Helping Children with Anxiety

Special offer on Pre-Recorded Courses and Webinars

Illustration by Becky Whinnerah (@BexGoneWest).

I’m a therapist, and one of the things I get asked about most is anxiety in children. Parents find it hard to navigate, because children don’t come up and say ‘I’m worried’.  Instead they show us through their behaviour. They have tummy aches, or headaches, or they refuse to do things they usually enjoy.  Sometimes they have trouble sleeping or separating from their parents.   They ask repetitive questions or they withdraw.  They develop specific fears of dogs, or cars, or other children.

Parents find themselves in a continuous loop of reassurance ‘There’s nothing to worry about’ or ‘You’ll be fine once you get there’ they say.  Or they make plans to avoid all sources of anxiety – only going to parks without dogs or never being out of sight.  Pretty soon, everyone in the family feels anxious, not just the child.  It’s spreading, rather than getting better. 

Anxiety is a strange thing. It starts out as a feeling about something – maybe something new, or something we’ve had a previous bad experience with. We don’t like that feeling, and so we try to get away from it – and then, we start to feel anxious about the feeling.  We get anxious about anxiety.

Once a person is anxious about feeling anxious, the anxiety multiplies.   Because when you are afraid of your own feelings, you can never really be safe.  Everything you do to try and get those feelings to go away makes it worse. 

There’s lots that parents can do to stop that anxiety multiplier from turning, and for that reason I have several recorded mini-courses and webinars for parents on helping their children with anxiety.  Some of these are specifically for autistic children and teens, others are for everyone.  There’s also one for those with really severe anxiety, those who can’t leave their bedrooms.

We have just released several new ones, and to celebrate we have a 20% off code on all courses and recorded webinars around stress and anxiety, valid only until August 21^st. 

Put ANXIETY20 in at the check out.