Help Your Child Find Courage
in Uncertain Times

Fight, Flight, and Freeze are the three basic ways that our bodies respond to threats.

Your brain might decide that fighting the danger is best. For example, if you are faced with an unfriendly animal, you might yell or throw things at it to try to get it to go away. You might have learned to wave your arms and stomp your feet. You’re trying to prove that you are the bigger threat so the animal will leave you alone!

Sometimes, flight is the best option. Your brain wants to get you out of a dangerous situation quickly. This could mean physically running away from something scary, but it could also mean avoiding something that you find intimidating. For example, maybe it means not raising your hand in class because you’re scared you’ll get the answer wrong in front of others.

The last “F” stands for freeze. Sometimes, your brain can’t make a decision. Instead of fighting or running from the danger, you freeze up. You might have a hard time speaking or yelling, your mouth might go dry, or you might feel faint or lightheaded.

You don't need to wait for a stressful time to practice mindfulness. The practice of being mindful is available to you any time of the day! Taking a moment to take a deep breath during the course of your day, or stopping to admire a freshly bloomed flower is a way of practicing mindfulness. When you are slowing down and being present in the moment, you are being mindful.

What exactly needs to be developed to become resilient?

Many agree there are different levels of resilience to be expected at different ages and even in different fields.

For example training on military resilience is very different from how we would discuss it with teens. This course will introduce concepts for variations and provide links to additional information.

For now, we are going to begin with the idea of the 7 Cs mentioned by Coach Reese. Here they are again in case you missed them: Confidence, Competence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping, Control.

These seven concepts really summarize where we need to focus our attention to become stronger in certain areas of our lives.

The students will be developing their personal research focusing on one or more of these areas.

You might consider researching along with them. Where do you think you might work a bit more on skills for bouncing back?

1. Self Awareness involves recognizing aspects of who you are as a person. This includes what you think and feel, how you react, and importantly, why.

2. A good practice in developing self-awareness is focusing on your thoughts. What are you thinking? When do you have certain thoughts? Why do you have these thoughts? Are they productive or harmful?

3. We will begin with thinking about thinking. Our brains are the greatest supercomputers ever created. We have so many thoughts and we process them so quickly we are often unaware of their existence.

4. By learning to think about thinking we begin to focus on our thought life, which ultimately becomes our real life.