Hakuna Matata: Group Counseling for Stress and Anxiety

In my post last week, Stressing the Test, I wrote about small groups to help students recognize stress and learn stress reduction techniques.  Here are some highlights and group activities that can be used for students who have testing anxiety or other stressors.

In my first group session with 4th graders, we reviewed the group purpose and ground rules and students brainstormed ideas for the name of their group.  The students came up with a number of creative ideas, but Hakuna Matata was the clear winner and is our group's motto and worry free philosophy.

With older students, we looked at the impact of too much stress using the Magic Worry Milk experiment. First, students put drops of food coloring in a small bowl of milk.  Each drop of food coloring represents something in their life, like friends, school, family, sports, or high school applications.  Then, I put a few drops of dish soap, or "stress", in the milk and food coloring and asked students to observe what happened and talk about how it relates to stress. Students shared many thoughtful connections, including

• Stress impacts all areas of our lives
• Stress can make us feel all mixed up
• Stress makes it hard to get your priorities straight

Once students understand the purpose of the group and the effects of stress, there are many fun activities to teach stress reduction techniques.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Write stressors on strips of construction paper.  Students then connect the strips of construction paper to create a stress chain.  This chain stays outside of the classroom or outside of the counselor's office, so that students are leaving their stress at the door!

• Students can decorate magnetic locker mirrors with positive affirmations to practice positive self-talk.
• Students can practice visualizing overcoming stressors or feeling less stress.Students can use fabric markers to decorate pillow cases with their positive visualizations.
• Deep breathing, exercise, and mindfulness activities can be used to help students see how they feel before and after trying these stress reduction techniques.

I hope these activities help all of our students cope with stress and ROCK the DC CAS!