If you haven’t been feeling like ‘you’ lately, you might want to try and find out why. This booklet is to help you to make sense of what is going on. It has ideas from the young people who helped write this booklet.
If you haven’t been feeling like ‘you’ lately, you might want to try and find out why.
You can do this by exploring:
- The things that are happening now
- The things that have happened in the past
- What is important to you today
- The people who support you may call this a ‘formulation’. But for ease in this booklet, we will call it telling your story.
This booklet is to help you to make sense of what is going on. It has ideas from the young people who helped write this booklet. They found it useful so hopefully you will too.
Good luck!
- Spot important events or relationships
- Think about what may cause difficulties
- Understand what impacts on how you are thinking or feeling
- Recognise your personal strengths and the support you have around you
- Spot what makes things better or worse on a daily basis
- Look at changes you could make, next steps, and what would help you to make those changes?
There are sections in this booklet where you can write down your thoughts and feelings. You may want to keep this booklet in a safe place.
Telling your story covers five main areas. We can use these to make a plan for meaningful change:
- Past – What has happened in your past that may be important?
- Triggers – Things that spark a reaction: What was happening when your current difficulties started?
- Current – What is happening in your life right now? What is good? What is difficult?
- Positives – Do you have helpful people in your life? What are you good at? What is going well?
- What makes change difficult? – Is anything happening that makes it hard to make changes?
- The Plan – Start thinking about how you want to make changes and feel better.
Sometimes, things that happened in the past can still affect how we feel now. This can be in helpful or harmful ways.
Examples of important past experiences may be:
- A difficult relationship with a parent
- Having good friends
- Going through a rough breakup
- Having to look after people in your family
- Being bullied at school
- Having your first boyfriend / girlfriend / partner
Take some time to think about the important events (good and bad) that have happened in your life.
Draw them on the timeline:
Birth
Started school?
Joined a club?
Started secondary school?
Now
Sometimes, the things that make you feel upset or happy are clear. Other times, you can get upset or happy and don’t know where it has come from or why, it just seems to happen.
We may call these triggers.
It is helpful to recognise which things are triggers for you as it can help you manage how you feel.
Examples of triggers may be:
- A date that is important to you
- A friend sending you a lovely picture
- You or someone you love becoming ill
- A fight with a friend or a family member
Over the next few days, try writing down when you feel strong emotions - upset or angry, scared or anxious, happy or excited. Did anything happen that could have made you feel like that? This space may not be large enough! Please continue on another sheet if you want to.
| How I feel | What happened beforehand? |
Now you have thought about your past. It is important to think about what your life looks like now. What have you been doing over the last week? What are you doing today?
Making sense of what is good and what is bad can help you think about what is most important to try to change.
Examples of what is happening now might be:
- Having a difficult time with work at school
- Falling in love
- Having an argument with a friend
- Starting something new
- Family problems
Take a moment to think about your own life…
- Things that are important to you…
- Things that make your life challenging…
- Things you want to change …
Sometimes, when things are difficult, it can be hard to notice what is going well.
Positives can simply be eating food or remembering to drink water. Or, they may be having a good friend, or being skilled at drawing or painting. Positives can make your challenges easier to face.
Examples of what is going well:
- Having someone to talk to
- Something in school is going well
- Having good friends
- A hobby or interest
- Doing exercise
- Playing games
- Having fun
Often, people find it helpful to write down what they are happy to have in their lives. Try writing down some of the things that made you feel happy or positive about yourself. Doing this can help you to start feeling better.
We all feel we get stuck sometimes and it can be difficult to make changes. It is important to try and work out what makes change difficult.
Examples of what makes change difficult may be:
- Fear of the unknown
- Thinking that things will not change
- Doing the same things again and again…
- Unhelpful ways of coping
Think about what might be holding you back in your own life.
To make changes in your life it is helpful to understand what is (most) important to you. These can be called your ‘values’.
Values are important because they can help you to grow and develop. They help you to create the future you want. When you use your values to make decisions, you focus on what is important to you.
