Shrinking the Smirch (PDF)

'Shrinking the Smirch: The Young People's Edition' is a workbook to help young people manage stress, gain confidence, resist peer pressure and stay healthy. This book helps young people cope with the usual challenges of being a young adults including anxiety, peer pressure, exam stress, bullying, social media, etc. and is also appropriate for clinical conditions such as panic, eating problems, self harm and low mood. This resource is about the mind, what goes on in your head and coping with all the pressure and challenges young people have to face at home and school. This unique workbook for teenagers asks you to pretend these tricky thoughts and feelings are coming from a smirch, an unkind imaginary friend, a mind bully who wants to pull you into the pit of despair. This resource gives a lot of ideas about how you can beat this mind bully and cope better with all the thoughts and feelings that make you anxious, lonely and upset. It has been written with the help of a diverse group of young people who have shared their stories so you can see you are not alone and that there are things you can do to make life feel better. Jo Johnson has been working as a neuropsychologist for eighteen years. She worked for two decades within the NHS but now works as an independent consultant teaching and writing for several of the national neurology charities. Her specialist interests include brain injury, dementia and multiple sclerosis. She has written several books to meet the needs of children who have a parent with a neurological diagnosis including 'How to talk to your kids about MS' and 'My parent has a brain injury; a guide for young people'.