere and show determination (never give up!)

Mental Toughness is about being RESILIENT

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What it doesn’t mean...

Mental toughness is not about:

• being happy all the time
• rarely experiencing disappointment / sadness / anger
• always reaching your goals
• being uncompromising or rigid in your beliefs
• always being sure of yourself

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What makes some kids MORE resilient than others?

• Positive modelling from key adults around them
• Being naturally more optimistic
• Being able to self regulate their emotions
• Being more connected with others
• Experiencing success
• A sense of independence
• Having high self esteem
• Being empathic towards others
• Being able to manage anxiety better

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Anxiety

• Anxiety is a normal and necessary emotion, which can

help us detect and avoid danger.

• Normal anxiety is transient, manageable and can be

motivating.

• The fight - flight response is a natural and evolved

reaction to danger.

• We need anxiety - it protects us and helps us to focus!
• However sometimes our brains may perceive a threat

that’s not actually real or is out of proportion to the event.

• Event -> thought (alarm) -> feeling-> behaviour

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Excessive Anxiety

• A “false alarm” when there is no actual danger or threat
• An exaggerated response to a perceived threat
• Anxiety can be a problem when it stops children from

progressing in the three responsibilities of childhood: learning, making friends and having fun.

• 1 in 5 students are at risk of developing an anxiety

disorder.

• Anxiety may be defined as a disorder when these

responses to stress are more intense than would be considered appropriate, are more frequent and non-transient and disrupt the child’s ability to function normally.

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What makes some kids more anxious?

• Genetics (about 30 - 40% of anxiety is considered to be

genetic/inherited)

• Environmental factors (e.g., high conflict in the home,

trauma, peer rejection, chronic illness, disruption in schooling, overly protected, unrealistic expectations, modelling etc)

• A combination of both

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Understanding Anxiety

• Helping young people to understand anxiety can really help

them regain their sense of power and control over their emotions.

• Anxiety can be scary but it cannot hurt you. It is designed to

protect you.

• Notice physical symptoms: fast breathing, heart rate increases,

butterflies in stomach, shaky or jittery etc and understanding why you are experiencing them can be helpful.

• Understand why these physical symptoms are happening in

your body and how to combat it.

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What Can Anxiety Look Like (Behaviours)?

• Perfectionism
• Difficulty coping with changes /rigid thinking - resistance
• Always needing to be right
• Wanting to take charge / control
• ‘Shutting down’ / non responsive
• ‘Perfect’ at school (often not at home!)
• Oppositionality / stubbornness
• Avoidance of certain things/people
• School refusal
• Self harm

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Thoughts Feelings and Behaviours

• We often assume it is the situation that determines how we will feel
• Actually it is the way we perceive or think about the situation that

determines how we will feel about it and act

• How we feel about the situation may then determine how we will

act

• Example: Two students who both spent very little time on a

homework project and get low marks = SITUATION

• Thought 1: I am stupid, I can’t do schoolwork
• Action 1: Give up on future projects

versus

• Thought 2: I didn’t prepare and paid the price
• Action 2: more effort put into future projects

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Unhelpful Thinking Styles

• All or nothing / black & white thinking / labelling
• Jumping to conclusions (mind reading, predicting)
• Personalisation (self blaming)
• Overgeneralisation (one time means every time from now on)
• Catastrophising (expect worst possible outcomes)
• Emotional reasoning (using our emotions as evidence)
• Filtering (not seeing the full picture)
• ‘Should have’ statements

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Challenging Unhelpful Thoughts

• Not just about thinking positively
• It’s about REALISTIC thinking
• Do we have genuine evidence for these unhelpful thoughts
• r are we getting trapped into an unhealthy style of

thinking?

• Challenge unhelpful thoughts by collecting conflicting

evidence (idea of being a thought detective)

• Replace unhelpful thought with a more realistic or

alternative thought that is more positive and helpful

• Remembering thoughts do not have to dictate our actions

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What else increases anxiety?

• Avoidance of things that worry you breeds more anxiety
• Messages and/or modelling of key adults around them that

are consistent with the belief that something is dangerous

• r scary (e.g., helicopter parenting)
• A lack of independence
• Overexposure to news media (vicarious trauma)
• Social media can contribute and exacerbate
• A sense of helplessness
• Not feeling connected with others / isolated

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More ways to teach mental toughness

Teaching:

• Growth mindset
• Mindfulness skills
• Social skills to interact positively with others
• Empathy and helping behaviours
• Emotion coaching
• Effective goal setting
• A positive self concept
• Optimism and hope
• Change is part of life

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What is a Growth Mindset?

