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WHAT IS
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Rewind the Tape is a free program designed to partner with and serve local schools to see positive changes in students’ mental health and behaviors. Through his own life experiences, illustrations, and research, Dr. Brian Connolly helps students understand the relationship between rejection, negative self-perception, and the state of their mental health and behavioral choices. This program empowers students to rewind the tape of their faulty self-talk and replace it with truthful, encouraging language, leading to reassuring changes in their ability to love and accept themselves, their emotional well-being, and their actions.
WHY INVITE
“Rejection is a common experience for me.”
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15 out of 25 students (60%) reported this as more than a rare experience.
“I tend to think something is wrong with me.”
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19 out of 25 students (76%) reported this as more than a rare thought.​​
“I have difficulty loving and accepting myself.”
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16 out of 25 students (64%) reported this as more than a rare fact.
“I tend to reject myself when I sense others have rejected me.”
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15 out of 25 students (60%) reported this is as more than a rare phenomenon.
43% reported experiencing some form of abuse (physical, sexual, mental, or verbal).
50% reported growing up in a home where one parent was absent physically or emotionally due to things like divorce, drug use, and work.
(The majority of students reported their father being physically absent.)
50% reported being bullied by their peers.
29% reported experiencing rejection from family members.
100% reported that they struggled with self-loathing or self-hatred.
86% reported having low self-esteem.
21% reported that they battle anxiety and depression.
29% reported thoughts of suicide.
40% of females reported struggling with body image issues.
10% of females reported having had an eating disorder.
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“I kept telling myself I wasn’t worthy of people’s love… and I was doing it all wrong.”
“They [experiences with rejection] really made me feel like I serve no purpose in life.”
“I hated myself; that’s plain and simple. I hated how I looked, how I dressed. I hated everything about me.”
“It just made me hate myself a lot, and I hated everything about me.”
“From a young age, I like, found like, cutting as a relief.”
“I thought the only reason I was born was so that I could be abused.”
“I feel like, for me…. my mental health in a way was really failing, and I feel like I was constantly in a state of stress and overthinking.”
“I had really bad depression and anxiety.”
“After all that, I became extremely suicidal, and I had really bad depression and anxiety, and I just didn’t really want to be near people, but I just put a smile on my face just to pretend like things were ok.”
“I caused myself to have an eating disorder. I would force myself to throw up after every meal.”
“I would always just kind of like believe myself as unworthy of other people’s attention.”
“I always told myself that, like, I was always going to be a victim.”
“So I found myself as like, not really good enough for people, and just like not worthy of love in general.”
“Because of my fear of rejection… I was just terrified and almost, like, paralyzed at, at points… to the point where I couldn’t do my work or other stuff, because I was so scared.”
“I was just so afraid of what others thought of me that I began to put up this front… and I became someone everybody liked, but inside, I did not like myself, and just hated who I was.”
ADDRESSING
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Rewind the Tape seeks to positively influence the mental health crisis due to the effects of rejection on teenagers today and the lies they believe about themselves as a result of those experiences. These effects include, but are not limited to, such things as low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and addictions.
Rewind the Tape helps students feel seen and understood by exposing the common experiences of rejection and its effects that plague many young people today.
This program also reveals common lies young people believe about themselves stemming from their experiences with rejection and shows how those lies contribute to negative self-perceptions that then wound their mental health.
Finally, students will be equipped to challenge negative thoughts that arise and replace them with truthful, positive ones.
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WHO IS
Dr. Brian Connolly holds an MA in counseling and a doctorate in ministry degree. He has served and worked with teenagers since 2005. Both his life experiences and educational pedigree have contributed to countless success stories of positively impacting and changing young people’s lives, as well as to the writing of four books. He is the founder and president of a nonprofit ministry called Faith Like Birds, whose sole goal is to help restore the broken places inside teenagers. He is married and the father of four girls.
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