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Counseling
Meet Mrs. Kelly
I grew up in Parma and now live in Jackson with my husband, Eric. We have 6 kids, 2 dogs (Philadelphia and Kelce) and 1 cat (Anakin, AKA Darth Vader). Outside of work I love camping, traveling, spending time with family and my pets, and following Philadelphia Eagles football. I love working with high school students and helping them manage and succeed in life. I am responsible for student mental and emotional support, Trails to Wellness, 504 plans, Link Crew, Attendance, and Xello (career exploration).
Contact: Email Gwenda Kelly, MA, LLPC
Address: 11500 Warrior Trail
Grass Lake, MI 49240
Office Phone: 517-867-5573
Resources
Social Emotional Learning - Trails to Wellness
Unit 1: Lesson 1
-All teens face difficult situations, feelings of stress, and strong emotions that sometimes make us want to act in unhelpful ways.
-We know from research that if we can improve our ability to manage strong emotions, stressful situations, and relationships, we can be more successful in other areas of our lives, too, such as at school and work.
Social-Emotional Learning: What is SEL and Why SEL Matters
Unit 1: Lesson 2 Mindfulness
-Many teens struggle with feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and having busy schedules. We can often find ourselves thinking about things that happened to us earlier in the day or week, or things that we need or want to do in the future. This can result in our thoughts feeling scattered, disorganized, or overwhelming.
-Mindfulness is a skill that can help us manage our swirling thoughts by putting our attention where we want it and practicing being fully present.
-Sometimes when we are overwhelmed or stressed, our thoughts can be quite negative. We can judge ourselves or our experiences, sometimes without even realizing it. We tell ourselves things like, "This is stupid," or "This is a waste of my time."
-When practicing mindfulness, if you notice any judgements, bring your attention back to only the facts.
-Focusing on the facts helps us train our brain to stay in the moment, not let our emotions take over, and direct our attention where we want it to go.
Video Mindfulness: Youth Voices
Unit 1: Lesson 3: Connecting Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors
-It is important to understand how mindfulness of the CBT model is foundational for interrupting problematic cycles.
-When we face any situation (something we hear, something we see, an interaction with someone else), we have thoughts or interpretations about it.
-Our interpretations shape how we feel and then our feelings drive how we behave.
--Our behavior can sometimes affect the next situation we face by making it better or worse.
-If we can learn to notice and be mindful of this cycle, we can learn how to interrupt it, changing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors for the better.
*Think of a challenging situation that occurred within the past week. Outline how your thoughts impacted your feelings and behaviors using the CBT model. Did your behavior make the next situation you encountered better, worse, or no different?
Unit 1: Lesson 4: Emotions
Each emotion we have serves a different function.
-Emotions are "hard-wired" and help us to survive, cope, and connect better with others.
-We often describe certain emotions as positive and others as negative. Although some emotions, like anxiety, anger, and sadness may feel negative, all emotions serve a purpose.
-Anger: Can help motivate us; can help us communicate with and influence others; can help us understand what is important to us
-Anxiety: Can alert us of danger or problems; can prepare our bodies to better cope with stress or threats; can save us time in getting us to act in important situations
-Sadness: Can show us what is most important to us; can draw others to us to help us cope
-Happiness: provides pleasure; helps us to connect with others
Even though sometimes our emotions are uncomfortable or intense, all of our emotions serve very important functions for us.
-However, when our emotions are very intense, they can compel us to act in ways that are unhelpful or even hurtful towards ourselves and others.
-The more we can identify our emotions, understand why they're happening, and what they're trying to get us to do, the more we can choose behavior that will actually help us reach our goals.
Reflect: For you, what strong emotion has the strongest action tied to it and is most difficult for you to control? How has acting on this emotion affected situations in which you've been involved?
Unit 1 Lesson 5: Thoughts
-Thoughts that occur quickly, sometimes even without our awareness, are called automatic thoughts.
-We know by now that our thoughts shape how we feel and how we behave.
-Thoughts can be positive, negative, or neutral.
-We also know that we each have different automatic thoughts in the same situation, like when we were told that there was going to be a quiz.
-Our automatic thoughts are not always accurate; some can be extreme, illogical, or unhelpful.
-We know from research that these thoughts fall into patterns, called thinking traps.
-We can learn skills to challenge and change our thoughts if they are unhelpful.
Unit 1 Lesson 6: Unhelpful Thoughts
-We can challenge our unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more realistic, balanced, and helpful thoughts. We call these new, more helpful thoughts, coping thoughts.
1. Use mindfulness skills to notice our thoughts
2. Ask ourselves some difficult questions to determine how true and/or helpful the thought is. Some questions we might as ourselves are:
-What is the evidence for and against my thought?
-What would I tell a friend in this situation?
-What would happen if I didn't believe this thought anymore?
3. Use the answers to those questions to develop a more helpful thought. We want to come to a thought that is more helpful and accurate, but one that we still believe!
Unit 1 Lesson 7: Applying Self-Awareness
-Mindfulness: Purposeful focusing of our attention; focusing on the present moment without judgment
-CBT model: Acycle showing how our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected; our behaviors shape the next situation we encounter.
-Purposes of Emotions: Every emotion serves a function or purpose for us, even if feeling the emotion is sometimes uncomfortable. Anxiety, for example, helps keep us safe.
-Unhelpful thoughts or automatic negative thoughts: Negative and/or tricky thoughts that occur automatically; these thoughts seem true but often don't tell the whole story.
-Challenging unhelpful thoughts: Steps we can take to challenge unhelpful thoughts. Catch (notice the thought), Check (ask yourself questions to evaluate how true/untrue, helpful/unhelpful the thought is), Change (replace the unhelpful thought with one that is more balanced, helpful, and realistic.
Unit 2 Lesson 8: Managing Strong Emotions
Acting on our emotions:
-Sometimes it makes sense to act on our emotions. For example, if we are really in danger and feel afraid, it is important that we run or fight to protct ourselves. If we are watching a sad movie or experiencing a loss in life, it can feel good to cry or reach out for a hug.
Acting on intense emotions
-Sometimes our emotions seem too intense, too uncomfortable, or are making us want to do things that really don't help the situation. For example, if we hit someone because we are angry at them, there could be negative consequences, like being suspended from school or an athletic team; if we hide from something that makes us afraid but isn't actually dangerous (life avoiding giving a presentations), we can miss out on important life experiences or struggle with the consequences, like failing an assignment or class.
-In these cases, instead of acting on our intense emotions, we can use strategies to bring down that intensity. This is called down-regulating - bringing the intensity of our emotions down.
Acting on low emotions:
-Sometimes our emotions or energy are really low, and these feelings make us want to do things that aren't helpful either - staying in bed, not seeing friends, etc. When we feel like this, we can use strategies to bring up our energy or activate us. These are called up-regulating activities.
Acting Opposite of our emotions:
-One way to think about how to change our emotions is to think about what activity or behavior is the opposite of what our emotion is making us want to do.