By Mary Shinn Health & topics reporter
Thursday, May 23, 2019 5:03 AM Updated: Friday, May 24, 2019 2:19 PM
Big Picture High School sophomore Ava Aragon taught her peers how to focus on the flame of a candle this spring to help them calm down.
The lesson was part of a class focused on understanding trauma and stress – and learning to manage and overcome it.
Focusing on a flame helps Aragon with her own anxiety, she said.
“It gives you an opportunity just to focus on the now,” she said.
Aragon is far from the only teenager dealing with anxiety. A Pew Research Center poll recently showed anxiety and depression top the list of concerns among teens, beating out drug addiction, alcohol and bullying.
In Southwest Colorado, Doty Shepard, who founded Resilient Colorado, a nonprofit, is teaching teens and adults to understand and manage the stress and trauma that can affect their brains and behaviors.
Shepard taught Aragon’s class at Big Picture about stress and has also led other trainings for high school students and adults in the region in the last year.
“Students today are ready to talk about – and they want to talk about – things like trauma and suicide and violence, and the adults aren’t ready. It’s difficult for them,” she said.
However, whether teens or adults understand them or not, the effects of severe trauma can shape their lives.
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