Examples of values may be:
- Trust
- Loyalty
- Equality
- Honesty
- Caring
- Trying hard
Below is a list of values. Tick any of the values that are important to you in your life. You can add your own values:
- Having close friends
- Being ambitious and hard working
- Having loving relationships
- Being good at what you do
- Having a life filled with adventure
- Having an exciting life
- Enjoying food and drink
- Being creative
- Being self-sufficient
- Designing things
- Working things out – solving problems
- Trying to be a better person
- Being true to religious faith and beliefs
- Being physically fit
Once you have taken the time to think about:
- The things that are happening now
- The things that have happened in the past
- What is important to you today
It can be helpful to make sense of how different experiences can have an affect on you today.
Example of how a past experience could impact on you today:
Past: Bullied in Primary School
Triggers: Had argument with my friend.
Current: Don’t like myself, not going out, friend not talking to me
Values: Having loving relationships.
Can you see how ‘being bullied in Primary School’ and ‘Had an argument with my best friend’ have affected the information in ‘Current’?
Because ‘Having loving relationships’ is important to this person, an argument with their friend might make them feel alone.
Think about some of the information in this workbook. Can you see how some of your experiences might be connected to or impact others? Or to things that are happening for you now?
The boxes below might help you to make some links:
| Past |
| Triggers |
| Current |
| Positives |
| What makes change difficult |
| Values |
| You can use this box to write how your experience or event is having an impact |
Remember that all these factors together can help you make sense of your feelings and difficulties today. It is important to think about this, when planning important changes.
Once you have made some sense of how your past has impacted on your story you can you can set some goals to positively change your future.
| Big goals are... |
| Smaller steps I can take to achieve these goals are… |
You can make your goals easier to achieve by breaking them down into smaller, more doable steps. Let’s imagine you value being independent but you’re afraid of using buses…
Step 1 Walk to the end of your street
Step 2 Walk to the bus stop (with a friend, if you prefer)
Step 3 Ride the bus with a friend
Step 4 Ride the bus by yourself
Try not to put too much pressure on yourself to complete these steps quickly. It is okay to take your time - remember progress looks different to everyone.
You can use the information you wrote down earlier in the booklet to help to fill out the boxes on these pages.
You can write your story so that it focuses on different parts of your life, for example being at school (e.g. what happened at school in the past? What went well for you at school?). Some prompts have been included to get you started.
| Past: What has happened in the past? | |
| Triggers: Has there been anything that has made you particularly upset? |
|
| Current: What is happening in this part of your life today? |
|
| Positives: What is going well? | |
| What makes change difficult: Is anything happening that makes it hard to make changes? |
|
|
Continue on this page to write down what
My goals are...
Small steps to achieve these goals are...
|
Is there another part of your life you would like to understand better? You might like to think about things like your family life or your social life...
You can use the boxes below to think about this.
| Past: What has happened in the past? | |
| Triggers: Has there been anything that has made you particularly upset? |
|
| Current: What is happening in this part of your life today? |
|
| Positives: What is going well? | |
| What makes change difficult: Is anything happening that makes it hard to make changes? |
|
|
Continue on this page to write down what
My goals are...
Small steps to achieve these goals are...
|
This workbook alone may not provide all the answers. It will help you to make sense of the person you are today and develop into the person you want to be.
It is important to know that a formulation is never really finished, because your story is still being told. Your story will change over time as you discover more about yourself and your situation. Remember to go back to your stories and update them as you learn more about yourself.
“Note / doodle pages throughout the book enable young people to personalise it, and take notes as they go. I like this because having a physical booklet that can be returned to and worked on over time could help young people understand why they are where they are.”
“You can write formulations about small parts of your life or your life as a whole.”
“Think about adding a reminder after the positive exercise, about why completing this book is both important and a positive step.”
“Everyone should get one of these to fill in.”
“Why hasn’t this been done sooner?”
“Positivity activity is good because keeping up positivity making the tasks in the booklet more enjoyable.”
“The ‘helpful resources’ links are ‘really helpful, thank you’.”
Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust
A range of mental health self help guides available to view/download in various formats
www.
Kooth
www.
Living Life
www.
NHS Inform
www.
William Howard School
www.
Young Minds
www.youngminds.org.uk
Beating Anxiety One Step at a Time: Overcoming Anxiety to Reach my Goals [leaflet]. (2015).n.p.