Wolf Pack
Blazing fires and supernatural creatures aren’t the only challenges facing the teens at the heart of Wolf Pack’s first season. They’re also managing stress and anxiety around some pretty relatable issues – new relationships, conflict with friends, family drama, technology and the pressure to balance it all.
The strategies we see Everett and his friends using to cope with anxiety and stress aren’t just for life-threatening situations. We can all use them anywhere, anytime to help manage and improve our mental health.
Explore this page to learn more about anxiety, how to use these tools in your daily life, and ways to reach out for help if we’re struggling.
Most of us experience stress and anxiety in our lives. Although stress and anxiety are related, it’s important to understand the differences so we can identify and manage those feelings when they arise. Stress is a response to an external cause, and at healthy levels, stress can be helpful by motivating us or pushing us to take better care of ourselves.
On the other hand, anxiety comes from an internal place and is our reaction to that stress. If stress says “The test is tomorrow and you need to study”, anxiety says “You’ve waited too long, you’re going to fail and that’s going to mess up your plans for the future.” Anxiety often leans into the worse case scenario, can be extremely overwhelming, and can interfere with our ability to take the actions to feel better.
Coping With Anxiety
Tools like breathing exercises and tips like the ones here can help us manage, reduce and prevent anxiety.
If anxiety is overwhelming and/or ongoing, mental health professionals can help us find the right treatment plan.
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Explore Yoga For Anxiety
Feeling anxious or overwhelmed? These yoga poses for anxiety can help you calm down and find your center.
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Engage Your Senses
Find relief by tapping into your senses using the 5-5-5 method.
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Take A Break With A Visualization Meditation
Manage anxious thoughts and stress with this short but effective grounding meditation.
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Try Journaling
Urban Wellness Blog shares some great prompts to work through anxiety
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Hear From Your Peers
This Is Normal is a podcast where young people talk about their own mental health experiences and challenges — and how they got through them.
Breathing
Breathwork is a unique method of stress relief because it’s both automatic and self-controlled, meaning even though we breathe unconsciously, the way we breathe can be manipulated or adjusted to benefit our mind and body.
Fear and anxiety can send the nervous system into overdrive, activates the fight-or-flight response, and fills the body with the stress hormone cortisol. Anxiety also affects our ability to control our thoughts, which is exactly where the breath can become an anecdote.
When we engage in deep and rhythmic breathing, we activate the vagus nerve, and pump the brakes on anxiety and stress. As we return to our inherent state, our mind calms, our heart opens, and our energy is restored.
New to breathwork techniques? Try one of the grounding exercises below!
Support Your Pack
Friends are often the first to notice when we’re not feeling our best and can play an important role in helping us speak up and find ways to feel better.
Check out this page for signs that someone in your pack is struggling, tips on how to reach out and what to say, and ways to ask for help if you need it.
Need help now?
If you’re struggling and need to talk to someone, you’re not alone. There are lots of free, confidential resources available 24/7.
