We’re supporting Children’s Mental Health Week from 3-9 February. Here, our Family Support & Bereavement Services Team share some helpful information in conjunction with the week.
Children’s Mental Health Week is an important event in the calendar each year, shining a light on mental health awareness for children and young people. From 3-9 February 2025, we’re supporting Place 2 Be in their aim to equip and empower children and young people to embrace self-awareness and focus to, ‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself’.
The KEMP Family Support & Bereavement Services Team have put together some useful information below to coincide with Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week 2025. KEMP Counsellors work with children and young people who are living with loss, using creative therapeutic techniques and tools to help talk through grief, fix positive memories in place, and express challenging emotions.
Take a look through the information below, or skip to a relevant section:
- Understanding your own Self Awareness
- Self Awareness – Bereavement, Grief and Loss
- Self-awareness and your own emotions
- Disney’s Inside Out Helping Us to Understand Emotions
- Self-Awareness in action – Reflective Practice
Understanding your own Self Awareness
Having a good understanding of your own self-awareness helps you to build upon your own resilience. This helps you to better process, respond and look after yourself and your own emotional wellbeing, helping you to grow and develop as a person, enabling you to understand and accept yourself.
Having a good self-awareness also helps you to learn solution focused skills for you to use when times can be tough. Solution focused skills as a way of thinking that can help you to make positive changes and implement strategies that you can put into place during certain situations for support.
Self-awareness helps identify and celebrate your individuality, strengths and interests and being aware of what helps you, when finding something hard. Self-awareness helps you to know yourself, grow yourself.
Self Awareness – Bereavement, Grief and Loss
When experiencing a bereavement, the grief and loss can have a big impact on your emotional, physical health and wellbeing. Some people may find it harder to find the energy and motivation to look after themselves.
Having a good recognition and understanding of your own self-awareness is an important skill to help you through difficult times of bereavement. It enables you to recognise what you are feeling and what you need as an individual to help support you through this time.
Self-awareness and your own emotions
Emotions are important for they tell you what you are feeling. When you identify and express feelings you can be better equipped to respond through difficult situations. Helping you to recognise what you need.
In grief and loss, self-awareness is important as it helps you to navigate through a range of complex emotions, that you may find become overwhelming.
It can help you to think of emotions like traffic light signals:
Green:
Emotions that make you feel good, safe and secure – emotions like, joy, comfort, calm and happiness.
Amber:
Emotions that are there to warn you need to slow down, have a little pause, like worry, sadness and being unsure.
Red:
Telling you to stop, have a break before you may do or say something that may upset yourself or others – emotions like anger, frustration, fear and sadness.
Disney’s Inside Out Helping Us to Understand Emotions
You may have seen the Disney films Inside Out and Inside Out 2. They follow a young girl called Riley and her emotions as she is growing up, experiencing and going through different changes. The feelings we observe her go through: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger, Anxiety, Envy, Boredom, Embarrassment and Nostalgia.
The film reminds us how important all these emotions are to feel and understand, and that they are all normal for us to experience in our lives. These emotions can also be experienced in grief and loss.
It is important to understand that even though in an ideal world we would like to feel happy all the time, there will be times in life that we won’t, and that this is okay. The main thing is knowing what helps us during difficult times and being confident in reaching out to talk to someone if you need to.
Place2Be have partnered with Here4You this Children’s Mental Health Week. Here4You are supported by the Walt Disney Company, the creators of Inside Out and Inside Out 2.
Self-Awareness in action – Reflective Practice
It can be useful to start to explore reflection. The first step being to take time and space for yourself, to reflect, explore and understand your own emotions and feelings that you may have felt over the day or during a particular time.
Reflection can be done in a variety of ways. It’s best finding a way you are most comfortable with – whether you prefer doing it alone, talking it through with someone, or through writing, art, creatively or visually.
Reflection can help identify how you mentally and physically feel and respond to situations.
It can help you to recognise healthier coping strategies and responses, which you can plan and put in place in situations that you find challenging. Reflection can help you to reinstall positive affirmation on what has gone well, what you have enjoyed, building upon your confidence and identify strengths which can be helpful through times of grief.
Building Self Awareness Through Reflection
Reflection could be something which is a new concept for yourself, or you may be subconsciously implementing already. Remember reflecting on your emotions and feelings can help build self-awareness on how things can impact you.
By being able to recognise the impact daily things can have on you, from different activities, situations, experiences, interactions with people and changes around you, can help you understand and plan how you can restore and support your own well-being.
Reflective practice helps you identify warning signs, feelings of discomfort, thoughts, behaviours and responses. Enabling you to recognise and learn which strategies you can implement that work best for you.
Reflecting on memories of the person who has died can be of comfort and also help cement memories. Our Family Support Bereavement Services team have shared information about some memory activities ideas which you can read on our website.
Remember: during times of grief and loss it is important to ensure you to take the time to look after yourself.
Bereavement Support in the Wyre Forest
At KEMP Hospice, our Bereavement Support Team are here to help Children & Young People across the Wyre Forest who are living with grief and loss, whether they have an existing connection to KEMP Hospice or not.
All our support is provided free of charge, and for children & young people will usually take place either in the hospice or we will visit them in school. Find out more about the support available to Children, and Young People or how to make a referral for KEMP Family Support & Bereavement Services.