The Doctor is In

On Tuesday, October 17, Dr. Lisa Damour spent the day at Dana Hall, visiting with students, faculty and staff, and the broader community as she discussed students’ mental health and levels of stress and anxiety among youth today. Damour is a psychologist, teacher, speaker, consultant, author of three New York Times bestsellers, and host of the Ask Lisa podcast.

Damour first met Middle School and Upper School students in two afternoon sessions, workshopping with both groups about what to do when you get bad news, like a poor test grade. She solicited suggestions of appropriate vs. inappropriate ways of coping and managing negative feelings before sharing her own strategies.

“When you turn to music that matches a negative mood, sometimes the way out of a feeling is through it,” Damour said. “You say to yourself, ‘I’m already sad, so let’s do this thing, we’ll go full force into it, and then I’ll feel better faster.’”

Damour shared her two markers for good mental health: Having feelings that fit the situation you’re in, even if those are negative feelings, and managing those feelings well. She also spoke about the different types of stress, including the healthy stress students should be accustomed to feeling when they have to adapt to something new.

She talked about how everyday anxiety (“nerves”) is our warning system that something is wrong and keeps you safe, and how that is very different from the disorder of the same name. She let students know to seek help if they’re having an anxiety response when nothing is wrong or if their response is too big for the problem.

In her session with faculty and staff, Damour covered strategies for managing a student meltdown as well as the use of activities where your full mind and body need to be present to break the cycle of rumination, which is more common among females. “The solution to rumination is distraction,” she said. “Find something that’s compelling that takes your mind off of it for a while.”

In the evening, Damour was the featured speaker in Bardwell Auditorium as part of Dana Hall’s Wannamaker Lecture Series. She spoke to parents and guardians about the importance of being a steady presence for their children.

Some of Dr. Damour’s tips for managing mental health, stress and anxiety:

• The measure of the quality of a coping technique is that it should bring relief and do no harm.
• When struggling to maintain perspective on bad news, ask yourself or your student: How will you feel about this in three weeks?
• The act of saying a feeling actually brings you emotional relief. Pack the feeling in a word and share it.
• Distraction can be great, but look at the dosing. If you Internet shop for 15 minutes as a break from your work, that’s fine, but if you spend two hours shopping and you’re missing deadlines, that’s when it becomes a problem.
• There is nothing you can do to support your mental health more than sleeping well, so consider removing phones from the bedroom.