Speaker 1Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
Speaker 2Hello and welcome to the How. Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 10, and today we are talking about anxiety, part two. So, these are the practical strategies to support our worried, overwhelmed, angst-ridden children and teens who just can't seem to move forward. Remember, in episode three, we talked about what anxiety is, the common signs, and most importantly, the notion that anxiety is all relative to how your child perceives the situation. So, it's not about what we think they're capable of, but how they perceive the gap between the ability they have and the resources they have to deal with it. So, just to recap, particularly if you've not managed to catch up on episode three, I would definitely suggest you go back and do that. But if you're on this episode, let me just recap before we dive in. So, the strategies about the well-being seesaw, because the strategies that I'm going to share with you today relate directly and specifically to both sides. So, as you'll remember, when I talk about well-being, so let's imagine positive well-being. Let's imagine a situation that our children feel super comfortable, super confident, capable in. Imagine a seesaw. This seesaw will be perfectly in balance. On one side of the seesaw, what our child perceives are the demands being placed on them by that situation are met equally by what they perceive are the resources they have to deal with it. So, we've got a lovely, balanced seesaw. It's no different for us either. When our children are in a situation where they feel overwhelmed, stress, angst, ridden, or worried, the seesaw tips, and what happens now is as the seesaw tips, what they perceive are the demands being placed on them by a situation are far heavier and outweighed than the resources they perceive they have to be able to manage it. So, imagine a seesaw that's completely tipped. So, when we're looking at strategies to help and support our children, we have to address both sides of the seesaw. Now, we could try and manage the physiological response, but if we really want to equip our children to be able to manage their worries and anxieties on their own, we really need to address both sides. So, we're going to talk about those particular strategies, but remember it's all to do with perception. I know I keep banging on about it, but it's so important for us as parents, educators, and those that support children to recognise that it doesn't matter if we think our children are capable, it's how our children perceive themselves and their capability in that moment, and what's important for us to do is to acknowledge and recognise that for our child in that moment, in that situation, it feels overwhelming. So, let's start looking at the side of the seesaw that I typically address first, which is the perceived resources. This, in essence, is the side that is how your child's body responds to the stressor, the angst, the worry. So, without blasting with you with science about it, but in essence, when our children feel overwhelmed or stressed or they're worried, their body goes into fight or flight. Their brain recognises or perceives a threat, a fear, a danger, an overwhelm, and that really starts a domino chain effect of their sympathetic nervous system kicking in and trying to protect them by fighting, fleeing, or freezing. So, when we're looking at supporting our children by giving them strategies to help them manage the physiological response, the stuff that's going on in their body, it's important in some ways that we have a conversation with our children to understand, at the basic level, where do they experience worry? Where do they experience this stress, this overwhelm in their body? Because if they can identify and pinpoint where they're at, where it shows up in their body, then when we start using the breathing techniques and the strategies that help, they're able to see the difference. They're able to identify whereabouts they're targeting and they're working on. So, one thing I love to do that helps children identify this is either draw a gingerbread person, or in my case, a stick person. I'm not very talented in the drawing department. But what you're really trying to do is draw an outline of a child. Whether you draw that on an A4 sheet of paper, whether you draw it life-size. And what you're really trying to help your child to sort of connect with is, whereabouts in their body do they feel these big emotions? And what I would suggest that you do is, I love post-it notes, these work brilliantly, or you can use marker pens to put crosses on there. But start, first of all, by modelling and explaining when you feel stressed and nervous, when you're overwhelmed. Explain to your children what situations make you feel that way. For those of you who've probably heard me talk hundreds and hundreds of times, you'll know that I genuinely have a fear of heights. And mine typically manifests itself in a real anxiety and worry about driving over bridges. So, whether that's driving over bridges or walking over bridges. So, when I am driving over a bridge, or even, to be honest with you, when I start thinking about it for too long, for me, where it shows up is that my heart rate increases, so I can feel my heart beat really, really fast. And then the other common sign for me is that palms of my hands get really sweaty. In fact, just talking about it, now I can feel it. So, those, for me, are the typical areas. So, if I was drawing an outline of a person and trying to indicate to my children, I would be putting crosses or post-it notes by my hands to indicate that that's where I get my sweaty palms, and then by my heart to show that kind of increase in heart rate. What we know, though, is that, and this is important to stress to our children, is that we all experience stress, worry, and overwhelm in different ways. So, what shows up for me, I might share some characteristics with my daughter, for example, if she's feeling anxious or worried. But there will be certain traits that she will experience that I won't, and certain traits that I will experience that she won't. And some of the common signs, some of the common signs that I