Conversations With The Stressed Body: Facilitating Stress Self-Disclosure Among Adolescent Girls Through An Embodied Approach

TL;DR

This study investigates how an embodied design approach can facilitate stress self-disclosure among adolescent girls. By conducting two workshops—an initial Pilot and a main Embodied Probes study—participants connect with bodily sensations through body scanning, body mapping, and tangible making, expressing stress verbally, visually, and via interactive prototypes. The findings reveal that embodied methods create a safe space, enhance somatic awareness, and enable self-disclosure through multimodal channels, uncovering dimensions of stress such as somatic symptoms, sources, and coping strategies. The work contributes design implications for adolescent well-being, demonstrates the potential of soma design and embodied probes in HCI, and highlights non-verbal, tactile pathways for communicating and alleviating stress in young women, with broader relevance to body-informed mental-health interventions.

Abstract

Adolescent girls face significant mental health challenges during their transition to adulthood, often experiencing heightened stress from various sources. While various interactive technologies for self-disclosure had been explored to support stress relief, little is known about how to encourage stress-related self-disclosure through an embodied approach. This study presents a co-design workshop centred on Embodied Probes, a series of artefacts and activities incorporating embodied methods and technologies. During the workshop, nine participants aged 15 to 18 engaged with their bodies, expressed bodily sensations through tangible means, and designed embodied prototypes tailored to their personal needs for stress perception and relief. The workshop revealed insights into somatic symptoms, sources, and coping strategies for stress among adolescent girls, as well as how embodied methods can support their stress self-disclosure. This paper contributes to the HCI community by offering design implications on leveraging embodied technologies to support self-disclosure for young women's mental well-being.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: Iteration between pilot workshop and Embodied Probes workshop.
• Figure 2: Embodied Probes Workshop Sessions.
• Figure 3: Similar metaphorical imageries identified on body maps.
• Figure 4: Body maps and tangible body maps sculpture.
• Figure 5: Tangible body map sculpture by P3.