Being Alone

Headspace Studios. Welcome to Sunday Scary Student Edition. My name is Dora Camal and I'm one of the mindfulness of meditation teachers here at Headspace and today I'm joined by very special guest, hi Gael. Hi Dora. Gael, so for the folks that are tuning in today that may not be hip to teenager therapy, can you tell us who you are, what you do and what you have created? Of course, I'm Gael Aitor and I'm the creator and one of the hosts on a podcast called Teenager Therapy. Teenager Therapy is a podcast all about helping young folks tackle mental health issues. Over the course of the next six Sundays, Gael and I will be unpacking all different topics that pertain to mental health and the struggles that teenagers and students face. This includes the mental, physical, social, spiritual, and work issues that can often overwhelm you any given week when you're young. And of course at the end of our chat, I'll be guiding you through a guided meditation to help you approach the week from a more mindful space. I'm so excited to be making this series and I think it's really cool that the first episode is dropping the day before World Mental Health Day. I feel like I'm constantly on a journey of self discovery and I've learned what I need in friendships how I really open up to people. Sometimes maybe I do enjoy being alone a little bit more than other times or sometimes I do want to be with friends. Yeah, so on this topic of loneliness, tell me, has there ever been a time where you were experiencing loneliness or what are your thoughts about being alone? I remember my sophomore year of high school. At some point, I went from eating lunch with my friends and my friend group to just going out on my own. I would go to my Japanese teacher's classroom cause she would always open it for lunch and I would just sit there and I would bring my peanut butter sandwich and I would just watch The Office on my computer. Sometimes I wouldn't even watch anything. I would just sit there in the hallway inside the classroom and just get to be by myself in my own presence. Yeah, I feel you. So do you find as a teenager that wanting to be alone can be like frowned upon or people will pressure you to be in groups or do you feel the pressure to have to be with other people? I think there's definitely pressure. I remember actually there was this one time where there was a school dance. And I went to the dance and my friends were there and this is so nerdy, but I took a book with me. Not the book, what book was it? Oh my God, it was like some like self-help book. And I remember going to this dance and sitting down and talking to...