will experience that I won't, and certain traits that I won't, and some sweaty palms, beating heart rate. They may have what I often call jelly legs, so their legs may feel slightly wobbly, or their hands might shake, might complain of a tummy ache, they might feel lightheaded, they might talk about having to gasp for breath, they might feel slightly sick. So, it's being able to really acknowledge to our children that it doesn't matter, we all experience it in different ways, but recognising it is the first part of then being able to explain to our children that it doesn't matter, we all experience it in different ways, to use some strategies to make those changes. So, that would be the first thing that I would suggest you do, help your children understand where they experience the anxiety and worry. And so, what we're now going to do is, when we're trying to teach them some of these strategies, and I want to keep it simple, so I'm just going to talk through a couple. What we're trying to do is help our children understand the connection between the strategies that we're going to teach them, the breathing strategies, and the changes that they'll experience in their life. So, what we're going to do is, we're going to teach them some of these strategies, and what we know is that it typically takes between 60 and 90 seconds for our bodies to go from fight or flight to rest and restore. Now, 60 to 90 seconds doesn't sound like a lot, but when you are in a situation where you are feeling monumentally overwhelmed and angst-ridden, it can genuinely feel like a lifetime. So, my top tip when it comes to all of the strategies I'm is that you have to practice them we have to encourage our children to practice these strategies in situations where they are feeling calm and relaxed because if we can get them to practice them and get used to using them in those calm situations they're much more likely to use them in the situations where they're feeling overwhelmed because as we all know when we're overwhelmed and stressed we want to avoid situations we want to run away so if we don't have practical strategies that we've used time and time again we're not going to pick up a new strategy in that moment because we're not thinking from our logical brain so it's all about practice and for us as parents it's about being patient being consistent and encouraging our children to just keep practicing and that in time things will improve so let me talk you through another strategy as such but it's a really good way for children to understand to make that link between their gingerbread person their stick person that we've sort of put crosses and post-it notes where these feelings show up these emotions show up in our bodies how that then also connects to what's going on in our mind and how we can then explain this idea about going from fight or flight or overwhelm to this lovely calm rest and restore and the way that i found it's the most easy way to explain to children is using a glitter jar and for so many children this can be a monumental aha moment it's almost as if things just naturally slot into place and they think oh my goodness me that so explains how things feel for me now you can use this to explain emotions when our children experience these big emotions their rage and anger but i'm going to talk to you specifically about how you can use the glitter jar to explain to children about anxiety and anger and how you can get rid of anxiety and worry so in essence what you do is you end up with a jar with some glitter in and some water so what we're trying to do explain is to explain to our children that the water in the jar represents our mind first thing in the morning when we wake up it's clear it's calm it's still we can see through it and we can usually make good choices because it's calm and still but from the moment we wake up we start thinking and those thoughts are represented by glitter much like a snow globe that glitter sort of floats around and the thoughts might be what day is it can i have five more minutes sleep oh i'm feeling a bit weary i wonder what i might have for breakfast what am i doing today those sorts of things that in essence we do all of the time we're thinking and we're chattering more about that later but when we're having just general thoughts that narrate our day as we go around they're really represented by small loose parts of glitter that float around amongst the clear calm still mind so as we're thinking these thoughts and as the glitter is swirling around we're still able to see through the water it's still relatively clear it's still relatively calm and we can still make good choices but when we worry about something we're in a situation where we feel overwhelmed stressed or we're really really worried instead of getting little bits of thoughts that flitter around instead we get flooded with all of these thoughts and worries that say that we can't possibly do something that something scary is going to happen that we're not good enough we're not clever enough we're not popular enough we're not thin enough we're not sporty enough whatever that enough might be and this is when we would shake the glitter we'd shake the glitter jar and what we now find is that there's glitter everywhere it swirls around and around and we no longer have clear calm water our mind isn't clear we're not able to see through it we're not able to make good choices because we're feeling overwhelmed and in lots of ways when you shake that glitter jar and the glitter is swirling and whirling around particularly if you've put enough in there what you can also do is quite a lot of children will say that that's exactly how their tummy feels this sort of swirling butterfly movement that makes them feel so debilitated and so overwhelmed so as we show this to our children and we explain that this is how we feel when we feel stressed and nervous and angst ridden and worried and so it's really difficult in that moment to necessarily dip into the strategies that we've talked about to do the breathing exercises so actually what we need to do is we need to find ways of creating some calm of creating some space of being able to press pause and this is where the techniques that i'm going