Many adolescents struggle with a sense of self-worth. Our culture is highly competitive, and often, we are faced with impossible standards. Social media platforms offer an unrealistic look at the lives of other adolescents, and even well-meaning adults can place unachievable expectations on adolescents by being quicker to point out areas for growth and improvement than offering praise for hard work and perseverance. When teens hear and see these kinds of messages, they often wonder whether they can ever be good enough.
Adolescence is also a time marked by self-exploration and experimentation with different identities. As students try on different ways of being, it is important that they have a solid foundation of “self” on which to build. These lessons are designed to help them learn about the things that are most important to the student and that make them unique.
Comparison as a Form of Self-Judgment
“Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It’s about accepting all of yourself.”—Tyra Banks
Objective: Students are taught to become aware of how often they compare themselves to others and how this impacts their feelings of self-worth. They will learn to identify examples of comparison in their daily lives and talk about ways to mitigate the effects of judgment on how they see themselves.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• What Makes You Unique? activity (10+ minutes)
• Appreciating Your Body meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: Let’s talk about judgment. How often do you size yourself up when you walk in a room—generally without even realizing you’re doing it? How many times do you rethink your hairstyle or outfit in the morning? Is it fairly common for you to compare what you said in class to what someone else said? Do you mentally beat yourself up because you think you could have been smarter/funnier/quicker? Do you sometimes gloat because you see yourself as better looking or more athletic or more popular than other kids?
Our brains are designed to judge situations and people, and unless we take the time to stop and recognize that we’re doing it and assess whether it is actually useful in any given situation, it gets more and more automatic. It becomes the backdrop of everything we do, despite the fact that the purpose of judgment is to discern whether a situation is safe for us. What we’ve evolved to do is turn that judgment on ourselves, and it becomes destructive to our sense of self.
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students to talk about what it feels like to judge and be judged. Are the two feelings different? How would students describe each feeling?
• Prompt students to calculate how often in any given day they see and hear people being compared to each other. Can they cite examples at home, at school, and in the media? What about literature or sports?
• Can students identify places where they can just be who they are without being judged? What is it about those places that make them so easy to be in? What would it take to create more safe places like that, both for themselves and others?
Activity: What Makes You Unique? (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Appreciate Your Body
We all spend a lot of time and energy critiquing our bodies. As teenagers, most of us spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, cataloging the things we would love to change—even just a little bit—and paying more attention to the things we don’t like than the things we do. This meditation is designed to give you an appreciation for the things we take for granted every day.
Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths in and out to settle in and clear any random stray thoughts you’re having. Starting with your feet, think about what they do for you on a daily basis. How they squeeze into your shoes or take a beating on hot pavement or sand when you go barefoot. Maybe you play sports and they keep you balanced as the bones and muscles flex to move you in the right direction without you having to think about how that happens. From there, move to your ankles and lower legs.
Think about how the bones support you every day, how blood courses through the veins and arteries to bring nutrients and blood cells, how the old skin sloughs off on its own and new skin is constantly created beneath it automatically. You don’t have to tell it when.
Think about the marvel that is your knees, how they bend smoothly to help you squat down and tie your shoe and how they lock into place when you need them to. What about your upper legs? Those powerhouses of muscle and bone that hold you upright, that flex and extend to help you walk and run and skip and ride a skateboard. Your hips? They are amazing, too.
Make your way up your body like this, pausing to be astonished at what happens in your gut all day, every day—hormones and digestive juices being released at the right times, and your food is broken down and distributed throughout your body to the places it needs to go without you directing it there. Your kidneys and liver deal with the waste products, and your diaphragm moves to help you breathe. Your lungs exchange gases seamlessly, and your heart beats, beats, beats, and it responds to scary things by speeding up so you can run away if you have to.
Your immune system sends healing cells to make scabs and flush out germs. Your neck holds up your head all day long and twists to help you see what you need to see. Stop and appreciate your arms and hands. Think about how your hair and your fingernails just grow, cells constantly dividing while you’re not even aware of it. Acknowledge your ears and eyes and nose and mouth, as well as your brain, for orchestrating all of these complicated and incredibly essential tasks, mostly without your supervision or interference.
