By Nadine Briggs and Donna Shea
An adult or child who struggles with feelings of anxiety will tend to avoid the things or places that cause him or her to become anxious. Avoidance is a coping mechanism that keeps the uncomfortable feelings that anxiety causes at bay. You may find yourself trying to help someone by offering suggestions for how to manage his or her anxiety only to be met with a “yeah, but…” response. Be careful of that “yeah but,” as it is one more way of that person succumbing to his or her anxiety and avoiding taking control of it and fighting back.
One tip to help your anxious child overcome the “yeah but’s” is to help him or her learn and practice coping strategies when he or she is calm. Once he or she is feeling anxious, your child’s ability to think rationally may dissipate and he or she will likely be resistant to any suggestions presented at that time. When learned and mastered in advance of feeling anxious, these strategies can very effective in empowering your child to override the anxiety and calm his or herself down.
In our latest book, I Feel Worried! Tips for Kids on Overcoming Anxiety, we offer many suggestions for kids to use to feel empowered to become “worry ninjas” and fight back gripping anxiety. We include many different ways to overcome anxiety, knowing that kids may be initially be resistant to using the tips. We want to bolster kids with the idea of the worry ninja and emphasize that these tips will give them superpowers to fight back those uncomfortable worried feelings.
We encourage you to start by suggesting that your child try 2-3 of the tips and then check in with him or her to see how well those worked. Ask your child to measure his or her success with a tip or strategy on a 1-5 scale with 1 = not very helpful to 5 = expert worry ninja. Your may be inspired by an idea in the book and then create his or her own strategy. He or she may also enjoy some of the crafts outlined in the book and make the tip to overcome anxiety into a hands-on project. Here are a couple to try:
Create a Worry Box
Take an inexpensive container and have your child decorate the outside with permanent marker. Ask them to write his or her worries down on paper and place them in the box. Seal it tight with the lid. Set aside some time to talk about the worries that are in the box with your child. Remind your child that he or she does not need to worry alone. When your child is done talking about the worries, put them back in the box and remind your child to let those thoughts leave his or her brain until it’s time to take them out again. We suggest morning, after school and dinner time as good times to review the worry box contents. Before bed is not a good time since those worried thoughts could make it hard to sleep.
Make a Comfort Zone Poster
To help a child who may have difficulty sleeping at night, try making a Comfort Zone poster. Draw two sleepy eyes at the top of a piece of poster board to start. Then ask your child to draw his or her own pictures, or cut out pictures from magazines, of things that make him or her feel happy. Hang this by your child’s bed so he or she can look at it while falling asleep. Comforting thoughts, with the visual reminder, will help keep your child’s nighttime thoughts more positive and happy.
Anxiety can be difficult to manage and it can have an enormous impact on how kids live their lives. Giving your child too many tips at once will likely be met with “yeah but.” Stepping through the strategies slowly and deliberately can make the process less intimidating. Increasing your child’s ability to draw on effective tips and strategies can place him or her in a position of power and help him or her to become and expert worry ninjas (without the “yeah but!”)
