The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness Skills to Help You Deal with Stress

by Gina M. Biegel MA, LMFT

Overview

Between school, friends, and planning for the future, it’s easy to feel stressed out. Written by a psychotherapist specializing in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and featuring brand new exercises, The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens, Second Edition shows how mindfulness skills can help you relax, prioritize, and keep calm during stressful times.

Your teenage years are some of the most stressful of your life. With pressure about grades at school, parents who just don’t seem to get it, dating, and friends who drive you crazy, it’s no wonder. But here's the good news! If you learn a few strategies for getting stress under control now, you’ll have the skills you need to deal with problems and difficult feelings that life sends your way—in high school and beyond.

The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens is a collection of simple workbook activities that will teach you to reduce your worries using a technique called mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way to be aware of your thoughts and feelings in the present moment. You can use mindfulness when you start to feel as though things are spinning out of control, so you can stop worrying about what might happen and focus instead on what’s happening now.

If you’re like many people, you find it easy to look at your negative qualities or feel there is no way to fix your problems or stress. This book is about building on the resources, skills, and positive qualities that you might not even realize you have. It is a way to move from “I'm powerless” thinking to “I can do it!” thinking.

Hundreds of teens in mindfulness-based stress reduction classes have used activities like the ones in this book, and here is what some of them have said:

“I have learned to let things go and move on from bad experiences.”

“I felt that the coping skills learned are easy enough and effective enough to be used when I need. I now feel at the very least that I have the ability to reduce my stress.”

“I learned new and different ways to stay relaxed and how to deal with stress and now I don’t worry much.”

If they can do it, so can you! By practicing the skills outlined in this workbook, you'll be well on your way to developing lasting resilience and a new kind of strength—one that comes from within. Why not get started today?

This book has been selected as an Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Book Recommendation—an honor bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684030187
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Series:	Instant Help for Teens Series
Edition description:	Second Edition, Revised
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	227,619
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Gina M. Biegel, LMFT, is a psychotherapist, researcher, speaker, and author in the San Francisco Bay Area who specializes in mindfulness-based work with adolescents. She is founder of Stressed Teens, which has been offering mindfulness-based stress reduction for teens (MBSR-T) to adolescents, families, schools, professionals, and the community for over a decade. She created MBSR-T to help teens in a large HMO’s outpatient department of child and adolescent psychiatry who were not receiving relief or amelioration of their physical and psychological symptoms with the use of a multitude of other evidence-based practices. She is an expert and pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based approaches to youth. She is author of Be Mindful Card Deck for Teens. She also has a mindfulness practice audio CD, Mindfulness for Teens, to complement the MBSR-T program. She provides worldwide, intensive ten-week online trainings, and works with teens and families individually and in groups. Her work has been featured on CNN, Reuters, and in The New York Times. For more information, visit her website at www.stressedteens.com.

Table of Contents

Letter to Teens vii

Letter to Parents and Professionals ix

Activity 1 Letting Go of Your Problems 1

Activity 2 Defining and Understanding Stress 5

Activity 3 Life Stressors: What Is Stressing You Out? 9

Activity 4 The Physical Effects of Stress: Paying Attention to Red Flags 15

Activity 5 The Emotional Effects of Stress 20

Activity 6 When Stress Can Be Helpful 24

Activity 7 Stress the Problem, Mindfulness a Solution 27

Activity 8 Living in the Now 31

Activity 9 Mindfulness and the Five Senses 33

Activity 10 Bringing Mindfulness to Routine Tasks and interests 37

Activity 11 Dropping-In Mindfulness Practice 45

Activity 12 Mindful Eating Practice 52

Activity 13 The Body Scan Mindfulness Practice 56

Activity 14 Bringing Mindfulness to Walking and Movement 63

Activity 15 Doing Homework or Taking a Test Mindfully 67

Activity 16 Accepting Your Emotions: "The Guest House" 69

Activity 17 Don't Believe Everything You Think 74

Activity 18 Don't Jump on the Train of Thoughts: the Railroad Activity 79

Activity 19 Stress Waves: Riding the Waves of Life 82

Activity 20 Paying Attention to Your Breath 85

Activity 21 Paying Attention to Your Mind: Sitting Mindfulness Practice 89

Activity 22 Taking in the Good: Doing What You Enjoy 93

Activity 23 Focusing on the Positive: the Pleasant Moments Calendar 96

Activity 24 Focusing on the Negative: the Unpleasant Moments Calendar 100

Activity 25 Things You Can and Can't Control 105

Activity 26 Mindful Stopping: Responding instead of Reacting 108

Activity 27 Being Mindful of Harmful Judgments 111

Activity 28 Mindful Messaging and Posting 117

Activity 29 Playing Out the End of the Movie 121

Activity 30 Life Events Can Cause Stress 123

Activity 31 Coping With Painful Events 127

Activity 32 Unhelpful and Harmful Coping Behaviors 131

Activity 33 Using Self-Care to Manage Problems 138

Activity 34 Tracking Harmful Behaviors: the Self-Awareness Calendar 143

Activity 35 Next Steps 148

Acknowledgments 155

Interviews

Biegel resides in Campbell, CA.

Editorial Reviews

“A gift for our stressed-out teens and the grown-ups who work with (or live with) them!”
—Christopher Willard, PsyD, author of Mindfulness for Teen Anxiety and coauthor of Mindfulness for Teen Depression; Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School


“This is a useful workbook for teens. It draws on and distills decades of experience and research on mindfulness and self-regulation, and shows teens how to do it!”
—Trudy Goodman, PhD, founding teacher at insightLA.org

From the Publisher