to talk to and we're going to share and encourage our children to do really come in and what you can do when you make a glitter jar and you're explaining this to your children is still withholding the glitter jar just having a general chat to them about how might we press pause how might we be able to create a bit of space and what you'll find is as you're just having this discussion with your child is the glitter begins to calm a little the water stops swirling and within 60 to 90 seconds the glitter has settled to the bottom of the jar and we've created that lovely clear and calm space and what's key to emphasize with when that happens is because this is really important to help our children understand is when we've created that calm we haven't taken away the things that have worried us we haven't removed them we're not dismissing them but what we've done is by learning a particular strategy that helps settle our body's response to it is we've created some calm and stillness so that we might then be able to make a different choice the worries are still there because they're represented by the thoughts and the glitter that's at the bottom of the jar but we've given ourselves some space some room to breathe to be able to then implement these strategies and i find having the gingerbread person the understanding of where the anxiety and the worries tend to show up in our body coupled with the glitter jar that is a beautiful visual that children can absolutely connect with when they then start using the breathing techniques you're much more likely to have some success with this so i'm going to suggest two different breathing techniques and i'm going to tell you i particularly like these is that in essence what we're trying to do is create a bit of calm and the breathing techniques that encourage you to take a deep breath in and then a long slow exhale do work they are great and they are brilliant yet what i typically find with children is that they're so caught up in that moment they're so overwhelmed is that they struggle to take those breaths in that way so the strategies i'm going to recommend are specifically doing something so the first one take 10 is instead of encouraging our children to take deep breaths and then longer slow exhales we encourage our children to take deep breaths and then longer slow exhales we encourage our children to take deep breaths and then longer slow exhales we encourage our children to take deep breaths and i find by counting their breath what really happens is their mind is distracted on their breathing which we don't ask them to change we simply ask them to observe and count and that by doing that that naturally brings with it an essence of calm so let me talk you through take 10 and if you head over to drmaryhand.com forward slash library pop your email address in and what we'll you'll then be able to do is add a little bit of calm and then we'll talk you through take 10 and if you head over to drmaryhand.com forward slash library pop your email address in and what we you'll then be able to do is access the specific instructions on this as well as all the other resources from this podcast episode and all my other podcast episodes so take 10 is in essence a strategy that is a breathing strategy where our children only ever count their breath they don't try and change it and they only count their breath up to 10 so let me explain i guess the easiest way for you to show your child how to do this so if you imagined your child was lying on their bed maybe they've got a favorite cuddly or something that they could place on their chest as they breathe in and out they will notice that that cuddly or whatever it might be would move up and down because that's their in and their out breath well take 10 is simply about noticing and counting the in breath and the out breath as separate breaths so let me explain how you do this so you would simply say ask your child to observe their breathing so they would then count in their head and count in their mouth and count in their head as they breathed in
Speaker 1therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST.
Speaker 2That would be a count of one. As they then breathe out, that's a count of two. The next in-breath would be three. The next out-breath would be four. Next in-breath, five. Next out-breath, six. Next in-breath is seven. Next out-breath is eight. Next in-breath is nine. Next out-breath is ten. And that's it in essence. However, what I have found to work particularly effective, and it's just by coincidence really, rather than design, is if we encourage our children to do that three times, so they count to ten once, they count again, and then they count a third time, is what I have found is the time it takes our children to do that is roughly 60 to 90 seconds. And if you make a reasonably sized glitter gel, so not a jam gel size, but a little bit bigger than that, then 60 to 90 seconds is also the amount of time it takes to do that. And if you make a reasonably sized glitter gel, then 60 to 90 seconds is also the amount of time it takes for a glitter gel to settle. So if you make the glitter gel, you can encourage your child to shake that glitter gel and then practice the breathing strategy at the same time so they can see the connection between the two. So my advice would be when you're starting these sorts of strategies is to encourage your children to practice them. And I typically get children to practice them at night because that's quite a nice relaxing time. They're going to go to bed and they're going to go to bed at night. So if you let's be honest, if you've got a child who worries or who is anxious, you're probably noticing the challenges in terms of them being able to fall asleep. So we can get some really quick wins with these particular breathing techniques because our children notice that they relax them. Now I'll be honest with you, with the take 10, what usually happens is the first round of 10, it's slightly all over the place. They're trying to get used to what they need to do with the counting. But by the second round of 10, they're getting into a little bit of a rhythm and it's starting to feel a bit more of a nice steady flow. By the time they do the