As over 20 school districts extend Thanksgiving Break to a full 10-day holiday, some teenagers may be experiencing something reminiscent to the isolation of quarantine, this time, with the heightened anxiety of FOMO! Neva talks about how she is trying to make this Thanksgiving break a therapeutic reset by setting some goals. Listen for more!
As over 20 school districts extend Thanksgiving Break to a full 10-day holiday, some teenagers may be experiencing something reminiscent to the isolation of quarantine, this time, with the heightened anxiety of FOMO! Neva talks about how she is trying to make this Thanksgiving break a therapeutic reset by setting some goals. Listen for more!
Hey guys! Welcome back to Alphabet Soup. Today’s episode is about how Thanksgiving Break can affect our mental health both positively and negatively, and how you can try to make the most of this opportunity to recharge and improve wellbeing. And you know, everyone experiences ups and downs, even the Pardon Turkeys! Imagine the wave of emotions that Peanut Butter and Jelly must have gone through a few days ago! From a frying pan fate to being pardoned to live a peaceful life at Purdue University. They serve as an example of how sometimes big changes can happen in a short time. So, let’s talk about how we can come back to daily life with a fresh mindset after this Thanksgiving holiday.
So, apparently over twenty school districts across the nation are extending Thanksgiving break to allow for recovery from pandemic-induced stress. Navigating new technology and online school was a tough challenge for both students and educators. Not only that, but as school have gone back to in-person, dealing with the transition while continuing to live in a world where Covid-19 spreads has created a whole new world of problems. An extended Thanksgiving break is intended to create opportunity for students and educators to address ongoing stress from the pandemic.
It’s nothing new that the pandemic has caused a sharp spike in mental health cases marked by increased depression, anxiety, ptsd, and even suicide around the world among many. Quarantine presented its challenges to teenagers, like me, who were isolated from peers. A poll that asked teens to vote whether they thought distance learning was worse than going to school revealed that over 60 percent of kids say yes. With thanksgiving break being extended, many schools in the US are looking at a 10-day holiday break, which for some, may grow reminiscent to quarantine era isolation after a few days. A lot of us are spending Thanksgiving break at home and we will eventually get bored, miss our routines, and miss having daily interactions with our peers. But now that we are not in quarantine and people are free to get together, classic teenager anxieties like FOMO are returning. Ah, FOMO or fear of missing out, is such a lovely feeling. I say that sarcastically, because feeling like you’re missing out, especially around a time like the holiday seasons can be really discouraging. So, for some, an extended Thanksgiving break may not have the intended effects that the school districts were hoping for, but instead may be something that students aren’t necessarily thankful for. But I believe that anyone can make these short periods of isolation beneficial to their own mental wellbeing.
Here are some tips for having a therapeutical break. First, think about things that negatively affect you. We don’t need any of that toxic energy this week. Once you identify the anxiety that you want to remove yourself from, try to formulate a method of doing so. For me, I needed to disconnect and instead focus on what really matters to me, family, and my mental wellbeing. So, I’m limiting my social media. The thing with social media and constant stimulation is that a bunch of teenagers get bored of listening to our own thoughts. This may not apply to everyone, but a lot of the teenagers I’ve talked have said something similar about how they think the solution to all their problems is just to deal with them later, and how do they do that? By not thinking. I like to think of it as a form of advanced procrastination, setting aside our problems and thoughts for later. It’s a terrible habit, but we all do it at some point. Disconnecting from our phones forces us to spend more time with our thoughts. And that’s an important part of introspecting and healing. What I really want to encourage, and am working on myself, is allowing yourself to think, allowing yourself to sort out all the problems that you’ve been setting aside in your head. Now is the time to do that. You’ll feel much freer for it, I’m sure.
Another thing we can try is to set health goals for ourselves to replace our usual routines. The habit loop is simple, cue, routine, reward. It doesn’t’ have to be anything crazy. Here are a few that I’ve set for myself this week: 1. Drink more water. So, I have added drinking a glass of water right when I wake up, and before each meal to accomplish this goal. For the past few days, I’ve been a little bloated but that is your body’s way of letting you know that you were previously dehydrated! So, if you continue drinking more water the bloating will subside. Applying the habit loop, my cue would be waking up, my routine would be drinking water instead of going on my phone, and my reward would be feeling hydrated and calm. My second health goal is to sleep for as long as I can before I naturally wake up. I guess you could say I’m taking advantage of not having to be at school by 7a.m. My third goal is to avoid going on my phone first thing in the morning and right before I go to sleep. Stimulation from the screen can cause sleep problems and also, I’ve noticed I feel happier staying away from my phone in the mornings. To set these goals for myself took some self-reflecting on how certain things have affected my mood in the past. It’s quite simple, if you feel like something is negatively impacting your mental health, try to stay away from it. For me, it was going on my phone. Instead, I’ve decided that for this whole week, the first thing I am going to do in the morning is to drink a nice glass of water. Hopefully, committing to one week of these health goals will help me reset my mind, and maybe even change my bad habits by replacing them with new routines!
For today’s bit I wanted to tell you a brief history of the American turkey pardoning tradition. So, presidents have been pardoning turkeys from being served as part of the Thanksgiving feast since Abraham Lincoln. But the official tradition of pardoning began with President George W. Bush who famously said, that the turkeys, Marshmallow and Yam “were a little scared of going to a place called Frying Pan Park.” Since then, the tradition of turkey pardoning has become a fun ritual that allows Presidents to crack a few jokes and lead us into the holiday season. So, a deep congratulations to Peanut Butter and Jelly this year for being pardoned!
Alright, guys as always, if you enjoyed today’s episode, then share the show with someone you are thankful for. I am thankful for you for listening to the show and I’ll be back next week with a new episode! Happy Thanksgiving!