Growing up my mom always told me that girls became vicious in middle school. I made the mistake of not believing her and now here I am, letting you know that is not a lie. Girls do become vicious in middle school and they become like that without a single ounce of remorse.
Welcome to the first post in a series of 10! Welcome to Surviving Middle School! Throughout the next ten posts, I will be writing about my tips and recommendations for how to survive middle school. All of these posts are based off of my experiences only, many of you might not experience this at all or may face a worse extreme. Please be cautious when reading as you may not experience the same situations. I do hope, however, that by reading you can have a good idea of how to survive your middle school years. I wish you luck and hope you enjoy the series!
There are so many basic rules that we learn throughout our middle school experience. Some of them are so cliche, stupid, and boring like you are dating a boy if you talk to him. Others are there for good reason, like never ever mentioning anything about another girl’s weight. I broke so many of the rules while in middle school including the weight one. You can get “cancelled” over the smallest thing so be prepared to possibly become isolated, most likely for less than a day, because of a mistake.
This is a rule that I’m sure most girls know. Most girls will stick together in what we call “girl code.” It’s essentially an unspoken code amongst girls that they will behave a certain way towards someone who has annoyed them. In other instances, girl code can be another girl helping a girl in an unsafe situation. In my school, it was all about girl code and hating on whoever the majority of the girls didn’t like. It bounced around a lot but always seemed to find its way back to me. If you are disliked by the “popular” group of girls, you are more likely to be ignored by that entire group because of girl code. In order to become a popular girl, you have to follow girl code; which often results in being excluded (if you’re the odd one out, like me!).
The lunch table might seem so simple but it is incredibly important. Where your “assigned” seat is at in the lunch table determines who you get to talk to. When I say assigned, I mean where everyone sits for the first time. Once someone sits there, they’ve claimed it. Luckily and unluckily, I claimed the seat at the edge of the table where there was a .5 foot space between the girls’ table and the boys’ table. Luckily because I could talk to the boys when I was ignored by the girls and unluckily because none of the girls would talk to me. You wouldn’t think that something as simple as sitting on the edge of the table would further add to the social isolation of you from the group. All in all, get a good seat on the first day at lunch!
I’m not sure about all schools, but all my classrooms had the “good” seats. You know, the comfortable ones that everyone always raced to get. Most of the good seats at my school were couches, meaning two people could sit there. Unfortunately, that leaves room for another person, besides yourself, to sit there as well. If you are sitting next to a boy, you could be accused of dating them. It’s the most basic rule of my middle school experience, if you sit next to a boy and have a conversation, you are automatically dating. I remember one day I was accused of dating a boy in the grade below me because we sat next to each other on a bus and became friends.
Friends are so unbelievably important in middle school. Typically we start to go through puberty by the time we hit seventh grade and it can be helpful to have a friend, or a few. I know it can be easier to talk to people your age rather than parents or teachers. Sometimes, people in similar ages can be more relatable and it feels more comfortable/natural to broach more uncomfortable topics.
I know that this is middle school and it doesn’t truly count for anything except the ability to attend a signature program in high school, however, it really pays to work hard in the beginning. I find it so much easier in high school because I worked hard in middle school to find good study habits and what worked best for me. Check out some of the blog posts below for inspiration on tips/recommendations for doing well in school.
This is something I wish I would have understood earlier on during my middle school career. If people don’t like you or hang out with you, they aren’t going to magically become your friends one day. I was always on the hunt to get more people to like me and to find some friends, but it all just hurt me. I was so focused on getting people to like me that I have done things I’m not proud of for attention and friends. Please do NOT repeat my mistakes and come to terms with the fact that they won’t be your friends if they don’t want to.
Part 1: Surviving Middle School 101
Part 2: Girls Are Vicious
Part 3: Finding Friends
Part 4: The Social Cliques
Part 5: Good Grades Please
Part 6: How To Be Okay
Part 7: Talking To Teachers
Part 8: Being Good At Being Alone
Part 9: Social Isolation Is A Real Thing
Part 10: Let’s Find You
Girl, you don’t even have to thank me. I know you were just craving this type of post. But you can say it if you want, I mean, I’m a sucker for compliments. Just kidding! I would never go fishing for compliments like that… Anyway, let’s have a real girl talk. Face to computer, computer to face. I know that we have all been stressed at least once in our lives, unless you are that one person who just didn’t. It could have been about grades, a guy, or maybe a situation at home. Despite the reason we became stressed, we still felt it. Maybe in the form of a stomach ache, a headache, intense sweating (shout out yikes to those who forgot their deodorant that day!), or a lack of appetite. There are so ,many symptoms to stress that we won’t all experience the same ones. Some of my friends will get headaches while I will fidget with my fingers or rip my fingernails off. So today we’re going to dive right into the depths of stress and talk with a mental health therapist to get all of your questions answered!
Stress is our body’s adaptive response when faced with anything that is perceived as a threat or challenge.
The stress response, specifically our amygdala, powers up our body with oxygen, hormones, and adrenaline that activates what is known as the fight or flight response. What this means is that when we are faced with a stressor, our muscles tighten, heart rate increases, our digestion stops, and all the blood flows towards our arms and legs. This is to increase our chances of survival.
The problem is that in some situations like a life and death situation, we want the amygdala to take over, however, when there isn’t a life-threat our amygdala cannot decipher the difference, thus causing us to become stressed out for invalid reasons.
