Welcome to the first module of LUNA! LUNA is a program that helps teenagers work through feelings of fear and anxiety. During your journey through this program, you will learn how to identify and change unhelpful anxious thoughts and behaviors. LUNA will help you achieve your goals, and we hope the skills you learn will help you for the rest of your life.
One of the exciting things about this journey is that you are not alone! You will do some of the activities on your own, and some with your parent. You’ll also receive some guidance from a therapist every two weeks.
This week, we will introduce you to our program and help you understand more about anxiety. You will spend about 30 minutes reading and doing activities.
Meet Sophia and George
First, let’s meet Sophia and George. In LUNA, you will follow along with them and work on your own anxiety so that you can achieve your own goals.
What is Anxiety?
Hello, meet Sophia and George! Sophia is a 13-year-old girl who loves anime. She loves drawing anime characters in her sketchbook and making up characters and storylines in her free time. Now, meet George. George is a 16-year-old boy who loves everything about medieval history. He spends most of his time reading fantasy books about medieval times and playing his favorite medieval video game.
Sophia and George love doing these things, but sometimes they struggle with anxiety, fears, and worries. Anxiety is an emotion or feeling everyone has that tells us something bad is going to happen. It is similar to fear, worry, or nervousness. Anxiety does not feel great, but sometimes it can help us by telling us things about our world that can be helpful to act on. For example, Sophia often feels anxious or nervous before a math test. This can be helpful because her anxiety tells her to study, which will help her do better on the test.
But, sometimes, anxiety can be unhelpful. When our anxiety is too much and too intense, it can be hard to overcome. For example, Sophia sometimes feels so anxious about her math test that she can’t focus while she studies. Sophia may even avoid studying, which then leads her to receive a bad grade.
Feeling anxious, even when there is no immediate danger, can also be unhelpful. For example, George often worries about having a serious illness. He checks his body a lot for any signs of disease, spends hours searching for symptoms online, and repeatedly asks his parents if they think he is sick. Even when his doctor tells him he is healthy, he still struggles to believe it. This makes it hard for him to focus on school and enjoy his favorite activities.
Anxiety like this is difficult to manage, but the LUNA program is designed to help teenagers manage unhelpful feelings of anxiety or worry. You are taking a great step towards overcoming anxiety by participating in LUNA! Welcome to the journey!
In LUNA, you and your parent should complete one module at a time, going in order from Module 1 to Module 12. Try to complete one module each week. For each module, you will...
- Read and watch videos to help you overcome your anxiety and fears.
- Work with your parent to complete tasks that will help you manage your anxiety.
- Practice what you learned after each task – sometimes with your parent, and sometimes on your own.
- Meet with a therapist every two weeks to discuss any challenges you’re experiencing and to receive feedback and guidance.
- Come up with different ways to keep yourself motivated throughout your journey. You may receive rewards or extra support to help you reach your goals!
Throughout the LUNA modules, there will be videos like you just watched, as well as worksheets/figures for you to use. To use the worksheets, just click on the associated link. Then, you may either print out the worksheet to fill it out on paper or save the worksheet onto your device to fill it out electronically. Be sure to save the worksheets on your device before filling them out to make sure you don’t lose your work! If you would like to go back to a worksheet or find a specific worksheet for any reason, you can visit the Worksheet Library where we will have all the LUNA worksheets listed and ready to download.
It’s very important for you to practice what you learn in LUNA every week. Managing anxiety is not easy, and it can’t be done overnight. However, if you try your best and practice every week, you will be sure to make progress and learn how to overcome feelings like anxiety or worry.
We know that it might be easy to forget to work on the LUNA modules and complete the associated activities. Because of this, we want to give you some tips to help you incorporate LUNA into your schedule! It may help you to add LUNA modules and activities to your Google calendar or onto your physical calendar at home. You could also set timers on your phone that remind you to work on LUNA or download a scheduling app that can send you reminders to work on the program. Good luck! You can do this!