Take one more pause to be appropriately awed by your body, and the next time you look in the mirror, give it thanks instead of grief.
“Shame is the most powerful master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.”—Brené Brown
Objective: Students will explore ideas of shame and learn about the difference between shame and responsibility. They will talk about how shame impacts the way they see themselves and share strategies for combating and resisting it.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Self-Compassion Inventory activity (10 minutes)
• Combating Shame meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: Brené Brown is a researcher at the University of Houston who studies shame and its impact on us. One of her most important findings about shame is that it often shows up when we identify with our actions too much. For example, if I am caught lying and that leads to the belief that I am a “liar,” that is shame. If instead I acknowledge that I am a good person who made the mistake of lying, that is taking responsibility for my actions but not allowing myself to be defined by them.
Taking responsibility for a mistake or poor decision allows me to accept that failure, move on, and learn from it. Believing that I am a “liar” or a “cheater” means that I have given up on learning because I am already resigned to the fact that I’m a bad person in some way.
Discussion Questions:
• Have students discuss this idea of shame versus responsibility and talk about times when they have fallen into the trap of letting themselves (even just for a little while) be defined by their worst mistake. Can they see whether there were ripple effects from that?
• Can students identify people in their lives whose words or actions seem to trigger this kind of shame-thinking in them?
• How many students are adept at shaming themselves, even if someone else doesn’t point out a mistake they made? Can they identify the kinds of phrases they use when they do this?
Activity: Self-Compassion Inventory (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Combating Shame
Shame is destructive and corrosive. It eats us from the inside out, and it convinces us that we are not smart, capable, lovable people. We all know what shame feels like, but how do we shake it off? This can help.
Find a comfortable sitting position, and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths in and out to settle in and release any random thoughts you might be having.
Try to remember a time when you felt shame. Without getting sucked into the story, focus on what it felt like in your body. For some people, shame is hot—our faces flush, our stomachs tighten and burn. Some people shrink into a fetal position. Pretend you’re an innocent bystander and just notice the reactions your body has to shame. Don’t hold on to them or build a story around them.
It is important to know that as long as we don’t grasp the physical effects of emotion or try to fight them, they peak and disappear within about ninety seconds. If we resist the urge to let our mind build a story around them with memories or judgment, we can let them come and go like a wave on the beach.
Picture yourself sitting cross-legged on the beach just at the spot where the waves break on shore. Sit with your back to the ocean, which means you don’t know when the next wave is coming or how big it will be. Don’t be afraid. These waves are small and calm, they might barely touch your back, or they might come up as far as your shoulder blades, but you are safe. Just sit there, and allow the waves to crash into you and recede. This is what it is like when you let emotions come and go without fighting them. Sit there for a minute and let some small and big waves wash over your back and retreat back out to sea.
Now practice conjuring up different emotions, and let them do the same. Think of a time when you were frustrated with someone. Remember what that felt like in your body, and let it go. Think of a time when you were incredibly sad, and recognize what that felt like in your body. Let it go. Watch a few more feelings wash over you and move on—try anger and fear. Let them go.
The last feeling you’ll think of is shame. Let it come and go. Let it come and go again. Remind yourself that your emotions don’t define you and they don’t control you. They visit and go away if you let them, leaving behind a clear, smooth beach where you can write any story you choose.
When you’re ready, take a deep, cleansing breath, and open your eyes.
“The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.”—Rita Mae Brown
Objective: Students will explore ideas of individuality and contrast them against the desire to be part of something bigger than themselves. They will talk about whether it is possible to be part of a community without compromising their own values and unique qualities.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Authentic People and Values activity (10–20 minutes)
• Part of the Whole meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: We are all adept at looking at ourselves through different lenses depending on the context. Home might feel “normal” until you think about inviting a friend over whose family has more money than yours. At that point, the furnishings and neighborhood might seem embarrassing and inadequate—something you have to hide or apologize for.
As you get older, you might be perfectly comfortable with your housekeeping skills until your mother or father wants to come for a visit. All of a sudden, you can see the cat hair and try to remember the last time you washed the towels in the bathroom.
