iDiscover Tool Kit page buttons

Explore and book iDiscover courses and workshops Resources for parents and carers iDiscover home 

Tools

How are you feeling today? Whether you are feeling great, a bit meh, or not good our toolkit has activities, ideas and tools to help inspire you to explore who you are, grow as a person and learn new things.

Support

There are lots of services in Northamptonshire ready to support you. To get you started did you know you can:

  • Text a school nurse - for friendly, helpful advice on almost any health questions you have. This service is designed for 11- to 19-year-olds: 07507 329 600 Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm. Find out more Children's 0-19 Services

Mental health support from NHFT:

  • Live chat about your mental health - talk to us on CAMHS live 9am to 7pm, Monday to Friday

  • Phone about your mental health - the consultation line for parents, carers, young people and professionals is available 9am to 7pm, Monday to Friday on 0800 170 7055

  • Visit a Northamptonshire Drop-In - no need to book an appointment, just pop in and chat to the teams about how things are going for you. Find out more about Northamptonshire Drop-Ins

If you are in a crisis, at risk of self-harm or suicide - the CAMHS crisis team is open 24/7 and can be accessed by calling 0800 170 7055

Or: 

  1. Text Shout to 85258 at any time day or night. You can find out more by accessing the Give a Shout website 
  2. If your life is at imminent risk, call 999 for emergency help

Check out all NHFT services for young people

 

We have also gathered together some really useful organisations and services that are here to support you, your parents / the person who cares for you.

Click on any of the headings to see a full list of the services available.

Please note NHFT provide this list of services for information and does not have a responsibility for any of the services offered outside of the organisation.

 

Topics

Did you know the NHS.uk website has information on every topic or condition you can think of?

Check out the NHS website

 

We have created information on some topics, related to the services we offer here at NHFT.

Your Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health

Your Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health

Your Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health

We have 5 core emotions: Happiness; Sadness; Anger; Fear and Disgust and over 200 different feeling which relate to them. Our emotions are a natural part of our body’s and our mind’s response to the world around us and how we are processing the things that are happening. Our emotions and important, they can give us warnings about dangers and help us to survive:

Sometimes we can become hyper-aware and start to see dangers where there isn’t really a threat, this can make us feel worried or panicky. The good news is that when we stop and notice how we feel, naming the emotion and checking if it has been triggered by a threat or a perceived threat we can stop worry or panic taking over and regulate our emotions and feel safe again.

 

Breathing is a really important strategy to help regulate our emotions. When we feel stressed, angry or worried we naturally take quicker and more shallow breaths. When we intentionally breathe more slowly and more deeply it changes the physical feelings in our body and helps us to regulate our emotion. There are lots of different breathing techniques to try:

  • 7-11: breathe in for a count of 7 and out for a count of 11, do this 3 times.
  • Square: with your finger trace a square in front of your, breathe in for a count of 4 along the top, hold for 4 down the side, out for 4 along the bottom, hold for 4 along the side and repeat twice more.
  • Blowing bubbles: breathe in slowly and blow bubbles – as you blow the bubbles imagine your worries/tricky feelings blowing away in the bubble.

What if I hate breathing exercises?? Some people find this really tricky, if that is you, don’t worry. Perhaps you would find it better to have a cold drink of water and sip it slowly; suck a sweet for a minute or practice a grounding exercise: Look around, what 5 things can you see? Stay still, what 4 things can you hear? Notice, what 3 things can you touch or feel? What 2 things can you smell? Name 1 good thing about yourself.

From Resources: This is where the video links need to be:

 

 

Promoting wellbeing and mental health

Promoting wellbeing and mental health

 Promoting wellbeing and mental health

Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in a rut or on a bit of a negative cycle but the good news is that by taking little actions we can start to shift that towards feeling better. Take a look at the Action for Happiness website, it is full of resources and great ideas which can help you to boost your wellbeing.

