Anxiety is not uncommon for teenagers. Between friends, exams, homework, extracurriculars, and keeping your GPA up, life can get pretty stressful. Sometimes it gets so stressful that it starts to form unhealthy habits and underlying mental health issues–but studies are showing that there may be something that could help: mindfulness meditation.
I know what you’re thinking, “Meditation is going to fix my child’s anxiety?” No, that’s not what I’m saying. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, making it a good tool to maintain mental health and act as a helper–not the only treatment.
Just 10-minutes of mindfulness meditation could help
The University of Waterloo recently conducted a study that showed how powerful mindfulness meditation can be. With over 80 individuals that struggle with anxiety, the researchers discovered that using mindfulness meditation reduced one of the most common symptoms of anxiety: repetitive, off-task thinking.
The best part? It was only 10-minutes once a day. With just a few minutes out of the day, anxious individuals found improvements in their mind’s tendency to wander and overthink things. For people with anxiety, this can be one of the main things that disrupts their day. While it’s normal for the mind to wander, when it’s almost impossible to make it focus at times, that’s an issue.
Mindfulness meditation isn’t just about sitting in one place for 10-minutes. It’s about taking a moment to pull yourself out of your internal worries and focusing–without judgement–on how you’re feeling now and taking note of what’s around you in the current moment.
One of the researchers, Mengran Xu, discussed why the results are important:
“Our results indicate that mindfulness training may have protective effects on mind wandering for anxious individuals. We also found that meditation practice appears to help anxious people to shift their attention from their own internal worries to the present-moment external world, which enables better focus on a task at hand.”
Mindfulness meditation obviously has a lot of potential in the mental health fields. It’s a tactic that you can use nearly anywhere and almost anyone can master it.
If you believe your child is struggling with a mental health issue, it’s critical to reach out to a professional for further guidance.
Solstice is here for your daughter
Solstice is a groundbreaking residential treatment center for girls, ages 14 to 18. Our girls and assigned female at birth often grapple with depression, issues with bullying, low self-esteem, anxiety, trauma, ADHD, and other emotional or behavioral problems when they come to us.
Through a unique combination of therapeutic programs based upon both traditional and holistic mental health treatment, we treat our clients with age and gender specific techniques. We strive to empower teenage people with the ability to believe in themselves and provide the tools and motivation required to instill these beliefs for life.
For more information about how we use mindfulness meditation at Solstice, please contact us at (866) 278-3345.
