Anxiety has outpaced depression as the number one mental illness in this country. But feeling anxious is not a mental illness. It’s an inevitability. Our goal, however, is to prevent anxiety disorders in children.
How does anxiety shift from an emotion to a disorder? Lots of factors play a role. But in part by a lack of teaching how to identify, understand, express……………and THEN manage, this emotion. We tend to rush to the manage part and this denies the child’s brain the opportunity to develop the neural circuitry it needs to engage with anxiety in a healthy manner.
Think about it: if I asked you how you respond to a child that is anxious, what would you say? Do you have a clear framework for doing so? Not many people do.
Instead, I hear, “Oh, gosh, Laura just thinking about this makes ME anxious.” Yes. Because so many adults are over wrought by feelings of anxiety, they have a very difficult time remaining regulated when a child shows anxious feelings through challenging behavior. It is sometimes hard to see the child behind the behavior and realize, “That behavior tells me the child has strong feelings, what are they?”
Updating our approach to anxiety
While there is no “one way” to respond to a child feeling anxious, participants will learn how to respond to children feeling anxious in a healthy way. This will require some “software updates” from the adults: letting go of myths/old beliefs about how to engage with a child when they are anxious. Habits such as dismissing, denying, distracting, or rushing to fix the issues. Instead, we teach the child the skills of emotional intelligence.
In this training, participants will learn the ‘brain and mind reasons’ for anxiety and evidence-based strategies to work with anxious feelings in children. In this way, we attend to the state of anxiety the child feels in the moment so they don’t develop a trait of being an anxious person.
While we cannot prevent anxiety entirely, we can prevent anxiety disorders in children.
This training can also be done to help adults with their anxiety. Participants will learn the adult strategies for developing a healthy relationship with anxiety. It is possible!
Please visit my Resources page or my You Tube channel for more information about healthy child development!