Mental Health Awareness Week ’23: Lizzy at Teen Connect

For Mental Health Awareness Week 2023, we’re sharing thoughts, experiences, and strategies from the team across our different services on anxiety, the focus of MHAW this year.

Lizzy at Teen Connect

I supported a young person who spoke about being so anxious after watching scary content on YouTube that they could see the scary characters in their bedroom and struggled to go to bed and sleep. I remembered having had a similar experience when I was young and how intense that experience was and confusing as I had people telling me it wasn’t real yet it felt real and looked real and how alone I felt and silly. I let them know they were not alone and looked at the different emotions they may be feeling and how powerful their mind must be to create so vividly the characters and sensations from the content they had watched.

I wondered with them about how if their mind was so powerful it could do that I wonder what else it could do to make them feel safe and comfortable in their bedroom again. The next time I spoke to them they said they had turned the scary characters into M&Ms from the advert which made them laugh as they ate some real M&Ms and the characters didn’t come back and they took control by not watching the same content again.

The sweets have been changed to protect the identity of the sweets involved.