“Stress is a short-term or long term response to a specific event or trigger; like for example being stressed about a fight with a friend. Anxiety lasts longer. It is persistent and excessive and doesn’t go away even in the absence of a stressor.”
“Irritability, anger, fatigue, muscle pain, digestive troubles, difficulty sleeping.”
“Short term sress when facing real danger is beneficial, but long-term stress impacts our mental and physical wellbeing. People can get heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, fatigue, anxiety, and many other issues as a result of long-term stress. It has also been proven that increased stress levels can lead to a shortened lifespan.”
And the answer to the question we’ve all been waiting for….. what do we do to combat stress?
“The number one strategy that I always encourage my clients to do is to practice some deep breaths. And we may think, breaths? Come on, we do that all the time but the difference is that when we are in a state of stress, our breath is so shallow and so fast that it doesn’t really fuel your prefrontal cortex. And, so what we want to do is take these slow deep breaths that allow this oxygen to come to our prefrontal cortex that will then allow us to take this step back to rationalize things. They way to practice this breath is to take a breath through your nose, count to five as you hold that breath, and then you want to release the air softly through your mouth until all the air is gone. You want to make sure that you count because if you don’t, your brain will be likely to return its focus back to the stressor. You want to repeat the breaths multiple times until you are calm.”
There are two other great options for combating stress, guided imagery and progressive muscle relaxation.
Guided imagery: “What this entails is you focusing on a pleasant thought or idea that is likely to bring a smile to your face. And then your going to use the five senses in order to describe it. For example, if you love ice cream then you could think everything about ice cream in unlimited ways. So, I’m going to describe what I see, I’m going to describe the smells of all the different ice creams, I’m going to describe the taste, what I hear in my environment, and what it feels to be eating that ice cream. And so, this is a really good exercise to do before bedtime because it activates those slower brain waves that allows your body to relax and fall asleep easier.
Progressive muscle relaxation: “The third strategy that I encourage people to do is called progressive muscle relaxation. And for this one, what you do is apply tension to different parts of your body and then you relax the muscles. For example, you would squeeze your left hand really tight, hold it for about three seconds, and then relax it. You do this about three times and then you would switch to your right hand. Once again, you squeeze, hold for three, and then relax. You keep putting tension and relaxing different parts of your body until you do a whole body scan until you’ve applied tension and relaxation everywhere. What’s really cool about this is that if you actually relax your muscles and as you do this, tell yourself relax; your brain will actually associate the word relax with the actual physical relaxation fo your body and any time you say relax in the future, if you do this enough, your brain will automatically make your body relax.”
And there you have it! The secret of all secrets, the way(s) to eradicate stress. Please, please, please let me know in the comments if you have any other tricks that help you to feel less stressed. I know the breathing has always helped me whenever I stress out but I’m so so so so so open to other methods. I hope this helps!
Starting high school can be so exciting because it is a fresh start and you get new opportunities/chances. But there's always those negative thoughts that pop into your head. Will I have friends? Will I get good grades? Is everyone going to hate me? Etc. etc. That is exactly what is running through my head right now and I'm just hoping that this year goes by easily.
I can’t lie. I am a bit nervous to start high school which I start in exactly one week. Can you believe it? Little old me starting high school, wow. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do what I did in middle school, which was become so focused on whether or not people will like me. And yet, I’m doing just that right now. Don’t get me wrong, I am ecstatic to start high school, I truly am. But, I am looking back on my history in middle school and essentially expecting that to happen again. My high school is still small with about 70 kids per grade but we have about 20 in each class period. So theoretically, I should be able to find some friends in those 70 kids considering I will most likely meet almost all of them with my different classes.
I’m also worried about grades. I know that I’m smart, but I’m entering an accelerated program. Does that mean I’m going to struggle and my grades aren’t going to be as good? I hold myself to high expectations, and if I don’t meet them, I tend to beat myself up. I also stress myself out a lot when taking tests or giving presentations. I don’t want this for myself, I want to go into my exams thinking that I can do it and being confident in my abilities. My mom once told me that people who stress themselves so much about getting good grades, will one day burn out and tank it. I often wonder if that will one day be me. I am constantly trying to stop myself from stressing, but it still happens. I can’t get it to stop. Thankfully, over the years I’ve learned a few tricks about how to relieve stress, read them here!
Let’s face it. Entering high school is scary. PERIOD. But, we’re in this together. We’ve got this and we’re going to have an amazing time. Please feel free to email me if you need someone to talk to and/or are struggling with your mental health. You are going to rock high school, we’ve got this is the bag! I believe in you.
What do you see when you look into the mirror? Do you see someone who is smart, kind, beautiful, compassionate, and brave? Or do you see someone who is ugly, rude, insecure, and a bully? Beauty is all defined upon a perception, a single perception that we let dictate how we feel about ourselves and what we see in the mirror. Most of our perceptions is based upon how other view us, or at least how they say they view us. When they call you ugly, you start to believe you are ugly.
I love chocolate, especially chocolate pudding. I grew up addicted to sugar and would eat chocolate pretty much every day. As I got older I switched to clean eating and started to drastically decrease my sugar intake. In December of 2020, I started the AIP diet and had to really switch all of the foods I had once eaten. I had to substitute milk, flour, eggs, cane sugar, etc.
Discover a new way to discover without the fear of feeling embarrassed or ashamed. Explore this website to find a variety of posts and resources to help you become the best version of yourself!
August 7, 2023
October 16, 2022
October 15, 2022
