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In the first of two blog posts, Ruth Hodierne, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Sussex Liaison & Diversion for Youth, gives us some tips on keeping calm during lockdown.

HOW TO STAY CALM

Plan your days 
Disruption of a normal routine can be stressful. Take some time to write down how you want to spend your day. Creating and sticking to a new routine will give you a sense of order and normality.

Mindfulness 
There are lots of free apps you can use to guide you through breathing techniques and meditation that can help ease your anxiety and clear your mind of anxious thoughts. Headspace or Smiling Mind are free mindfulness apps.

Clean up your social media 
You may be spending more time online so try and unfollow or mute accounts that make you feel anxious, upset or angry and find positive accounts like Young Minds (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) that boost your mood and share your interests.

Take a break from the news 
It can be tempting to constantly have the news on in the background, this can have a negative impact on your mental health. Try limiting how often you check the news.

HOW TO STAY CONNECTED

Board games are a great way to spend time with friends or family and a lot of these can be played online, like Monopoly or Chess, or through apps such as Words With Friends.

Video Calls – phone calls are amazing but seeing someone’s face really can make a huge difference. It can lift your mood and make you feel less lonely. 

HOW TO DEAL WITH STRESSFUL SITUATIONS AT HOME

Create a rota 
If you’re in a situation where lots of people are fighting over the TV, who cooks or cleans, then get together and create a rota and to avoid arguments.

Get changed every morning 
Change from what you’ve slept in, even if it’s into a clean pair of pyjamas. This will do wonders for your mood.

Walk away from tense situations if you can 
You can think and plan for the situations or people that you foresee being difficult over the next few months. You can ask a friend to call you at a certain time of the day that you expect to be problematic. This can give you a natural reason to leave a room and take a break from an intense or potentially confrontational situation. Or set an alarm and match your alarm tone to your ring tone, needing to take a call gives you a legitimate reason to leave the room. 

Create a list of “safe conversation topics” that you can refer to when things get awkward or difficult. Similarly, create a list of conversation topics that you feel are best to avoid.

Create a Hope Box
It is understandable how the recent increase in anxiety and fear may impact your thoughts of suicide. If you are at home and looking for ways to manage your thoughts of suicide, you could create a Hope Box which is filled with sensory items, such as photographs of the people you love, your favourite perfume, or song lyrics that resonate with you. Papyrus has a great how-to sheet on creating a Hope Box

Useful Apps and Numbers:

‘Stay Alive’ App where you can work on keeping safe from suicide.

YoungMinds Crisis Messenger Service, Text YM to 85258 for free 24/7 mental health support if you are having a mental health crisis.

Childline, if you’re under 19 you can confidentially call, email or chat online about any problem. Freephone 24/7 helpline 0800 1111.

The Mix, if you’re under 25 you can talk free on the phone, by email or on their webchat. You can also use their phone counselling services. Freephone 0808 808 4994 (1pm-11pm daily).

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Journalist Jan Edwards describes how an ordinary day of door-to-door fundraising led to his involvement with Make (Good) Trouble. 

It was early January, and winter had firmly clasped its unrelenting, icy grip on Brighton and Hove, suffocating the distant memories of summer. 

Shivering, my resolve to fundraise for homeless young people spurred me on. I started a new road, willing an answer for some warmth. I knocked, but there was no response. Maybe the next… “Hello! Sorry, I was cooking.” I rushed back. “Hi, I’m from Centrepoint.” “Ah, I know all about you!” says the woman, smiling. “Come in.” 

While door-to-door fundraising can be discouraging, I relished meeting all sorts of strange, eccentric, but often wonderful people. At Centrepoint, I was yelled at, sworn at and chased down a garden path with a broom (only to be invited in for tea and an art lesson by the less cranky next-door-neighbour!).

Naturally, I was intrigued by this friendly woman who had provided respite from winter’s wrath. “You don’t need to say anything. I’ll sign up,” she said. I was bemused as even the most willing of donors usually take some persuasion. “I work for a social enterprise called Make (Good) Trouble, helping teenagers. I’m Daisy, the co-founder.” 

Daisy explained that her company aims to challenge society’s narrative that young people are a nuisance. The media is often full of teenagers’ misdemeanours, so Make (Good) Trouble uses it to celebrate their achievements and improve mental health. Based on my passion for helping young people from my own experiences, I was eager to get involved. 

As a teenager, I suffered from low self-esteem, unexplainable anger and bouts of anxiety and depression. This informed my behaviour: impulsiveness, drinking and trouble at home and school. In fact, I spent more time out of school than in! If only I’d had a means to express my feelings, to channel my complex coil of emotions. 

Enterprises like Make (Good) Trouble are essential if other suffering teens are to make a difference in the world, inspiring creativity and motivation. As a journalist, I feel that nothing boosts self-confidence more than completing a project and seeing the results. “I would love to help,” I enthused, leaving with Daisy’s number and feeling warm inside and out. 

I was delighted when Daisy scheduled a meeting to discuss my involvement with Make (Good) Trouble. She explained how revered the enterprise has become, securing a donation from Sussex Police. “We have Project Poppy coming up, which looks at women’s mental health in the First World War. It’ll be perfect for you.”

My Grandad is a Holocaust survivor, so I am familiar with the impact of war. A survivor of three camps, Grandad has harrowing memories which he seldom discusses. He was taken away from his mother as a child, and never saw her again. Nobody knows what became of her. A story lost. 

