Peaceful Teens

Peaceful Teens Program

Through Mindfulness and Positive Psychology strategies, 'Peaceful Teens' helps teenagers to navigate through their difficulties in a supportive group environment. Building on the content covered in the Peaceful Kids program, Peaceful Teens includes a deeper understanding and application of Mindfulness, grounding techniques, controlling the controllables, riding the waves of strong emotions, adaptive coping strategies, managing unhelpful thinking and self care.

The Peaceful Teens program can be facilitated by trained participants who have suitable qualifications and experience with teenagers.

Life long Coping Skills

Teens learn life long coping skills

Basic theory on Mindfulness and how it affects the brain and lessens stress and anxiety
The different ways to practice Mindfulness and integrate it into their lives
Their feelings and how this relates to anxiety and stress levels
Understanding anxiety and how it relates personally to them
Understanding triggers for stress and how to calm down when feeling stressed
Physical symptoms of stress and anxiety and learning to identify when they need to take time out to calm themselves
Worrying and how it affects the brain and body.
Different types of thinking that increase or lessen anxiety
Noticing their own self-talk and how this is affects worrying and stress levels
Creating a balanced lifestyle including lots of chill out time and being in the flow

Aims of the Program

To minimise the symptoms of anxiety and stress
To build emotional resilience
To empower teens to self-manage their anxiety
To teach teens Mindfulness exercises they can use for life
To build a reservoir of ‘strength’ to enable teens to cope with life more effectively
To minimise anxiety symptoms occurring in the future
To teach teens to use a range of effective coping strategies
To teach teens to self-calm
To develop emotional intelligence skills
To teach teens life-long skills to manage stress and prevent stress build up
To support teens so they know that they are not alone with suffering from anxiety

Program Structure

Peaceful Teens is an 8 week program for a small group of secondary school students held at a school or a private organisation led by a Peaceful Teens trained leader.

A group of 4 to 6 teens participate each week over an 8 week period.

Sessions are for approximately 1 hour each week.

Sessions include learning a range of mindfulness strategies and meditations, effective coping strategies and positive psychology exercises.

Teens learn a new meditation each week and then practice at home on a daily basis.

Research

Peaceful Kids is based on evidence based therapy and research from the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR), Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (MiBCT), Positive Psychology and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

The Peaceful Kids program is endorsed by the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES)

Peaceful Kids was researched through the Murdoch University for Beyond Blue - Be You, and has now been approved as an evidence based school program. Research has also been conducted through EACH on both the Peaceful Kids and Peaceful Parents program, and evaluated by Save the Children for their 'Cool for School' Program.