third 10, they're in a really beautiful relaxed state. And then they feel very relaxed and often then drift off to sleep. And certainly when I've done this strategy and taught it in schools where we've also made some beads, which will be in the resource if you'd like to do that. If you've got a child who actually could really benefit by having something that's quite relaxing, you can do that. So if you've got a child who actually could tactile, that's all in the take 10 instructions, is that what we find is that by the time they've done their third round of 10, you could literally hear a pin drop in the room. And we've got lots of children yawning and super relaxed. So I cannot recommend that strategy more. And I genuinely use take 10 when I am driving over bridges because it helps me with that. So that's one breathing technique. And then the other breathing technique is the hand breathing technique, which can also be really useful and relaxing for some children. So we're trying to remember, we're trying to help our children build a toolkit so they can go to the resource, their go-to resource for them. And their go-to might be different to someone else's. And they may use some breathing techniques in some situations, but not in others. So with a hand breathing technique, what you would do is you'd get your child to get their pointy finger out. So I'm right-handed, pointy finger out, and then their other hand. So I'm right-handed. So I would then have my left hand up with my fingers spread. And what I'm really doing is I'm using my pointy finger to trace around my hand. So I would start at my wrist and move up towards the top of my thumb. And as I'm doing that, as I'm moving up, I'm breathing in. As I trace around my thumb, I breathe out. As they trace, trace up my next, finger I breathe in. As I trace down it, I breathe out. Next finger, breathe in and out. So you're tracing around your finger on your hand. But as you trace up, you breathe in. As you trace down, you breathe out. Until you get to your little finger, trace all the way down to your wrist. And then you retrace your steps and go back again. Now that worked really well for some children because it's tactile. It's something that they can feel and they can touch. And that can be another really good strategy. And really, I find if you teach children two strategies, you're giving them choice. You're helping them make decisions in that moment of which strategies might I try in this particular situation. And practice is key. So if we go back to our seesaw, we've got our perceived demands, which are super heavy. Our perceived resources, which are just too light. So they can't make a difference and they can't rebalance that seesaw. So we have just gone through the resources. Now, let's talk through the perceived demands. So how can we change that side? And in essence, the perceived demands is not the physiological response that's going on with our body. It's the internal chatter. It's the dialogue. It's the narrative. It's what your child tells themselves in their head around their ability to manage and cope with any given situation. And I will be honest, this is the hardest part of the seesaw to make changes with because it's all about the internal chatter. Yet it can be the most powerful and in my mind is a life skill that we should be equipping our children with. So this is where we need to persevere and we need to keep going with this one because it will help our children long standing, their internal chatter. And the way that I typically explain this is that I explain to children that we're having conversations in our head all of the time. We're having little internal chatters. And on one side, we've got that internal critic, that inner ogre. Sometimes books refer to it as the inner bully. I'm not a huge fan of that. I tend to prefer the internal chatter or the inner critic or the inner ogre. But that's the part that says we can't do something, that we're not going to make friends, that we're not popular enough, clever enough, thin enough, fast enough, sporty enough, whatever enough, we're not. So when we're in a situation that we feel overwhelmed, that's the voice that is so overwhelmingly loud. It feels like it's shouting and we can't possibly hear anything else. And yet when we're in situations that we are happy, that we feel confident in, we don't typically hear any narrative. We don't typically hear any dialogue. But what's happening is we've got the other side of our chatter, which is the voice of our best self, the voice of our inner cheerleader, the voice of our best friend that is cheering us on, that says you can do this, that says you are popular enough, you are clever enough, you are kind enough, you are thin enough, whatever the enough might be. So the first thing when we start tackling this particular area is we're going to start tackling this particular area, which is really helping our children to understand that they have an internal dialogue and then to really help them connect with the situation that they find overwhelming. What is the internal chatter? What is going on with that dialogue? What are they hearing in their head? What does the chatter say to them? Because we can't look at shifting it until we understand what the chatter is first. So within the resource library, you're going to find that this is an A4 sheet that is split into two sections. And on one side, we've got the inner critic, the inner ogre, helping our children when you, I don't know, let's say we've got a child who finds it really difficult to try new activities because they're worried about not knowing anyone and that they might not make any friends. So we ask them, when we say that we're going to go and do a club or an activity and you feel like you just can't do it, what's the sort of stuff that's going on? What are the things that you're hearing? What's being said in your head that, oh, it's too scary. I'm not going to know anyone. Nobody will talk to me. What if I'm no good at this? Yeah. So we're trying to help our children understand what is that chatter. And we want to write that down in the inner critic, that inner ogre side. And then we really want to start looking and accessing what might our inner