As an adult, the thought of inviting your boss over for dinner or having your in-laws come to stay for a few days could throw you into a spiral of fear, despite the fact that you have friends over all the time and that seems just fine.
By the time we are in our teens, most of us have gotten really good at sizing up social situations and determining who we need to be as we enter. We quickly figure out how to conform or fit into that particular room, and it can leave us feeling a little empty or fake.
Some teens have particular talents that they loathe sharing because they don’t want to stand out—either to be the center of attention or to seem as if they’re showing off. However, that sense that we need to be more like our peers than distinct from them can keep us from really exploring the opportunities we could have. We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves—especially during the teen years when we are pulling away from parents and forging new relationships—but when we get scared that we aren’t smart/athletic/pretty/strong enough, we can falter, and it is often more frightening to think about being shunned from a group than it is to express who we really are.
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students to talk about how the need to “fit in” shows up in their lives. Has it ever kept anyone from doing something they wished later they’d done?
• Ask students to talk about the difference between “fitting in” and “belonging.” Do those states of being feel different?
• Is it possible to belong to a group of friends without liking all of the same things those people like? Does anyone have examples of that? What happens when you express your unique perspective instead of simply agreeing with everyone else?
Activity: Authentic People and Values (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Part of the Whole
Find a comfortable sitting position, and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths to settle in and clear your mind of any random thoughts. As you relax, picture a computer keyboard in your mind. Can you see all of the letters and numbers? Even if the keys all have the same basic shape and their job is similar, they look a little different and have different functions. Each letter of the alphabet and each number, each key that holds a punctuation mark, is important on its own, and really powerful when it is used with the other symbols.
Imagine that you are one of those symbols—you can decide which one if you want to. Think about how your school papers and emails and text messages would be different if that symbol wasn’t there. Think about how important each one of them is as a part of the bigger picture.
Now think about all of your friends, classmates, and relatives as a unique symbol. Together, you make up a community that is rich and diverse, and that is not because you are all the same, but because you are all different. Think about how each of the individuals plays a key role and how you all function on your own, with your own ideas and beliefs, and how you function together. Reflect on how vital it is to have each of you performing your own special role and be grateful for the unique qualities you bring to the table. We are, each of us, important in our own right and part of something larger that both needs us and nourishes us.
When you are ready, take a deep breath, and open your eyes.
“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”—Donald Miller
Objective: Students will talk about the notion of “perfect” or “ideal” and see how subjective those notions are. They will discuss the purpose and examine the assumptions they make about themselves in an effort to be more accepting of their flaws and talents.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Stories I Tell Myself activity (10–20 minutes)
• Changeable Me meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion: The ancient philosopher Plato had an idea known as the Theory of Forms, which basically says that each object that belongs to a particular group of objects (regardless of what it looks like in reality) contains some ideal set of characteristics that makes it part of that group. For example, there are many different types of chairs, but there is something about each one of them (plush ones and wooden ones alike) that we recognize as chair-like. He said that there is some essential set of qualities that give them each a chair-ness.
This concept is sometimes called “Platonic Idealism,” and over time, in some cultures, the concept has morphed into the notion that there is one “ideal” form of everything. While Plato was simply exploring ideas of form and shape and function, human beings often use ideas like his to assert some belief about perfection or the “best” form of something, such as the human body.
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students to discuss this idea and how it shows up in their lives and the way they feel about themselves. Is there an “ideal” body type? Or an “ideal” skin tone or accent or set of qualities that a teenage girl or boy ought to have?
• Have students explore whether there is truly an “ideal” form of anything. Perhaps one chair is ideal in one situation but not in another (If your classroom was populated with recliners, would much learning take place? Does anyone want to watch TV or play video games in a hard, wooden chair?).
• Have students make a list of their own ideal qualities (they don’t have to share them if they don’t want to). Do they think their list differs from their classmates’ lists? Do the qualities change depending on what they are doing on any given day? Is that OK?
Activity: Stories I Tell Myself (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Changeable You
Find a comfortable sitting position, and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths in and out to settle in and release any random thoughts you’re having.
