Re-writing history, neutralizing bad memories, looking for positives in the everyday – these are some of the things we have been looking at in my mentoring sessions for the past couple of months.
Very often, the young people I work with have experienced some kind of trauma. In our sessions we look at ways of reducing the impact that it has on everyday life, and we can see where trauma has directly influenced current behavior patterns. With the young people’s permission, I work with school to put various levels of support in place to prevent issues arising. For example, one of the young people I work with loves the outdoors and finds being in classrooms all day very stressful and unproductive. I spoke with school to see if we could introduce an intervention outside in the school garden. School was happy to take this forward and my young person benefited greatly from being outside, in the fresh air, in a calming, green environment. Being outdoors is absolutely a huge benefit to our young people. I recently took a young person horse riding near Brimham Rocks. It was a beautiful day, you could hear the birds singing, no noise from traffic, riding through the trees in amazing countryside. The young person was smiling non-stop, and we had an amazing day. In our sessions since we have talked about this and when things get tricky in school, to take a moment to envisage the calmness we felt on our horse ride. Sometimes a little distraction to remove them from the chaos of whatever situation they are in at school is enough to help them reset and then continue with their day.
Recently I have started creating story books with some of my young people. We draw the difficult things they have experienced and create characters so we can determine what happens next to them. I find this a very positive activity as some young people find it easier to draw memories or explain things as if they were happening to someone else, we are then able to think about outcomes and which ones they would prefer.
And sometimes we sit, have a cup of tea, and put the world to rights and in that moment, everything feels better.
Clare Walmsley- Change Direction Youth Mentor, Harrogate