cheerleader say? What might the voice of our best friend say? The version of our best friend. And what's key to remember here is we're not talking about negative talk and positive talk. That's not what we're trying to say, because in some ways, when we start talking about negative talk and positive talk, I think it slightly diminishes our children's experience of that moment because we're saying, well, that's negative. You shouldn't be thinking that. Well, actually, that's what the chatter is saying. How can we reframe that? be an alternative so it's not about being overly cheerleady and saying oh my god you're amazing you can so do this you can do whatever you want you can be incredible it's about trying to find a more reasonable narrative and that might be it's hard but you can do it it feels scary now but once you get started it won't feel so overwhelming it's hard making friends but with practice it gets easier you've been in situations like this before and whilst it's felt hard at the beginning it's got easier as you've kept going so this is it's that kind of dialogue it's that kind of chatter that we want to help our children access so the first part of it though is we have to help them recognize what's the internal chatter that shows up for them and acknowledge that there's no shame in our children feeling that we're not trying to diminish it we're not trying to say it's negative and there's something wrong with that that's our child's experience much in the same way as it's our experience whatever the situation is that we feel overwhelmed in and for a lot of adults that can be public speaking and again those thoughts can be completely irrational that you're going to fumble or that you're going to say something ridiculous and that people are going to laugh but that's your experience so we need to make sure that we help our children understand that it's okay to feel that way and how can we begin to look at it from a different perspective how can we begin to change that narrative so that we can feel less overwhelmed because the internal chatter is what creates our children's realities so we have to accept that that's their starting point and what we're trying to help them do is shift it and move them one way or the other so we need to make sure that we're one small step at a time so once we've got that internal chatter once we've got that inner critic and that ogre chatter let's now look at what we could replace it with what feels comfortable from your child's perspective if their friend said that they were experiencing these feelings or these thoughts how might they help their friend what advice would they give to them what alternative chatter would they give them and this is where the mantras then come in so we've got our inner critic our ogre narrative we've reflected we've looked at what we might be able to do to change that and we've written down some things that are the voice of our best friend would say maybe the voice of our cheerleader or the voice of our best self so now what we want to do is really when you're trying to get these alternative perspective you probably want to get about five or six and then what you want to try and do is pick top three that you're going to try first there is no right or wrong with this with the internal chatter because it's really going to be a lifelong practice what we want to help our children understand is there is no right and wrong there is just simply which would i like to try first which would i like to use for a little bit and notice how well they work which things am i going to put in my toolkit and take out in a particular situation and test so it's like running through a toolkit running an experiment we're collecting data we're doing a little bit of research and we're working out what works for us so it's getting your children to choose the top three that they want to try and i really would encourage you to get those three written on three separate cards maybe make them colorful and bright and maybe put them up in several different places so your child has them to mind really easily and really quickly they can kind of draw on those at any time and just encourage them to practice so when they're in a situation that they feel overwhelmed encourage them to practice saying those phrases those mantras in their head out loud whatever that might be and to notice how that might change how they're feeling does that change all of that stress and tightness that they might feel in their chest or their heart beating or their sweaty palms or their jelly legs or that fluttering in their tummy which of the mantras worked particularly well which ones are they going to keep using which ones are they going to drop which ones are they going to add and test and which ones are they going to try differently and really it's just about helping our children understand that this is going to be a lifelong practice it is going to be something that they're going to need to keep trying and tweaking and that it's something that you do too i mean let's face it when we're in situations that we feel overwhelmed with as adults we're saying mantras all of the time we just haven't formalized it with special words that i've talked about about mantras and in a critic and cheerleader but we do use them all the time you know this is only going to be i'm only going to be here for half an hour and then i'll be out or i know this feels really scary but i'm just going to get my head down and just get on with it those are the sorts of things that we're probably saying to ourselves and we're doing all of the time without necessarily realizing it so i hope that you've enjoyed this video and i hope that you've enjoyed it and i hope that you found these resources helpful do go back and listen and re-listen to this podcast these strategies that i've recommended are ones that i use day in day out and i know have made huge huge positive changes for children whether they're in situations where they're completely angst ridden or they're lacking in confidence they do work they just require some practice so as ever if you've enjoyed this episode i would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time
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