• Embracing challenges
• Persist despite setbacks
• Learning from criticism
• Understand that effort and practice is needed to get

better at something

• Learning from others and being inspired by others

successes

• +ve academic and social outcomes

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Mindfulness

• Mindfulness is an awareness of the here and now
• Not the past, not the future, not being on auto pilot
• It is using all the senses to ground yourself in the present

and pay attention to what is happening right now without any judgment - accepting

• Awareness & acceptance
• Takes practice to get good at
• Consider the Smiling Mind app

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DIY Glitter Jars - As A Calming Tool

Glitter jar - "Just Breathe" clip

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Social Skills to promote

• Observing successes and skills in others
• Modelling of positive behaviours observed in others (e.g.,

eye contact and positive body language, admitting mistakes, forgiving etc)

• Assertiveness (as opposed to aggression or meekness)
• How to start and continue conversations with others
• Reading social cues
• Developing problem solving skills

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Problem Solving

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Teaching Empathy & Helping Behaviours

• Kids feel empowered by helping others
• Teach kids from an early age to understand what it is like

to walk in someone else’s shoes

• Helping others increases self esteem and empathy
• Helping others also contributes to a sense of

accomplishment and self confidence

• Use emotion coaching to help develop empathy and

emotion regulation.

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Emotion Coaching

• Children need feedback about their feelings and thoughts to

learn self-control

• Over time children learn to use ‘feeling’ words to describe

their experiences to others

• ‘When children experience an attuned connection

[empathy] from a responsive adult they feel good about themselves because their emotions have been given some resonance and reflection.’ Siegel, D. 1999 The Developing Mind Guilford Press

• This helps children to learn emotional regulation.

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How to do Emotion Coaching

• Time it when noticing early stages of emotion
• Reflect on their perspective
• Then use 3 - 4 statements indicating you understand what

they are feeling

• Check your understanding of what they are going through

by reflecting what you think you have heard from them.

• Validate their emotions not their behaviour. Focus only on

emotion at this point.

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Emotion Coaching continued...

• Use ‘stem’ statements to help label the emotion and

show empathy:

– ‘I’m guessing you’re feeling ….’ – ‘It’s horrible when you feel….’ – ‘It seems like you’re …’ – ‘If somebody said/did that to me, I’d be feeling pretty …’

• Although we may worry that by doing this we are

increasing their emotion, the reality is the opposite

• This helps to calm them / emotionally regulate
• Deal with behaviour /problem solve later if needed

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Goal Setting

• Ensure goals are specific and realistic
• Breakdown goals into smaller steps
• Build a ladder with ultimate goal at the top
• Make sure the ladder has gradual steps to mastery
• Start at the bottom step and set up rewards for achieving

success at each step

• Use problem solving skills
• Goals may be about achieving anxiety goals or about

learning goals or friendship goals etc - can be anything!

• Focus on one goal at a time
• Celebrate all successes and effort!

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Positive Self Concept

• Build on your child’s strengths
• Encourage independence (self efficacy and autonomy)
• Limit reassurance (encourage them to try to work out

answers to their own questions)

• Avoid rescuing your child (‘helicopter’ parenting!) - they need

experience to develop a positive self concept

• Remind kids about instances where they have successfully

handled previous difficult situations

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Optimism and Hope

• Model this glass half full approach
• Gratitude jars can help remind yourself of what is good in

your life (helps re-focus to positives)

• Teach and promote humour and model how we can laugh

at ourselves and see the light side

• Help kids to keep things in perspective
• Encourage them to know they can get

through a difficult situation

• it won’t always be like this

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Change as part of life

• Change is a natural part of life
• Change is inevitable
• Although changes can sometimes feel scary, many

changes can be positive. Give kids examples of positive changes they have experienced

• When things first change it can be difficult to get used to but

with time, we learn to adapt

• Change can help us to grow and mature

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Other ways parents can help...

• Give a clear message that you believe in your child’s ability

to handle situations but you are always available to help

• Your role is to facilitate and develop their skills to handle

situations NOT to take over!

• Model positive coping behaviour when you experience

anxiety yourself

• Try not to lose control of your own emotions or let your own

frustrations through

• Have a united approach to parenting with all key adults in

their lives

• Provide calm, clear consequences when necessary
• Avoid excessive reassurance

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