Idioms: Mental Health & Emotional Resilience

What is this lesson about? This mental health idioms ESL lesson plan helps B1–B2 learners express emotional struggles, recovery, and resilience using natural English idioms. Students explore expressions such as hit rock bottom, bottle things up, be at breaking point, a weight off your shoulders, keep your chin up, and pick yourself up through dialogues, grammar-based tasks, and reflective speaking practice.

What language will students learn? Learners focus on six essential idioms:

• Hit rock bottom – reach the lowest emotional point

• Bottle things up – suppress or hide emotions

• Be at breaking point – be extremely stressed and close to collapse

• A weight off your shoulders – feel great relief after sharing a problem

• Keep your chin up – stay positive during difficulties

• Pick yourself up – recover after a failure or setback
  

How do students practise? The lesson builds both fluency and self-awareness through:

• Warm-up discussion questions on stress and coping strategies.

• Dialogue-based reading activity with realistic emotional challenges.

• Definition matching, gap-fills, and sentence transformations for grammar and usage.

• Typical usage matching to show idioms in authentic contexts.

• Speaking practice where students reflect on personal resilience and share advice.
  

Why is this lesson useful? By the end of the lesson, learners can:

• Use idioms naturally to describe emotional challenges and recovery.

• Build confidence in sharing personal stories about stress and resilience.

• Develop emotional fluency alongside grammar and vocabulary.

• Apply wellbeing language in authentic conversations.
  

Who is it for? This lesson is designed for intermediate adult learners (B1–B2). It’s ideal for wellbeing-focused ESL classes, personal growth discussions, or resilience training, either online or in-person.