Try to remember what you looked like when you were a baby. Maybe you had a lot of hair; maybe you were bald. If you can, recall a photo of what you looked like at the time, and take a minute to observe it closely. When you are ready, try to picture yourself as you are now, maybe even conjure up a memory of your most current school picture and set it right next to your baby picture in your mind. There are some things that have remained the same—maybe your eye color or skin tone, but a lot has changed since then.
You will continue to change and develop throughout your life, but even though the things other people see are shifting and growing, the real you is still there. Try to see if you can identify a part of you that is YOU and imagine where it is. Maybe it’s hidden deep in your belly, or perhaps you feel it in your chest near your heart, or maybe it is in your brain. There is no right or wrong place because it’s you.
Now focus on those photos of you and place a bright, golden spot in the area where you feel your personal essence on each picture. This is a reminder that no matter what other people see, no matter how you change over time, there is something that just defines you as you, making you special and unique.
Your abilities have gotten stronger over the years, too. You are much better at walking now than you were as a baby, I bet. Moreover, throughout your lifetime, you will both gain and lose abilities, and yet you will still be yourself. Imagine what you might look like at age fifty, and place that picture right next to the others in your mind. Look at the physical changes and similarities for a moment. Then see if you can determine what it is that links all of these photos together. Feel what it is that makes you always and forever you. That part is impervious to change, immune to time.
When you are ready, stack the photos, and breathe deeply. Take one last look at the golden light, and open your eyes.
“We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.”—Maya Angelou
Objective: Students will examine the ways in which external expectations and pressures affect the way they feel about themselves. They will go deeper in their personal reflections on shame and how it affects them.
Tools:
• Discussion Prompt (5–10 minutes of introduction, 20+ minutes of discussion)
• Shame Progression activity (10 minutes)
• Leaves in a Stream meditation (5 minutes)
Discussion:
“Over the years, I have learned that we humans tend to be happier when we are where we belong rather than trying to get somewhere that is not really who we are.”—Daniel Gottlieb
Often, when we are feeling anxious, it is because we are afraid that we can’t live up to some external expectation. When we are internally motivated to accomplish something, we are more able to overcome mistakes and keep pushing through obstacles because the end result is something that we have decided is important to us.
When we are trying to do something that we think will make others like us better or look on us favorably, we get our own self-worth tied up with what we think others value about us. When we use outside standards to determine how we feel about ourselves, we can’t ever really be comfortable with who we are, because those standards could change quickly and then we’re left playing catch-up.
It has also been shown that the more we try to change ourselves, the more our focus narrows. The more self-critical we are, the more self-absorbed we are. That means that we are less able to accurately predict what others are thinking about us, even though we trick ourselves into believing that they really are judging us.
Discussion Questions:
• Ask students to talk about a time when they did something to please someone else. What did that feel like in the short term? What did it feel like in the long term?
• What kinds of pressure do students feel to live up to external expectations? Where does that pressure come from? How can they address it in their lives?
Activity: Shame Progression (see Appendix A)
Meditation: Leaves in a Stream
Close your eyes and take some slow, deep breaths in and out through your nose. Try to empty your brain of all thought and realize how hard it is to do that. Even if you can manage it for a minute or two, it’s normal for our brains to get sucked back in to reacting to something you hear or how your seat feels or worrying about an assignment or test you have tomorrow. It’s pretty rare for anyone to be able to empty their head of all thought for very long, but this visualization can keep you from getting caught up in them for a few minutes and give your brain a rest.
Imagine you are sitting near a stream. Take a minute to picture the surroundings—maybe it’s a shady forest or a sunny meadow. The stream can be wide or thin, deep or shallow, loud and gurgling or quiet. There is something large nearby that you can lean against—a rock or tree or bench. Sit for a minute and flesh out the scene.
Every time you have a thought, imagine it as a leaf falling from a nearby tree and slowly fluttering down to land in the water. As it comes into your line of sight—as you have the thought—notice it, watch it land, and see it float downstream from you. Don’t chase it. Don’t name it. Just notice it, and let it go.
There may be times when you have fifty thoughts in a minute and others when there are only a few, or one at a time. Let them all go. They are leaves in a stream. Sit for a minute and practice watching them go without describing them. Just notice.
When you’re ready, take a very deep breath through your nose, and open your eyes.