Invictus Wellbeing
Talking replaced by ‘Digital Deluge’
By Nicola Hanson, Children and Young People’s Wellbeing Practitioner for Invictus who are supported by BBC’s Children In Need.
Being able to talk and connect with those around us feels like something we have much less time for, and a skill that feels like it is almost phasing out. We are all guilty of using our devices rather than connecting in person with those around us.
Young people are more connected than ever through social media and can get information at the tip of their fingers constantly. They can be entertained like never before with a huge selection of programmes, movies, social media, micro entertainment and games, but all of this is reducing the opportunity for the most basic kind of human contact, just chatting.
Our brains have had to adapt to all this new tech and the need to feel constantly responsive. We get a mini buzz each time our comments get likes from strangers, but in the meantime, we are not communicating so well with those standing in front of us. We have created an environment for a whole new kind of stress, whilst we don’t do the one thing that helped us for centuries, sharing our problems with those around us, talking things through, and just getting things off our chest and feeling heard by those we love or whose opinions we value.
BBC Children in Need is launching a vital campaign to highlight the importance of being someone a young person can speak to, as it is no longer taken for granted that they will already be doing this.
So how can you encourage a young person to chat and share their feelings, their day, and ultimately feel they can come to you if something major happens? Here are some tips to help:
- Make it routine:
If they are not comfortable talking about the small things, the little squabbles, small frustrations and sharing the small achievements of their day, they will be much less likely to come to us with the big things, and we could miss when something major happens, and they really need someone to speak to. Encourage low-pressure conversation regularly by asking about their day and sharing details about yours, too. Small routines can help, such as “Tell me one tricky thing and two good things about your day today” which, can help them get into the habit of chatting about things.
- Think about where and when:
Make sure you ask at a time when you are fully able to listen but don’t turn it into an interview or a big session that creates a feeling of pressure, find natural points of the day or create them by doing a low stakes activity side by side, like washing up, doing a craft activity, or setting up a sport activity, whilst on a walk or whilst doing something calm is perfect.
- Be Curious
Don’t expect to know the answers or how they feel. Make sure you ask rather than presume, as the same situation can feel exciting for one person and really stressful for another. Ask lots of open-ended questions, but also give time for a response. This is when doing an activity alongside conversation can be really helpful, because it allows time to think about the answers or follow-up questions, whilst you can take a moment on the activity without it feeling awkward.
- You don’t have to agree, just try to understand.
You don’t always have to agree with how someone else is feeling and you may not imagine feeling as they do about it, but that doesn’t change how they do feel about it, saying “that sounds like it is really difficult for you” is so much more validating and will encourage a young person to feel safe telling you things than trying to reassure them by telling them they shouldn’t feel that way. By exploring how they feel together, you can help them come up with their own solutions and make them feel heard.
- You don’t have to be an expert or have all the answers.
It is really tempting to jump in with advice, try and avoid this for as long as possible and it is also a good idea to know if this is even wanted “do you just want to tell me about this, or do you want to see if I can help or do you need me to do anything?” is a really important thing to find out before we give advice as sometimes it is helpful to get things off our chest, but if an adult or anyone we are talking to always is always trying to fix it for us, it can make us feel like we have lost control of the situation and can make us reluctant to share information in future if actually we just wanted to share how we felt.
You can encourage problem-solving by asking the young person if they have thought about what they might do about it and allowing them to talk through their ideas and options. It is also ok not to know what to do and to say you will think about it too. Knowing where to go in your area for mental health or practical support means you can signpost rather than be expected to be a specialist. If a child speaks to you about anything relating to safeguarding, abuse or self-harm or suicidal thoughts, it is always worth knowing where to get advice on that.
- Ditch “don’t worry”.
“Don’t worry” can feel like “this doesn’t matter”. If someone is telling you about a worry, it is actually a really important thing already; they have trusted you with something that makes them feel vulnerable. Try to let them know you appreciate them telling you and remember to be curious about why this bothers them. Being told not to worry can teach young people not to share their concerns and can make them attempt to bury their concerns silently rather than problem solve them, but being told not to feel the way they do about something doesn’t work. Think about if someone tells you when you are really angry or upset to “just calm down”, will it work or make you angrier that the person doesn’t want to understand why you feel so frustrated? This is similar, not everything will need a solution, and often just being able to talk about it will make it smaller anyway, as it takes it from something we silently worry about to something much more manageable. It might be a worry that goes away on its own, but being able to talk about it means we can also help recognise that too.
Using these resources is a great way to start conversations but may open up difficult experiences and emotions. Trained professionals can help with this, so please seek expert advice.
Worries – The elephant in the room
By Nicola Hanson, Children and Young People’s Wellbeing Practitioner for Invictus who are supported by BBC Children in Need.
Young people’s worries can feel like the elephant in the room, we can see they seem stressed or anxious and this can look like they are withdrawn, quiet or emotional, but they don’t want to tell us what is wrong. Sometimes they do and we tell them “don’t worry!”. We have all used this phrase, but don’t think of an elephant, take a moment not to picture it. Don’t think of it’s trunk or its wrinkly skin. The chances are you are now picturing an elephant and me telling you not to whilst discussing it did not make it go away.
This is because our brains are not brilliant at don’t, don’t press the red button will often have us thinking about it when we were happily ignoring it before. The more don’t is brought to our attention the more attention we often give it. This psychology is the same for ‘don’t worry’ it doesn’t take the worry away, it just stops us thinking we can discuss it with people and that they wont understand. We can feel guilty for still feeling worried, feel silly or or even ashamed for being worried about something we shouldn’t, but rarely will we actually feel less worried.
If you want young people to be able to discuss their worries it is important you are ready to receive those worries without giving judgement on them. You may not react or respond as they do to the worries, but by allowing them to be discussed you can help them learn problem solving skills and the importance of just being able to share concerns without judgement. If a child feels nervous or dismissed sharing worries about a sleepover for instance, they will be much less inclined to open up about someone who makes them feel uncomfortable and it is easy to see how we might then miss an emerging situation. By listening to them, thanking them for sharing information with us, reflecting back their language to show we are trying to understand from their viewpoint and by recognising they are finding this thing tricky, even if we don’t, we make it much more ok and easy to talk.
