Podcast - Sienna Fernandez

The podcast, "Sessions with Sienna," focuses on a variety of topics to empower and educate listeners. The first episode discusses mental health in youth, specifically anxiety, depression, and stress. Sienna and her guest, Mike Neihart, a middle school PE teacher, share their personal experiences with stress and anxiety and how they manage it. They also discuss the causes and effects of stress and anxiety in youth and ways to help others who are struggling. Natural remedies, such as exercise, meditation, and journaling, are mentioned as effective methods for treating anxiety and stress. Long-term effects of chronic stress can include health problems like high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Stress and anxiety can also impact a person's lifestyle and relationships. The main takeaway is the importance of understanding and managing stress and anxiety in a positive way and supporting others who may be struggling. Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Sessions with Sienna. My name is Sienna, and I'm a ninth grader at Xavier. What this podcast is, it's all in this name, Sessions with Sienna, where I talk about a variety of topics. In this podcast, I want to leave my listeners feeling empowered and hopefully leave having gained some new knowledge. So, sit back and enjoy, and who knows, you might learn something new. Hello everyone, welcome to the first episode of my podcast, Sessions with Sienna. I am very excited to be here, and I'm ready to talk about our topic for today. To start us off strong, I'll be talking about mental health in youth. Specifically, I'll be diving into anxiety, depression, and stress, and the causes, effects, and how to help treat these as well. But, before I get into the details, I have my uncle as a very special guest with me for today, and I will let him introduce himself now. Hello, I'm Mike Neihart, I'm a middle school PE teacher. Here today to talk about mental health in youth with Sienna, something I am very familiar with as a teacher. Thank you for that. So, today we will be talking about these mental health issues and how to help treat them. It would be helpful to listen to this episode because it is very good knowledge to have and can apply to anyone. So, help yourself and those around you, and let's get started. To start us off, I would like to ask and answer, what does stress look like for you personally, how do you handle it, and how does it affect your everyday life? For me, stress can come from work and also from school. The things that stress me out range from my students misbehaving to being on top of my own schoolwork for my master's program. Trying to manage my social life while at the same time trying to get work done can be a lot for me. It is hard to balance too much of my plate all at once sometimes. I personally deal with my stress by exercising. Working out, doing yoga and meditation really helps me deal with my stress and makes it easier to handle. Thank you for answering. In the same way, I also often get stressed about school. For example, if I am behind in work or if I have upcoming tests or quizzes. I can also feel stressed about sports, especially dance. If I have upcoming competitions or if there are high tensions, I can feel anxious and sometimes I don't know how to deal with these feelings. However, I have found that listening to music, relaxing, and sleeping are good ways to help with these feelings. However, what works best for me is just to let it all out. This could be writing it out or telling a friend how I have been feeling. Stress can get the best of everyone, but it is important to learn how to manage it. For this next section, we will be focusing on our experience with stress and others. For you, what does stress or anxiety look like in youth in your life? What do you think are some contributing factors to this stress and how can you help others in your life who are dealing with these same feelings? For me, I often see my students stressed or anxious. This can look like kids acting out and misbehaving. Some contributing factors to this could be from their school life, home life, social life, or really anything. I can help students deal with this stress by being a safe place for others to come to. Even just letting others know that they can talk to me can be comforting for some. I can also recommend or reach out to others that might be able to help. Communicating trust and being understanding with my students is also a big part of making students feel comfortable. Thank you for answering. For me, I see stress in my friends mostly. This looks like spacing out, being quiet, fidgeting, and just acting different from how they normally do. Some contributing factors to this could be, just like you said, school life, home life, social life, and plenty of other things. Some ways to treat stress and anxiety are taking medication, going to therapy, and practicing self-care. And ways to help others personally around me struggling are to listen and give advice when they need it. And now I have a couple more questions for you. So let's start with number one. How can stress be managed in early stages or the early childhood? I believe connecting with others is a good way to handle stress. Talking to somebody you can trust and confide in. Just basically improving communication efforts with others also that you may be having issues with. One thing I can tell my students is get organized. Better organizational skills will cause less stress in the future. Being mindful of what causes stress and try to avoid those things that do cause stress. Using self-care. Taking care of yourself first. Make sure so that you do not become stressed out. And when you do get stressed out, don't have the big meltdown. You see that? They make a small problem bigger. So just try to avoid the big meltdown and be ready for what stress happens. It's going to happen. Just know how positive ways to deal with it. Thank you for your insight. Now let's move on to the next question. Number two. Do you believe traditional or natural remedies work for treating anxiety and stress? And what are some of these? Big in the natural remedies. For me, exercise is big because being a PE teacher, I use it for myself. Physical exercise helps me reduce my stress and anxiety. And I try to instill that into my students also. Meditation is another good thing. Just things like yoga or just slow, deep breaths. Anything that calms you down. Journaling is really good if you can write down your feelings or what's causing the stress. Maybe it will prevent you from having stress or maybe it will just get the stress out of your mind. And time management is big. I see students always trying to do their homework last minute or trying to study for a quiz or test last minute. If they just use their time properly, I think it will cause less stress in the end. And thank you. So the next question, we have number three. How can anxiety get worse as time passes? And what are the long-term effects of this? Long-term or chronic stress can lead to a lot of anxiety and worsening symptoms. And it can even lead to certain specific health problems. Some of these health problems, if students leave stress unchecked, could be high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and even diabetes. And thank you. And so lastly, we have number four. How can stress and anxiety affect a person's lifestyle and everyday work or school life? It could cause a lot of problems in one's social relationships with others. Whether it be at home, at work, wherever you're at, it could just become not even you anymore. The stress affects how you act and how you behave around others. So it could turn you into a whole different person. So to wrap things up, let's go over what we discussed today. So first, we talked about what anxiety was to us and how we personally dealt with it. Then, we talked about how we see anxiety and stress in the youth around us and how we can be of help to those who do suffer. What do you think are some big takeaways from today's talk? Well, I personally learned how to handle stress in a positive way. And also, I can help show others how to do this as well. That's great. I learned that anxiety and stress are big issues within youth and can be very harmful if not treated properly. Using this information that we learned today, we can go out and support others and ourselves with these mental health problems. Well, I think that's it for today. Thank you for tuning in to this first episode of Sessions with Sienna. And thank you to my special guest for joining me as well. I hope to see you all in the next episode. And remember to reach out and be someone others can reach out to as well. Thank you for tuning in to this first episode of Sessions with Sienna. And thank you to my special guest for joining me as well. I hope to see you all in the next episode. And remember to reach out and be someone others can reach out to as well. Bye! Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna Sessions with Sienna