FADE - reducing anxious thoughts

This week we have had five work experience pupils with us from a local school. One of them decided to write us a review of our FADE course:

My name is X. I am 15 years old and I took part in the Vibe FADE course - this course addresses anxiety reduction. I found this course really helpful in helping me learn anxiety coping mechanisms and understand where my anxiety comes from and why it can sometimes turn up in more severe forms. 

Personally, my anxiety can turn up in many different ways such as breathing difficulty and picking at my fingers. FADE helped me realise that when my anxiety comes up like this there are different coping mechanisms I should use to calm myself down so I am not harming myself. 

In FADE there are many different things that you do throughout the course, there are questions to answer - although you will never be forced to answer any questions you are asked I found being asked specific questions really helpful rather than very vague questions as it meant I knew what I wanted to answer. 

There are also icebreaker games to play with other people in your course so you get used to each other and feel more comfortable talking to each other throughout the time you participate in the FADE course. 

There are also lots of crafts you do throughout the FADE course like making stress balls or making god’s eyes out of wool and ice lolly sticks, friendship bracelets, or painting worry stones. These crafts are often included what is called chat, craft, and coaching. These chats are really helpful because you can chat about what it feels like when your anxiety gets in your head and have some coaching on how to handle it whilst also crafting something to calm you down, that you can also craft when you get anxious later on after the course in your own time. 

This teaches you helpful coping mechanisms whilst also giving you time to just talk which as teenagers I feel isn't something we get often. 

When you start the FADE course you get a booklet full of lots of different activities that you do during the course, usually on the first session you and others will fill out an about you section, this is really fun as it sparks up conversations with people you won’t normally talk to and can be really fun to learn about new people. 

I enjoyed being able to write and clarify my personal thoughts on anxiety. The Calm Planner was also really helpful and makes it really easy to control your anxiety and know what's going on when you do get anxious. 

My favourite task was the unwrap. It is a diagram with three circles, a circle of control, influence, and concern. It really helped me sort out my anxiety and what I can do about different anxious scenarios I have and which ones I can actually help and which ones I can’t help. It made me feel much more calm to understand that there are some things I can’t help and that’s ok because that happens. 

I found the FADE course really helpful, it helped me learn about myself and how I can help myself, it also made me feel much more comfortable because I knew where my anxious thoughts were coming from and why they turned up so severe.