Here is a free example strategy taken from my e-book that you can start using immediately:
How to Make a Vision Board of Hope and Potential
When children or teens are depressed they often have a lack of hope for the future.
Teenage suicide and suicidal ideation is a profound expression of hopelessness. It is often experienced as an overwhelming feeling that what they do is never good enough and inside, they are never good enough.
A vision board helps depressed children or adolescents to start imagining their dreams and goals for the future. The very process of making the vision board together will open a door for your child or adolescent to talk about their experiences and to start to address the negative thoughts that are in their head. Some teens may prefer to do it completely on their own, but you will have plenty of grist for the mill to talk about when you see their finished board.
The vision board can be a bulletin board or simply a white Styrofoam board. The process is to make collages of photos, magazine clippings, written affirmations, lines from poetry, and quotes which all represent their "outcomes". They can also include special cards, letters, and certificates, written by others that say positive things.
In the centre of the vision board should be a photo or picture of your child or teen. It needs to show through their facial and body language that they are feeling happy. We suggest the most recent photo if possible. This reminds then where they were and they can be and feel happy again. Revolving around this centre-piece are visual images of goals that the child wants to achieve that will contribute to feeling happy again. For example, feeling happy at school, having a closer inner circle of friends, feeling joy and creativity, a special project they want to be involved in, or their dream job or career in the future.
It can also include other goals such as working somewhere, learning to play an instrument, getting back to playing tennis again or another sport, submitting their poems to magazines or designs to companies, showing their artwork at exhibitions. It therefore is a mixture of inner and outer manifestations that the child wants to create and new beliefs that they want to install in their brain.
Help them to set their sights high; dream a little, but also be realistic. They will need to show the visual manifestations of what they want in each of these four areas:
- School
- Sports/activities
- Family life
- Social life.
Examples include making new friends, improving their sport, getting something they really want, or finding a boyfriend or girlfriend.
They think about what they want to achieve in the next five years from now. For a younger person it might be 1) obtaining GCSEs or 2) going on a special trip or adventure.
For adolescents, it might be: 1) what kind of person they want to be as an adult, such as a loyal and honest friend or a hard worker, and 2) what kind of job they would like to have.
Encourage them to imagine what sort of qualities they want to have in the next five, and then ten years. Since the dominating thoughts of a child with depression have been disempowering, hurtful, painful and negative, it is important to write very strong affirmations which will eventually eclipse the irrational destructive and toxic beliefs and gradually transform themselves into physical reality, helping the childs mood to become more on an even keel again.
The positive statements on the vision board should reflect the opposite of the negative thought patterns that they have. For instance, if your child has low self-esteem and suffers from a lack of confidence, then the statement could be something like "I am becoming more confident" or "my confidence is growing each day". Another example is "I am" or "I am becoming" more... joyful, self-assured, positive in my thinking. These are important statements to help your child think of and write down.
It is very powerful to sit with your child and in a quiet place with beautiful peaceful music, and say lets just try this exercise, nothing to lose. Imagine yourself already feeling as though your dreams have become a reality, your prayers are answered, or you have already reached your goals. This lifts one to a much more elevated mood.
Explain to your child that an affirmation can become even more powerful when it is turned into a song or chant. This is called an incantation because it is said with a focused purposefulness accompanied by body movement. Sometimes people proclaim this loudly when drumming, dancing or whatever movement they prefer.
Children and adolescents also can find and use quotes of their favourite person in history, current day celebrities or great role models in their life. Usually these great people have been resilient through trials, tribulations and adversity. They can choose their role models who are celebrities or famous people from both past and present who also suffered from depression (e.g. Mandela, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Einstein, Mother Theresa, Mozart, Abraham Lincoln, and Melanie C of the Spice Girls, Princess Diana, etc.).
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