“Physical and Emotional Health: Overview,” Doctrine and Covenants Seminary Teacher Manual (2025)
“Physical and Emotional Health,” Doctrine and Covenants Seminary Teacher Manual
Physical and Emotional Health
Physical and Emotional Health
Overview
As we go through life, we face many situations that are emotionally challenging. We can turn to the Lord for help to become more emotionally resilient. The following lessons encourage students to care for their physical bodies; develop healthy thinking patterns; seek the Lord’s help with stress, anxiety, sadness, and depression; and create and strengthen relationships.
Prepare to Teach
The following information provides ideas of what you may need to prepare in advance for each lesson.
Caring for Our Physical Bodies
Lesson purpose: To help students show gratitude to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ by caring for their physical bodies.
-
Student preparation: Invite students to ponder how they feel about their bodies and what they are doing to take care of them. They can also ponder how their attitudes and actions toward their physical bodies affect their happiness, energy, productivity, and relationships with God.
-
Handout: “Caring for Our Physical Bodies”
Building Emotional Strength in the Lord
Lesson purpose: To help students feel confident that the Savior will support them in building physical and emotional strength.
-
Student preparation: Invite students to ponder emotionally challenging situations they face, or may face in the future, and what they could do in those situations. They may want to discuss their thoughts with a parent or family member. You could point out that an outside perspective can sometimes be helpful in dealing with emotional challenges.
Developing Healthy Thinking Patterns
Lesson purpose: To help students develop self-awareness of their thoughts and establish healthy thinking patterns.
Student preparation: Consider inviting students to pay attention to and write down the kinds of thoughts they have when responding to challenging situations or interacting with others.
Handout: “Correcting Unhelpful or Inaccurate Thoughts”
Managing Stress and Anxiety
Lesson purposes: To help students identify and practice skills to turn to the Lord to manage stress and anxiety.
-
Student preparation: Invite students to think about a recent time when they felt stressed or anxious about something. Encourage them to ponder what successes and challenges they’ve had coping with stress and anxiety.
-
Handout: “Four Levels of Stress”
Coping with Sadness and Depression
Lesson purposes: To help students understand ways they can get help with feelings of sadness and depression.
-
Student preparation: To prepare students to study appropriate ways to deal with sadness and depression, provide the following statement: “I recognize how Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ can help me when I feel sad or depressed.” Invite students to prayerfully assess how well this statement applies to them and how confidently they could share it with others.
-
Items to display: An image or video of waves of the sea
-
Handout: “Seeking Help”
Being Perfected in Jesus Christ
Lesson purposes: To help students understand thinking errors related to perfectionism and how they can turn to the Lord.
-
Student preparation: Invite students to consider how they might describe the difference between perfectionism and becoming perfect through Christ. They could ponder the ways they might feel tempted to think they have to be perfect on their own.
-
Video: “Self-Compassion” (2:58); “The Imperfect Harvest” (11:01; watch from time code 2:37 to 3:04)
-
Handout: “Becoming Perfected in Jesus Christ”
Building Healthy Relationships
Lesson purposes: To help students seek the Lord’s help to establish relationships that contribute to their overall health and well-being.
-
Student preparation: Invite students to consider strong relationships they have in their lives and what they did to make them strong. They can also consider any people that they would like to develop or strengthen a relationship with and think of ways to do this.
-
Video: “Of Things That Matter Most” (19:12; watch from time code 12:35 to 12:56)
-
Handout: “Examples of Meaningful Relationships in Church History and the Doctrine and Covenants”
-
Materials for students: A strip of paper for each student