101 Mindfulness Exercises for Children and Adolescents
Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Executive Director, AllCEUs
Continuing Education (CE) credits for addiction and mental health counselors, social workers and marriage and family therapists can be earned for this presentation at https://allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/586/c/
Objectives
~ Core Mindfulness
~ Walking the Middle Path
~ Distress Tolerance
~ Emotion Regulation
~ Interpersonal Effectiveness
~ Mindfulness Exercises
~ DBT Games and Activities
Core Mindfulness
~ Three States of Mind
~ Reasonable: School Brain, scientist, robot
~ Emotional: What your heart says
~ Wise: The logical choice that makes you as happy as possible
~ Example: Animal rescue
~ Example: Extracurricular activities
Core Mindfulness
~ Wise Mind What Skills
~ Observe: Be a detective. Take in the whole situation.
~ Describe: Name your experiences
~ Participate: Be actively involved in the moment
~ Practice observing, describing and participating
~ Discuss things that would stay in the way of observing, describing, participating
Core Mindfulness
~ Wise Mind How Skills
~ Nonjudgmental: Observable, measurable
~ One mind: Focus on the task at hand. Clear your mind of everything else
~ Do what works
Walking the Middle Path
~ Balancing the ideas of acceptance and change
~ Incorporates
~ Dialectics
~ Both/And
~ Recognizing change is the only constant
~ Validation
~ Active listening
~ Tolerating others
~ Tolerating self
~ Behaviorism
~ Reinforcement
~ Shaping
~ Extinction of maladaptive behaviors
Walking the Middle Path
~ Open your eyes to seeing things from different angles
~ Change is constant. If it is stressful now; change will happen
~ Find both sides of the spectrum and use a both/and approach
~ Validate Self: Acknowledging what you feel nonjudgmentally
~ Validate Others
Distress Tolerance
~ Activities
~ Contributing
~ Comparison
~ Emotions (the opposite)
~ Push the experience from your mind
~ Think about alternate things
~ Sensations (intense)
Distress Tolerance
~ Self-soothe with the 5 senses
~ Pros and Cons
~ Long term goals
~ Decisional balance
Distress Tolerance
~ Imagery of a relaxing place
~ Meaning
~ Survived similar situations
~ What is important in your life (in comparison, how important is this)
~ Prayer
~ Relaxation
~ One thing in the moment
~ Vacation (mental or physical)
~ Encouragement Helpful statements about self and others
Distress Tolerance
~ Radical Acceptance
~ Life can be tough. It isn’t fair
~ Some things can’t be changed
~ You don’t have to like it
~ Identify
~ Things you can change
~ Things you cannot change
Emotion Regulation
~ Identify and label primary and secondary emotions
~ Strength
~ Sleep
~ Take care of self
~ Resist unhelpful behaviors/impulsivity
~ Exercise
~ Nutrition
~ Gain mastery
~ Take time for yourself (relaxation/pleasant activities)
~ Healthy self-talk
Interpersonal Effectiveness
~ Cheerleading statements
~ Dear Man
~ Describe objectively
~ Express your feelings
~ Assert your wants and needs
~ Reinforce by creating a win/win
~ Mindful focus on the present
~ Appear confident
~ Negotiate
Interpersonal Effectiveness
~ FAST
~ Fairly treat others: The Golden Rule
~ Apologize when you make a mistake, not for being you
~ Stick to values—What is important to you
~ Tell the truth
Mindfulness Exercises
~ Transformation: Creative uses for everyday objects (both/and)
~ Scents and memories
~ Mindful eating
~ Blindfolded awareness
~ Name 4 and 4
~ Create a special place (guided imagery)
~ Distress Hat
~ Emotions collage
~ Nature Observation
~ Hold Ice—Pain reaction
~ Self-Esteem envelope
~ A movie about my life (title, stars, main plot)
~ Feelings charades
DBT Games
~ DBT Charms
~ Self-soothing kit
~ Cell phone: Heart rate monitor, knock knock jokes, funny videos, distracting music, sweet images, cathartic/validating images (Grumpy Cat)
~ DBT Jeopardy
~ DBT Infomercials
~ Media DBT –show clips
Summary
~ Adolescents are trying to discover
~ Their values
~ Their niche
~ Their goals
~ Adolescents are transitioning from the carefree childhood to trying to become adults
~ Adolescents almost always have a low to moderate level of stress making them more vulnerable to emotional reactivity.
Summary
~ DBT helps adolescents gain control over their emotions
~ Mindfulness helps them become aware of the whats and whys of their emotions
~ Most adolescents prefer an indirect approach to learning skills
~ Through skills groups adolescents can
~ Acquire new skills
~ Relate them to something they know
~ Practice them in a safe environment
~ Come to the awareness for themselves why these skills are helpful
Summary
~ All of these activities need to be processed and brought back around to how they can be generalized in the real world