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Exploring who you are is part of growing up. These are benchmarks for each age group. Notice the ones that are in purple, and how important they are to managing anxiety. If you're not sure where you are, take our survey!
Click on the picture to get a menu of resources specifically for the purple bullet points. |
With Social Anxiety, you will need to work on knowing your feelings and the way your body reacts to your feelings, being able to receive feedback and not get anxious, building up your self-esteem, and finding creative solutions.
With social anxiety, you will need to work on problem solving, learning how to refocus in the moment and in daily practice, and be able to create SMART goals.
With social anxiety, social awareness is where your anxiety is coming from, but there are coping skills and strategies that you can use. Empathy is a huge one. We think you're more empathic. Use your empathy to find something that moves you so deeply, your anxiety doesn't get triggered. That way, you can practice your strategies in a safe place.
With social anxiety, you are using your abilities to make decisions and recognize good or bad choices on yourself. You are going to need to trust yourself, even when the anxiety comes out of nowhere and makes you feel afraid because you can't control it. You'll need these skills to motivate you through trying out your plan of action to manage your anxiety.
With social anxiety, these skills are used to practice your plan.You are becoming aware of what you need and want from friends, and what friends need and want from you. These skills will help you know your boundaries and know how to deal with disagreements without feeling like you're doing something wrong.
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Self Awareness learning strategies are critical to managing anxiety at this age.
Knowing what strategies are developed at each age helps us understand what can reasonably be asked of us. Anxiety, unfortunately, appears before these skills are developed. Anxiety is a direct result of not having these skills. Check out the links Building the Staircase and Identify Feelings to explore how to get these skills. The good news is that you cannot be expected to understand the complexity of anxiety. And science recognizes that you now need to start preparing as young as kindergarten. Where you are in your ability to meet these benchmarks depends on your age and exposure to these concepts. A personalized learning path can help. Contact us for recommendations. Self ManagementManaging yourself is a full time job when you have emotions and school, life, new responsibilities and changes in middle school. Look at all that purple!
(Click on the picture to the left to get a menu of resources specific to the purple bullet points) Managing anxiety is about connecting your thoughts, feelings and actions. The benchmarks for social emotional learning say this is when you're able to do it. Awesome! School is getting more challenging and so is life! We explain what connecting thoughts, actions, and feelings looks like in our social anxiety workbook, and here and here. Basically, you have to take it as seriously as you take school or sports or other serious activities. Every time you have big feelings, positive or negative, you have to track them. Check out these links: Social AwarenessHow much time do you spend thinking about the world around you? Do you think about the needs of other people?
Do you feel passionate about an important societal cause like climate change or animal welfare? This is when you start applying the knowledge you've learned about fairness and equity and rights to the world outside of you. By now you know what is fair when someone is handing out treats, but now you understand empathy and diveristy and different cultures. You understand equity and exclusion, diversity and responsibility. You may feel compelled to help and you should find an organization or group where your voice and actions are needed. You can explore the ways Creativity can be an outlet for what you feel strongly about. Or you can visit Kindness to see how you can make a difference. The bottom line is that you are learning about the world and developing beliefs and values. Act on them! Your voice is important. Decision MakingAs you grow, so does your ability to make informed decisions. The goal is to use the knowledge you have accumulated to weigh your choices.
It's important for managing anxiety to know how to make informed decisions. With anxiety, you need to be able to calm yourself down and access your logic to make informed decisions. You are taking the evidence and making achievable goals. A good first step in learning how to magic good decisions is to make goals. You can learn more about it in Plan. In the core competency, we see how to recognize and reframe critical self-tak. This is when that starts to emerge. A good way to combat negative self-talk is to check in with yourself through a journal. Use mindfulness to refocus your attention. Another important part of decision making is gratitude and kindness. Learn more in Kindness. RelationshipsRelationships with others are starting to be more complex.
First of all, people grow and change. They may not be into the same things as you anymore. This is a time to figure out what you want from other people. What qualities do you value in friends? It's important to know how to communicate with people and be respectful (even when you don't feel like it!). But it's just as important to know what you need from people. You are developing standards or values that you want from friends. You may have a couple friends that like to play games online and some who like to play a sport and they might be two seperate groups. As long as your highest friendship value is respect, it doesn't matter what brings you together. The most important part is respect. It's what you're afraid of not getting. Giving and getting respect should NEVER be compromised because you're afraid they'll think you're (insert negative thought). Never ever ever ever allow someone to be your friend if they don't treat you the same way. This is how you practice managing social anxiety at this age. Go to Unleash and Adventures to learn more. |