There are some really basic tips to helping us be in the best place for feeling good:

Sleep well

Research has proven that most teenagers need at least 9 ¼ hours sleep each night so if you need to be up for a school bus by 7am you need to be asleep by 9:45pm – lots of young people find sleep a bit tricky, we have a couple of videos in which we share our top tips for getting a great nights sleep:

Why is sleep important video

How to sleep well video

These websites are also packed with helpful tips and advice:

The Sleep Charity

Teen Sleep Hub

Sleep Scotland

Eat well

We need to eat a range of different foods everyday and this should include 5 portions of fruit and vegetables. If we leave long gaps between meals we can get hungry and this can make us feel angry, tired or sad, so eating little and often can be helpful – 3 meals and 3 healthy snacks over the day. If we eat sugary foods (apart from the risk of weight gain and tooth decay) we can end up with having big peaks and drops in our blood sugar – this can make us feel very tired and low in mood when we are in an energy slump. What we eat really does impact our mood, there are even good mood food lists available online such as the BBC Food: Eat Yourself Happy

Exercise

Young People should be physically active for about an hour every day and this helps to burn off stress hormones in our bodies and boosts feel good hormones called endorphins. If you find it awkward to go to a gym or an exercise class and don’t enjoy team sports, try putting some music on and dancing around in your room – you might feel silly at first but it will really boost your mood. There are also loads of YouTube workouts for teenagers which can help you to know what to do and reduce your risk of injury.

Relax and Laugh

Try to plan something to do with family or friends where you can enjoy some relaxed time together, the Anna Freud centre has loads of ideas for fun activities which can boost your mood: Self Care, Anxiety, Depression, Coping Strategies | On My Mind | Anna Freud Centre

Talk

If you have worries or difficult things on your mind talk to someone you trust. If you feel too embarrassed to talk to a person face to face you could use our ChatHealth text service where you can text a school nurse and share your concerns. The number is 07507 329600

Struggling with tricky Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviours

White outline of a clock

Struggling with tricky Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviours

During our teenage years our brains undergo enormous change – the pathways are being reorganised, you have got an amazing ability to think quickly and widely about a huge range of topics. You are gaining more and more control of our emotions and thoughts all of the time, but your brain isn’t fully developed yet and it is going to carry on maturing well in to your 20’s. With all this change going on it is no surprise that sometimes you feel a bit overwhelmed and this can mean that your emotions and behaviours are difficult for you to regulate by yourself sometimes. These two short videos talk about how our brains develop and also why we sometimes struggle to control of emotions and behaviours:

Practicing the breathing and grounding techniques explained above can really help to make changes to how our brain pathways work – this means that even if we have often got angry and slammed a door in the past that we can change that behaviour in the future by using the strategies we have shared – have a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELpfYCZa87g

Our Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviours are all interlinked – we can learn how to influence them on purpose which can make it easier for us to make good choices, feel well and challenge unhelpful thoughts.

When we feel a strong emotion it can drive us to act impulsively, the STOP technique can help us to pause, weigh up our thoughts and feelings and choose our behaviour:

To help you to make decisions when things feel difficult and confusing or to solve a problem, this technique can be really helpful:

It is very common during our teenage years to be a little unsure about our own identity and where we fit with frineds and family, this is part of becoming yourself and over your teenage years you might explore lots of different ways of being you and then as an adult you settle on the version that feels like the best fit. This can make us vulnerable to feeling low self-esteem, this video will give you some tips on boosting your self esteem: Self esteem – an introduction 

Asthma

Asthma

Asthma

We have gathered some useful resources to support you to understand and to manage asthma.

Courses

Community CTA

Courses and workshops

iDiscover courses and workshops

We offer lots of free courses and workshops to help you to live well and learn new things. All our courses and workshops have been created with children, young people and those who care for them. They are a great way to find out more about who you are.

Our courses and workshops include online and in-person events. 

Find out more about our courses and workshops