CLC provides individuals, educators, and communities with trauma-informed mental health programs that help people of all ages, races, and genders to live happier healthier lives.
CLC provides individuals, educators, and communities with trauma-informed mental health programs that help people of all ages, races, and genders to live happier healthier lives.
The exercises I’ve learned have helped me so much, and I use them to help my friends. One friend in drumline has bad anxiety, and they were extremely nervous before a performance. I taught them a meditation that helped me, and it helped them too.
I used to think mediation was stupid. I have severe inattentive-type ADHD, I was that cliché can’t-pay-attention kid. I would space out and couldn’t remember things that were just told to me. It was actually kind of scary. But I started doing meditation, and it helped ground me to those moments. I was able to focus and remember.
I’m closer with my friends because we’re all suffering through anxiety together and CLC is helping us get better together.
I was really concentrating on what was on the surface of my life and not looking deeper in myself to see what really mattered. I learned that it’s not the end of the world if I mess up.
When I feel anxious now, I close my eyes and focus on my breath. Learning how to breathe and rest my mind on that feeling helps. The breath is the center of your body, and when you’re focused on it, it’s calming.
You’ve probably heard of fight or flight, but people fail to mention freeze. Like when you’re taking a social studies test that you studied for until 1am the night before and you’re asked about an ancient river, and then, all of a sudden, you can’t remember anything. You’re being amygdala-hijacked. If your amygdala thinks you’re in danger, it will hijack your entire system, so of course you can’t remember that ancient river. You’re sitting there sweating, and then you remember how to ground yourself with meditation. You tell your amygdala you’re not about to die, and then, suddenly, you remember that ancient river is called the Euphrates.
When I started to learn about the science behind mindfulness and how it affects our bodies, I thought “Oh, this is kind of important. We should let other people know about this.” Meditation is this trendy thing right now, but a lot people don’t really know how it works.
I used to suffer a lot from stress and anxiety. It got to the point that I would get stress migraines. Now, I do mindfulness exercises every day. CLC has taught me to be in the moment and to realize that schoolwork isn’t everything.
I had a panic attack at school, and I didn’t know what was happening. I started freaking out for no reason. It was really scary. CLC taught me what’s going on in my body and what I can do to help myself in those moments.