Indeed, the impact of war on women is rarely considered. I realised that in learning about the First World War, the experiences of wives, of female nurses and doctors were not taught. With a Mum who won the NHS “Woman of the Year” award, I know how strong women are. It is imperative that the stories of these heroes be told. 

Meeting with Tayler, Daisy’s sister and project leader, I was amazed at her research and determination to bring the project to fruition. “Mental health is a current issue”, Tayler said. “We want young people to get involved and to compare mental health then with what’s happening today. We want everyone involved in the project to help build a picture of a fictional woman, Poppy, who lived through the War and use media to flesh out what her experiences might have been, to bring her to life.”

This project is part of the First World War Centenary, a programme set up by the National Lottery Heritage Fund that aims to help people understand the war, uncover its stories and explore what it means to us today, creating a link between then and now. Project Poppy participants will research the subject and create a film and a blog detailing the process, plus a presentation for schools.

Students at Hove Park School are participating in the project and we met up with them before the schools were closed due to the coronavirus. I was struck by the young people there, their compassion and confidence as they created diagrams of influences on mental health, both in the First World War and now. “Have you ever had mental health issues?” one girl asked. “Most of us have.” I was confused:  happy with her openness, but sad at the prevalence of mental health issues she had expressed. 

Walking home from the school that day, I was lost in thought. Isn’t it great how open young people are about mental health now, actively wanting to enact change? I smile. One thing’s certain: It’s incredible how interrupting someone’s cooking caused me to get involved with such an inspiring project.

Jan Edwards

We’re having to re-think Project Poppy due to the coronavirus lockdown. Make (Good) Trouble is now looking at ways to share the project online which will mean that more young people can get involved if they’re interested. Watch this space!

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If you’re a parent or a young person struggling to cope, or someone who needs support, we’ve set up a Facebook group to help you. It’s called Raising Teens. We’ve gathered some of our Raising Teens radio show experts to give advice and you can also share your own ideas and tips or simply have somewhere to talk and be heard. And we have our small army of amazing Make (Good) Trouble teens on hand to help out. 

We have Q&A advice sessions, ideas for activities and more. We’ll be sharing the best ways to keep in touch with friends and family – which apps and digital media wok best, including which are free – so no one feels alone. We also have every episode of our Raising Teens radio show available to listen to if you need specific help. Parents, teens and brilliant experts share stories and give really practical advice. 

Communication is so important, as is understanding each other when we’re feeling anxious and in close proximity. Listen to our pilot episode which covered dealing with flare-ups and how to get a teen to talk. We also discussed where to get support for yourself as a parent as well as broaching difficult subjects.

We also have episodes on understanding the Teenage Brain in series 1 – and The Return of the Teenage Brain in series 2 which are amazing insights into the workings of the adolescent brain and really do help us understand why teens act the way they do. 

If your teen is struggling with anxiety and other issues are flaring up, these episodes may help:

Kicking off

Loneliness

Eating Disorders

Self-harm

Family breakups

Relationships

Resilience

Sleep

Social media & devices

You can also join us on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn if Facebook isn’t your thing. 

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Gemma spoke about grief and loss on Raising Teens  last year. Here she talks about how that experience has helped her to open up and seek support.

It seems in a world so digitalised we often lose sight of reality; words are said with little truth behind them and conversations go unspoken. 

Make (Good) Trouble has initiated that conversation; discussing topics that are so often pushed aside, avoided, or even feared. It was for that exact reason that I’m determined to speak about the avoided, feared or pushed aside as these are normalities that are made anomalies. Having understood the topics at hand to be discussed, I was initially reluctant in opening up about the state of beings that I am far too familiar with; grief, loneliness and social anxiety. These three states of being tend to be intertwined and when one is taking the limelight the other two tend to sneak up slowly behind. 

After losing my mum at the age of nine and entering the foster care system at 14, I think it’s fair to say that adapting to change is now a skill I am far too familiar with. Anyone who has experienced a loss at such an age would understand when I say, the years that soon follow on from this are the ones you wished them were around to see; the start of secondary school, prom, birthdays and just general adolescent changes. I suppose losing a parent at any age is the greatest loss one can ever experience and as I said in my Raising Teens interview, I know as life progresses, there’ll be times when my mum is the only person I wish to share these moments with. 

We’ve heard from some amazing teens on the latest series of #RaisingTeens. This is Gemma talking about her mum. You can catch up on all the episodes via https://t.co/RYvFHBTVZb pic.twitter.com/GPHFTWLTp3— Make (Good) Trouble (@makegoodnews) 8 January 2020

The labels and judgement associated with foster care and losing a parent previously led me to avoid all conversations about it completely. While socially I would laugh and joke the situation away, internally the feeling was completely different. Make (Good) Trouble has helped me to break out of that mindset, to speak more openly and expose my vulnerabilities. 

Now, seven years on from where it all started, I’ve realised that I speak about my experiences for no other satisfaction than my own. To show pride in my determination to achieve all that my heart desires in aid of my mum’s legacy, and for those that are reading this, I urge you to do the same. I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, a destined outcome is there for the taking if you’re willing to work hard enough for it and neither your past nor surroundings should determine the outcome of that. 

My message here is simple; communication is key. Often talking can be the initiating factor behind that new friendship you never saw coming, the factor that resolves that argument that you no longer remember how it started. And it can be the beginning of the process that eventually heals, in some way, the wounds you’ve long tried to hide away from. 

I want to thank the Make (Good) Trouble team for providing me with the platform to open up on and for allowing me to share my experiences with a purpose to allow others to do the same. 

Listen to Raising Teens: Grief