Chapters 3-4
Finding Your Way Out of A Dark Place
Introducing Distress & Resilience
Key Learning Points
1.Introduce key concepts: Define the keywords distress and resilience.
2. Normalize distress as an expected part of life: Distress will intermittently occur in 100% of people. We want students to reflect on Harry’s experience of distress and how it may relate to their own experiences and those of their peers and family members.
3.Introduce anxiety: Anxiety, fear and worries are among the most common forms of distress.
4.Introduce “Stress Busters”: Having already considered Harry’s risk/protective factors, we now note that protective factors (such as friends, hobbies, and humour) can help people to be resilient and can even be deployed strategically to combat distress (i.e. Stress Busters).
CBT Foundations
CBT is a talk therapy designed to treat specific mental disorders, most commonly anxiety and depression. In this section we discuss distress (with anxiety as a specific example of it) and resilience (with “Stress Busters” as a method for achieving it).
Distress refers to any form of mental discomfort or suffering. It is often precipitated by risk factors such as those listed in Chapters 1-2. Since everyone will experience negative life events (a bad mark, a fight with parents, the death of a loved one etc.) at some point in their lives, everyone will also experience distress. This will happen at different times for different people and even those with few risk factors may suddenly find themselves in distress if they have a negative experience.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a special kind of distress that is sometimes used to describe the temporary worry, nervousness, or fear we experience before and/or during a challenging life experience. It may also be used to describe more persistent feelings that can arise in mental disorders.
These include:
Phobias (fear of specific things or situations such as heights or insects)
Social anxiety (fear of appearing foolish, being criticized, or rejected)
Separation anxiety (fear of being away from parents/caregivers/attachment figures)
Panic disorders (intense feelings of anxiety that may provoke the thought that one will die or go crazy)
Agoraphobia (fear of spaces where a person feels trapped with no easy escape)
General Anxiety Disorder (frequent worries and physical symptoms)
Health worries (worries about having illness or physical problems)
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] (repeated memories of traumas with high levels of distress)
Anxiety can be a profound experience which includes distressing emotions, worry-thoughts, bodily sensations, and urges to escape from the situation. Worry thoughts will be covered in detail starting in Chapter 6. Intense physical symptoms may include sweating, dizziness, chest tightness, a fast heart beat, shortness of breath, nausea, tingling in the fingers or toes or a feeling detached from one’s body. These sensory experiences can be misinterpreted to mean that a person is in danger or that he or she may die or go crazy.
These symptoms originate from the “fight or flight” system we share with other animals. When confronted with danger, this system prepares our bodies to fend off a predator or, preferably, escape the situation. Pumping blood and oxygen to our muscles is a useful reaction to help us run away if we are in the forest and see a bear, but it is not particularly helpful if we have social anxiety and are invited to a party. Unfortunately, when it comes to anxiety, humans have a physiology that is not well adapted to 21st century life. Youth often feel confused and disoriented by anxiety symptoms and an explanation of the “fight or flight” system and how it frequently misfires can be helpful (for both young people and adults).
It is important to note that the urge to escape tends to feed anxiety (e.g. if you run away from a specific kind of insect every time you see one, you can never learn that it is harmless). The goal of CBT for anxiety is, therefore, almost always to expose people to their fears so that they can learn to master them.
Resilience refers to the ability to recover from and/or overcome difficulties. People generally draw on protective factors to accomplish this.
“Stress Busters” are a person’s toolbox of skills that they use to manage distress and to find paths to resilience. These can include people, places, activities, hopes, dreams, and values. Although “Stress Buster” is not technically a CBT term, CBT frequently focuses on having a pre-arranged strategy for coping with a crisis. Since everyone will experience distress repeatedly throughout life, we all need a set of resources that we can draw upon to cope when distress hits. Stress Busters are those resources and, importantly, a CBT principle is that we need to practice using them BEFORE distress strikes. Just like we do not want to have our first fire drill during an actual fire, we need to practice using our coping skills well in advance of an episode of distress so that they are ready for action when needed.
How are Chapters 3-4 Related to CBT?
At the beginning of Chapter 3, we find Harry in significant distress. He is now experiencing many risk factors for distress all at once including being homeless and without enough money as well as facing criminal charges and expulsion from school. In the first three paragraphs alone, he is described as angry, frantic, panicked and worried. He begins to survey his own toolbox of Stress Busters including his wand and Invisibility Cloak when he is rescued by the Knight Bus.
On the bus, he discovers more reasons to feel worried including that a serial killer (Sirius Black) is on the loose and a reminder that people who break wizard law can be sent to the Azkaban prison. He wonders if he will be sent there. This is an unrealistic worry which is called a cognitive distortion in CBT terms (spoiler: this will be the focus of Chapter 6). Although the Minister of Magic calms Harry towards the end of the chapter by reassuring him he can return to school and will not be prosecuted, this section of the book introduces the reader to distress and anxiety with both relatable and fantastical triggers (i.e. school problems and serial killers).
The end of Chapter 3 and most of Chapter 4 introduce resilience and Stress Busters. We see that Harry’s emotional state can shift from anxious to happy rapidly, for example, when he discovers he will return to Hogwarts. The chapters highlight many of the things in Harry’s life that help him cope including his beloved owl Hedwig, his best friends Ron and Hermione, and his excitement about playing Quidditch again. This provides an opportunity for readers to reflect on their own lives and to consider the people and things which they can draw on to help them cope. At the end of Chapter 4 we discover that the serial killer is after Harry which foreshadows a central cause of Harry’s distress in the novel.
Core Lesson Plan - Anxiety and Stress Busters
LESSON OBJECTIVES
Define the terms distress, anxiety, resilience, and “Stress Busters” providing examples.
Determine Harry’s reactions (emotional, physical and thoughts) to the events of the chapters.
Identify Harry’s coping methods and encourage students to consider their own Stress Busters
SUMMARY OF TASKS/ACTIONS
Suggested Actions:
Read Chapter 3 prior to discussion or activities
Collaboratively discuss the events that make Harry experience anxiety. Using your personal judgement, you may encourage students to share what makes them feel anxious (you may choose to discuss the things that makes you feel anxious to facilitate student comfort).
Read Chapter 4
Discuss resilience and Harry’s Stress Busters
Lesson Planning:
Have Students:
complete “anxiety causing factors’ handout
complete ‘How do Harry’s emotions affect him physically?’ handout
complete ‘Character Snapshot (resilience)’ handout
review ‘Coping Skills’ handout
complete ‘Stress Busters’ handout
Students can brainstorm their own Stress Busters for homework
Teacher Answer Key
3: No Answer Key
Guiding Questions
Optional Lesson Plan and Activities
The following lesson plans and activities are optional. You may download the full set of optional lesson plans, activities, and chapter questions. Alternatively, you can download each activity or worksheet separately.
Entire Set of Optional Activites