(fewer mood swings).
We can embolden girls with the eating philosophy “Eat when hungry, and stop when full,” or author Michael Pollan’s good advice for healthy eating: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”1 If a girl can connect to and be mindful of the feedback from her body, she will gain wisdom about what kind of self-care she needs. It’s important that she knows that her weight does not determine her self-worth.
One need that girls sometimes underestimate is that of keeping active and moving their bodies every single day to stay fit and healthy. Being physically active aids in digestion, disease prevention, stress reduction, and mental performance and productivity. As well, girls who are physically active are more likely to have confidence and a healthy body image. Physical exertion throughout the day will also improve sleep, and sleep is a non-negotiable necessity: they need at least eight hours each night to restore and rejuvenate. Getting adequate sleep will improve memory and creativity (and grades), build focus and attention, and, again, increase positive moods. A girl has a plethora of activities to choose from—indoor or outdoor, solo or group—and she may want to explore numerous options to find out which she loves most, and which is the best fit for her level of physical ability.
Ultimately, girls need to know that their bodies know exactly what to do and how to achieve wholeness and balance. It’s their job to pay attention, listen, and trust in their bodies, and then to get out the way so their bodies can keep them healthy.
Mental Self
As girls grow, their brains continue to grow too (until age twenty-four). We can teach girls how to care for their brains and not just by wearing helmets when they bike. We can teach girls how to manage their thoughts. It’s not easy to become aware of what you’re thinking and to self-regulate a busy mind—for any of us at any age! Girls need to understand the maxim “Don’t believe everything you think.” Thoughts will come and go like monkeys swinging from branch to branch (the “monkey mind” is a common metaphor in certain schools of meditation), but they don’t need to believe them all. We can encourage girls to investigate their thoughts, releasing any that keep them stuck, by teaching them to first pay attention and to then be curious about their thinking, with questions such as “Is this thought true?” and “How do I know it is true?”
I can tell you that as girls’ brains develop, they start to gain what we call “metacognition,” the ability to think about their thinking. As metacognition develops, girls can improve their awareness of what they are thinking and to what degree. It’s true—sometimes girls’ thoughts are bang on, and can be trusted to guide them to the right decision; other times they are inaccurate or exaggerated. We can help girls sort through their thoughts until they learn to do it themselves. But we’ll never be able to help them do this if we aren’t cultivating connection and talking with them on a regular basis—how else will we know what thoughts keep coming up for them?
Girls greatly benefit from stress-reduction activities such as deep breathing, muscle relaxation, and visualization, to slow down and calm their rapid-fire thinking—or, as I call it, their A-to-Z thinking—and to focus on one thought at a time.
Emotional Self
We can help girls care for their emotions by encouraging them to express themselves. So many girls keep their feelings hidden and buried inside. We can teach them that their emotions can seem much worse and larger when kept on the inside, and convey to them the importance of sharing their inner worlds. Holding feelings inside can negatively influence girls’ physical health and well-being. We can encourage girls to explore their feelings with us. Often, when girls are given the safe space to do so, they feel unburdened and restored. If girls aren’t comfortable confiding in a trusted friend or family member, they might seek alternatives, such as writing in a journal, drawing or colouring, meditation, or yoga.
“Many of the most accomplished girls are disconnecting from the truest parts of themselves, sacrificing essential self-knowledge to the pressures of who they think they ought to be.” RACHEL SIMMONS
Girls need to learn that when they can identify their feelings and express themselves freely, they are caring for their needs and are much more likely to feel relieved, supported, and like they are not alone. It’s also important for girls to be able to match their emotional needs appropriately. By that I mean, if a girl can identify that she is sad, she can get her needs met with a hug or a safe space in which to release her tears, for instance. Conversely, if a girl is feeling happy, she can get her needs met by excitedly telling you all about her amazing day.
Sometimes emotional needs are met in unhealthy or avoidant ways—being angry with the wrong person, or taking a vow of silence and refusing to talk. Worse yet is when girls look for such extreme disconnection that they self-harm. Self-harm is a way for girls to manage uncomfortable and painful feelings. It can relieve built-up emotions, reduce stress, and help girls feel numb so that they “don’t have to feel anything,” especially emotional pain. Self-harm can also be a way to ease social anxieties, or even to retaliate against those who have wronged her. Self-harm is an external indicator of an internal struggle and a blatant cry for help.
Self-harm is an effective behaviour insofar as it provides short-term relief, but it comes with negative long-term consequences. By the time a girl engages in self-harm, she is desperate and may feel she has no other option. Self-harm can take the form of cutting or burning skin, scratching, binge drinking or excessive drug use, or an eating disorder. (If you suspect that a girl is participating in extreme self-harm, please seek professional help.) More subtle forms of self-harm include emotional eating, social isolation and withdrawal, harsh self-criticism or perfectionism, and self-neglect, such as ignoring personal hygiene. All these behaviours have one thing in common: they are seen as superior alternatives to feeling unbearable emotional pain.
A recent—and startling—discovery by sociologists is that a proliferation of online chat rooms for girls who participate in self-harm has shifted self-harm from a psychological disorder to a subculture that involves exploring how to harm oneself “better.” With this shift, self-harm took on new social meanings, remaining a behaviour practiced by psychologically troubled individuals who used it to soothe their trauma, but also it became a legitimated mode of emotional expression and relief among a wider population.”2 As I see it, the insidious potential of the Internet to encourage harmful behaviour is just another reason girls need you to spend time with them face to face.
Whatever form self-harm takes, we need to see this subculture as one demanding our attention and intervention. Girls are not the problem here; the problem is the problem. Something is wrong, and there are reasons behind this extreme, devastating form of disconnection. As the supporters of girls, we must figure out the why that is driving these destructive behaviours, so that we can assist them in getting the help they need and in ultimately making healthier choices. Self-harm is a clear marker that strong needs—usually coping tools and, specifically, self-care—are not being met. Self-care, then, is the preventive approach to self-harm.
Let’s rewind. Take the girl who has had a terrible day: she is rejected by a boy and called a disparaging name like “bitch” or “slut”; she feels as if her life has gone from bad to worse. Devastated, she returns home from school, only to find her parents both working late again and none of her friends responding to her texts. She resorts to cutting because she wants to numb out, but also because she feels that nobody cares, so why should she?
How can we prevent her from getting to a place of such despair? A focus on self-care may not prevent all acts of self-harm, but foundational work on the front end can drastically decrease the likelihood of the destructive behaviour and illuminate alternative paths to managing difficult feelings and practising self-care.
Spiritual Self
