Life Skills & Leadership: Unit 1, Session 6: Stress and Emotions | Page 68 of 93Instructional Sequence
I. Motivation (10 minutes)
Materials:
An empty school bag or shopping bag
Several books
A. The Weight of Stress
Participants identify the negative effects of accumulated emotional stress.
- Invite a volunteer to assist you. Say:
“I need some help introducing today’s topic. Would one of you be willing to hold this school bag for
a few moments?”- Hand the bag to a participant and instruct that person to hold it in her or his hand, extending the
arm straight out at a right angle from the side of her/his body. As you mention each of the
following stressors, add another book to the bag while coaching the volunteer to keep her/his arm
straight.
“We all have many responsibilities in our lives. Some are at home, like taking care of brothers and
sisters, doing household chores, and helping to cook or clean. Some responsibilities are at school,
like doing homework, writing papers, preparing experiments, or getting ready for examinations.
Other responsibilities are in your community, like getting along with neighbors, attending a youth
club, or participating in a religious community. Still other responsibilities are with your friends,
meeting them after school or on weekends, being in a musical group or on a sports team together,
or just hanging out.”- By now the volunteer is probably straining to keep her/his arm out straight. If not, ask how much
longer s/he would be able to maintain this position without becoming tired. How easy would it be
for her/him to keep holding all these “responsibilities?”
“The more responsibilities that get piled onto us (or that we accept), the harder it is to keep holding
them all up. Eventually we become tired.”- Relieve your volunteer of her/his burden, thank her/him, and ask her/him to sit down. Ask
participants to list other emotions or effects they have felt as a result of the weight of too many
responsibilities all at once. (Possible answers: anger; resentment; frustration; loss of sleep;
anxiousness; fear; feeling smothered or crushed; feeling like there is no way out.)
B. Summary
Say:
“Having to deal with many different responsibilities all at once creates stress. Too much stress can
affect your sleep and make you more likely to become sick. It can harm your relationship with friends