Tag Archives: low self-esteem

Overcoming Bullying: One Teen’s Story of Bullying and Survival

Posted in Girl Talk: Boys, Bullies and Body Image, Self-Esteem by

I believe being comfortable with myself will make me happy regardless of my situation.

This belief could come from the fact that I was bullied during the fifth and sixth grade. I had been friends with a girl for maybe two or three years, but then I decided to hang out with my other friend more than her. She felt betrayed, but I didn’t really notice what I was doing to her and she never brought it up. Then the bullying started. I figured that eventually she’d get over it or she’d get tired and stop. But she didn’t.

My former friend would pull my hair, punch me, and kick me…she even stabbed me with a pen once and broke my skin. I think my other friends tried to intervene as much as they could without getting anyone in trouble. It just wasn’t enough. I try to analyze why I never said anything and I guess it’s because I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble either. Even though she clearly was not acting like a friend anymore, I still felt loyalty to her from our past history. I also thought that if I didn’t acknowledge the situation, then it wouldn’t actually be real. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. The situation got to a point where it was really unsafe. I don’t know what would have happened if my mom hadn’t finally found out.

I guess she had noticed these marks on my body, but I’ve always kind of been prone to bruising so she didn’t think anything of them. Then one day she was walking me to school – which she rarely did – and she saw my friend pull my hair. She forced me to tell her about the bullying, and I broke down crying. She told me to talk to my teacher – which I did – and then the principal got involved too.

It was really awkward for me because we were a small class of about 30 and my former friend and I ran in the same clique of only five girls. I was nervous about what would happen to the friends I did like. Would they get angry at me for snitching on someone or would they stand by me? Surprisingly, the whole clique continued to hang out even though it was really awkward. My former friend and I just avoided each other completely. I’m not sure how we did that considering our group was so small…I guess that’s what made it so awkward.

On the positive side, I finished that year with a better sense of who I was. I learned from the experience.  I’m not going to ever let it happen to me – or anyone else – again. I swore that to myself. Since I was able to beat my problem and grow from it, now I know that I can handle anything.

Teens Discover Self-Empowerment and Heart Centered Leadership Through Yoga

Posted in General Health, Self-Esteem by

Guest Blog

For three years, I have taught a weekly yoga class to under-resourced teens. It is the happiest hour of my workweek. Both male and female students ranging in age from 13 to 18 participate. Like most teens, my students are navigating foreign and awkward territory. They experience hormonal changes, school stress, peer pressure and trying to become comfortable in their skin. However, my youth also encounter violence, hunger, and unstable home environments. As a result, they can checkout, have low self-esteem, difficulty focusing, act up or be in a constant state of fight or flight. Due to the trauma they face, some suffer from high levels of stress and depression. This all has a long term impact on physical and mental health, academic performance, forming stable and secure relationships, positive goal setting and accomplishment.

Class participants start in a circle. Each youth says a word or phrase that captures how they are feeling in the moment. It’s common to hear a mix of words like, happy, mellow, neutral, stressed, tired and sad. The students complete a reflection exercise and then move to a Hatha or Restorative yoga practice. Each week, the yoga and reflection activities are designed to build upon one another. Through yoga, participants learn to be healthy, engaged, relaxed and empowered; tools which enable them to pursue their dreams and live as leaders. They become comfortable and connected to their bodies and emotions, learn how to self-regulate through deep breathing, practice mindfulness, focus and connect to their hearts. Class ends with students sitting in a closing circle to share their moods. A shift often occurs, and words like relaxed, happy, great and flexible flow out of the teens’ mouths. What are the long-term impacts? One of my students said it best, “When life is stressful, relax. Yoga has taught me that if I stay focused, I can do anything.”

Shannon LeCompte has her M.Ed in Higher Education and is a Director at a national non-profit that empowers youth to attend and graduate from college. She is also a certified yoga instructor and teaches Restorative and Vinyasa yoga to adults and teens in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be reached at  lecompte.shannon@gmail.com

Perfectionism and Protection- A Teen’s Story of Addiction and Control

Posted in General Health, Girl Talk: Boys, Bullies and Body Image by

 She’s a petite 17-year-old girl, with little makeup and a kind smile. She is an only child. She has good relationships with her friends and loves to talk with them about boys, school stress, and gossip. She would never talk specifically about struggle she’s dealing with at home, but she will hint about them indirectly with her friends. She doesn’t talk to any of her friends about serious issues that she’s dealing with nor does she talk to her parents. I innocently asked, who’s there for you?  Her response,“that’s why I now have a therapist.”  She explained how when she was 16 years old she had everything bottled up inside her and struggled with depression, extreme mood swings and sought solace in drugs and alcohol. She talked about how her depression hit an all-time low at one point and she overdosed. Her drug of choice ecstasy and alcohol of choice vodka. Once this happened she had to come clean to her parents and tell them about the depression and obviously the drugs and alcohol. She was extremely scared because she had never opened up to them about “anything” before. When she told her parents about the drug issue her mom cried and her dad was sad. She was surprised by how open and comforting they were about her situation and sent her to rehab. The thing she feels the worse about is that by coming clean to her parents, she’s basically admitting to them that they don’t know her. She’s been lying to them. Lying about who she is and what she does. This truly bothered her the most. She said that time heals all when talking about going into treatment for her drug and alcohol issues. She then tells me that on top of the drug and alcohol issues and the depression, she also had an eating disorder. She had become anorexic for a period of time as a form of control over her life. She felt hiding the eating disorder was very easy to do. She stressed to me that it had nothing to do with body image at all, it was all about control.