Making Friends With Yourself (MFY) – A Mindful Self-Compassion Course for Teens
Making Friends With Yourself (MFY) is an empirically-supported 8-week program designed to cultivate the skill of self-compassion in teens. MFY teaches core principles and practices that enable teens to respond to the challenges of these critical years with kindness and self-compassion.
Adolescence is a time of change and growth. It is the period of life reserved for rebellion and self-discovery, but as the demands in life increase for teens, this time is often fraught with confusion, anxiety or depression. For many teens these challenges lead to disconnection and isolation.
In this 8-week long course which meets weekly for 1.5 hours, teens engage in developmentally appropriate activities and carefully crafted practices and meditations, which provide them with the opportunity to learn how to navigate the emotional ups and downs of life with greater ease. Backed by research, findings indicate increases in emotional well-being and greater resilience after taking the course.
This curriculum was adapted from the adult Mindful Self-Compassion created by Drs. Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, and has been endorsed by the founders.
I feel so honored to know Laila. She is wise, grounded, knowledgeable, and I am thrilled that she is teaching our teen self-compassion program. She is an exemplar teacher, and any teen would be lucky to be guided by her wisdom and her kind heart.
Karen Bluth, Ph.D.
Author of The Self-Compassionate Teen and The Self-Compassion Workbook for Teens, Co-Developer of Making Friends With Yourself (MFY), Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina
Laila’s course was fun and easy to learn. For the first time I started to recognize my inner critic and the role it played in my life. Now I know how to have a much better relationship with myself.
Allie, Teen Participant
Following in the footsteps of the adult MSC program, MFY is rooted in the three key components of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity and mindful, balanced awareness. These elements serve to open the hearts of teens to their own suffering, so they can learn to give themselves what they truly need, recognize that they are not alone in their suffering, and encourage an open-minded acceptance of the struggle they are facing.
