Teenagers face numerous challenges and pressures in the modern world. Mental well being plays a huge role in how they respond to those challenges. These struggles are not only felt by the individual, but by their parents trying to help. CounterPunch is designed to empower young people by focusing on their strengths, building confidence and resilience through the power of connection.
Mercedas Taaffe-Cooper
CounterPunch’s creator, Mercedas Taaffe-Cooper, has dedicated her life to obtaining a better understanding of internal control, motivation, mental fitness, and positive psychology. Mercedas’s struggles as a teenager ignited a desire to create and implement a program that could truly make a difference in the lives of youth and those trying to help them. Her combined experience as a registered Psychologist, an Exercise Scientist, a Boxer and Coach, and her studies of Martial Arts, Energy Healing, Reality therapy and Choice theory, have birthed a program unlocking the potential of connecting mind and body by simply changing our physiology.
- Connection between mind/body
- Connecting with oneself emotionally
- Connecting with the external world
CounterPunch’s Three-Phase Methodology
The behavioral program’s three-phase methodology begins with an emphasis on the mind/body connection through action and exercise. This connection inspires a physiological reaction whereby the individual’s energy changes internally in a positive way. This reaction includes the release of positive endorphins, resulting in a positive internal connection and the feelings of mastery and self-control. Hence the connection between the mind/body, through physical exercise and fitness, changes the individual’s physiology and brings about feelings of internal control. These positive internal responses can then be applied through connecting with the external world. This connection results in increased internal control, self-empowerment, action taking, exercising choice and a passion for life.
The Ring as the World
CounterPunch uses the analogy of the boxing ring as the teenager’s world, an arena in which they can practice and master the skill of changing negatives into positives using the CounterPunch three-phase methodology. When an individual steps into the ring, they are faced with a situation, one they could easily confront in the outside world; where they need to gauge and respond in a positive way. A positive reaction promotes the creation of a positive environment through the motivation to succeed and the freedom the values and the goals that been positive gives them. In the ring, individuals quickly learn that while they cannot control the other person’s actions, they can react and control the situation by adopting an Internal locus of control.
Teenagers can utilize this newfound internal control, developed using the CounterPunch methodology, to increase resilience and use effective communication to maximise their potential. The intrinsic satisfaction of knowing they can master their internal mind\body connection, is reflected by their connection with and place within the external world.