Managing Stress and Distress: How to Help

Managing Stress and Distress is part of the How to Help series of books exploring issues commonly faced by children and young people at home and in school. Managing Stress and Distress offers an accessible introduction to how heightened stress levels in young people can lead to distressed behaviour--and how to manage both. We have left behind a time when schools found it easier to exclude ’difficult’ children than understand them, but the evolutionary and psychological factors that often underpin stress responses and their resulting problematic behaviours remain poorly understood. Offering a complete, compassionate guide to what stress is, how it arises, the purpose it serves, and the issues it can cause, Stan Godek argues for a trauma-informed approach of managing short-term distress while also reducing long-term stress levels via a regular practice of mindfulness--and shows how parents, carers, teachers, and schools can help.

STAN GODEK is the founder and director of SG Training and Consultancy. He is a psychologist with a background of working with children affected by trauma. His work was informed first by attachment theory, and later by the theories of Erik Erikson and Alan Sroufe. He has worked in the UK, Ireland and Russia, and has also managed residential childcare services. Stan has developed a wide range of techniques and exercises designed to help young people to self-regulate their moods and emotions, and to cope more effectively with the various negative experiences that have impacted on their lives.