This is a very significant issue that often goes unaddressed until it's TOO LATE.
The number of young teenagers and adults experiencing extreme levels of hopelessness, which can quickly escalate to feeling 'helpless' has dramatically been on the rise. It's at this point that the potential for self harm, which can then lead to 'suicidal thoughts' and even worse 'suicidal attempts' occur. And often without any warning or signs.
We need to understand that 'our thoughts are our reality'. In other words - we can all relate to times in our life when we didn't think, or genuinely believed something wouldn't work, even if we had no real evidence to suggest it wouldn't. And in many cases, there was probably an abundance of evidence to suggest what we wanted to happen - was possible, as we'd seen others do/have or achieve it before. But, regardless of this - we didn't believe it was possible or would ever happen 'for us'.
Our 'internal belief system' convinced us to feel there was no point even trying. And so, if we had no hope or felt helpless - of course, why would we even try.
In essence, it's at this stage that teenagers and young adults won't even try to ask for help because they have no hope that life could possibly be any different.
So how does 'Emotion Switch' help prevent this. And do so without directly discussing or talking about such sensitive matters with young children?
Firstly, we do not believe that educating young children or even discussing these kind of topics is appropriate.
To be honest, we're not even keen on the term 'Mental Health', to which recent government research has begun to recognise this terminology isn't helping the situation. We prefer 'emotional wellbeing'.
In essence, a huge part of our work is raising awareness of how the 'words we use' are the 'words we feel'. Just like if we constantly said 'I feel stressed' all day long, we would by default 'feel more stressed'.
This is how we're able to handle such sensitive topics with young children, without directly discussing issues such as self harm, depression, suicide etc.
The way we do this is by gently discussing relatable examples where the children may have at one time felt a little stuck. Perhaps they couldn't do something, or they had thoughts that didn't make them feel too good.
We then ask the children:
- What could you have done differently?
- Is there anyone who could have helped you?
- How long would it have taken you to get help?
In every instance, the children instantly realise that no matter what happens, no matter what we're going through - there is always someone who can help us. They also develop the inner resources to realise that whilst we may not always feel we have a CHOICE, we do always have OPTIONS. And in many cases, getting help or making progress to move away from feeling stuck - can be achieved in a matter of seconds or minutes.
Educating children on simple, non intrusive strategies like these at such a young age - means that they develop the habit of tapping into an infinite pool of inner resourcefulness, so that as they embark on new journeys through life (secondary school, college, career etc) - they're naturally searching for 'solutions' rather than focusing on 'problems'.
This by default, has the potential to dramatically reduce the risk and rise of some of the most devastating consequences associated with emotional wellbeing deficiencies.
