More strategies to reduce your child's anxiety

When your child is overwhelmed with anxiety, they need something seriously different to distract them while the feeling reduces to manageable levels.  

Feelings of overwhelm do come and go. Your child has to ride out the wave. Get through the other side.

When feelings are aroused, the thinking brain cuts out, and you need a wind break as a temporary shelter from the storm.

This activity can be used in families regularly for a bit of fun and a laugh. But then it’s also available in time of need too.  

So – try this one for size in your family. Adults too, as I keep saying!

• Everyone stands and counts backwards from 10 to 1. Reasonably fast. But – do this while waving your right arm and hand around!

• Repeat the counting until you’ve done it with your left hand, too, and then your right leg and then your left leg (yes, try not to fall over!) That’s 4 repeats.

• Immediately go back to the start but only count from 9 downwards. Four times again, to cover waving with each arm and each leg in turn.

• Then – you guessed! – start again at 8. Repeat with each limb.

• Then 7 downwards…

Negative thinking is often the cause of anxiety. Anxiety is fear for something in the future. If you think negatively about that “something”, you’re not going to feel okay! 

That’s because it brings up the stress response of a rush of hormones ready for fight or flight. And if these stress hormones continue to be elevated day by day, they start damaging the brain and body. 

So it’s a great idea to have a family ritual at the end of the day to help reduce all the negative thoughts. 

Adjust this idea to suit your family. And if you have younger children, it’s good to start the habit early. They’ll enjoy it.

The point is to put aside negative thoughts by bringing in positive, grateful ones. It has a track record – the poet Rumi said you don’t try to sweep out the dark, you bring in the light!

You can just go for the positive, grateful ones if you like. But if you have an anxious child, it’s good to deliberately put aside the worries and concerns first.

Gather the family at a convenient time, but later in the day if at all possible.

• Everyone will use the fingers on their left hand to name feelings they don’t want from the day. 
• Take turns, each person in turn naming just one thing and raising one finger. 
• After a few rounds your own 5 will have been named. Scrunch your hand and put it behind your back: say, “Bother, bother, I refuse to look at these any more tonight.” (Or your own choice of words!)
• Take turns again, and using the fingers on your right hand in the same way as before, name 5 things you’re grateful for or are feeling positive about. 
• Hold that hand out in front: say, “I’m going to remember these all night.” (Or your own words!)

This routine gives the brain a rest. It calms the body. It puts a different perspective on things for a while. It gives a chance to the wiser bit of our brain to take charge of the emotions and any trigger alerts so that we can get to sleep.

Put a large circle of paper on the floor, or make a circle with rope or anything handy. 

Work out with your child what they will feel like if everything were just fine with whatever they’re worried about. 

We’re going to reduce anxiety by getting a real feel for the “OK state” when standing inside the circle (or on it!) so that they can mentally prepare and then feel it in advance, and so put it on for real when faced with the event.

Let’s take an example. What about a spelling test?

It might take a few questions and some thought, but your child might come up with any of these things for when they’re standing in the circle of excellence:

“I’ve learnt all my spellings. I have relaxed my body. I’m breathing slowly. My brain is calm and able to think. I feel confident. I’m smiling at the thought of getting them right.”

The idea is to practise stepping into the circle and deliberately experiencing all those things. This then registers in the brain as a suitable response. It can be activated when your child starts the test – they simply imagine themselves stepping into that circle again. Their anxiety reduces.

Your child certainly won’t sleep while tense with worry. One way of reducing anxiety at bedtime is to compile a playlist of a certain kind of music. 

Typically this list might be thought of as “classical”. But, more importantly, what it needs to have is:

• no huge variations of loud and soft
• a slowish beat or rhythm
• a melody that your child can follow and anticipate
• no vocal line
• a lower register, rather than a higher one (more soothing)
• repetitive elements

Such a list is not too hard to assemble. You may have to fork out the odd 79p several times over if you can’t find the tracks you want on a streaming service you already subscribe to. (But if you do have one, make sure it’s one without advertisements!)

The following are some examples of suitable choices. You can find your own, obviously! 

But if you listen to an extract of each of these first (maybe on Amazon or somewhere), you’ll get an idea of what will work and what won’t.

*Adrian Snell’s “Safe back at home on the shores of Loch Goil”

*Pisendel’s arrangement of “Telemann’s concerto in Bb major for violin, strings and continuo”

*Ungar’s “Ashokan Farewell” – Craig Ogden’s guitar version is super suitable

*Shaw’s “Violin Concerto in G mvt2: arioso” 

*Hawes’ “Stargazer Final” – from his Towards the Light album

*Hummel’s “Viola sonata in Eb major opus 5/3 mvt 2 adagio”

Invite your child to listen carefully and not to bother too much about going to sleep. They will almost certainly drop off though!

So your child is worried about something one day. 

Grab a piece of paper and help them write down the worry (you’ll find the worry often starts to lessen just by doing that! Like opening a valve to let air escape). 

Ask them: “What do you think will happen?” Get it written down. (Nice if they can write it themselves, but help them if not.) 

Bear in mind that what they’re expecting to happen is usually something bad. Go for the “bad” thing if you can, rather than something pretty prosaic like “it might rain”. Maybe ask: “So what?” to get to the root of the bad thing.

Now, ask them to rate how bad it feels out of 10. Jot it down.

Then ask them how likely it is to happen out of 10: 1  would be not likely, 10 would be very likely. Jot it down.

Many times, they (and we!) worry a lot about something that’s pretty unlikely to happen. Discuss these scores with them, if you like. They may have seen the discrepancy already.

Finally, help them invent and write down two other things that might happen instead. Just one thing, if it seems an uphill struggle to get two! It's not school...

But the important thing is to test the worry out and see what really does happen. (They could jot that down, too, afterwards.)

Thing is, unless they get in the habit of testing out their worries, their life will become a trap that limits their happiness. We parents just don't want to go down that road. So if this idea seems possible, try it out with your child.

If your child brings up negative thoughts about random aspects of school lessons that are worrying them, try helping them to invent a more positive version of the thought. 

Have a few minutes of fun with this set of examples. It will help your child to see how their thoughts affect how they feel about school and how they might change them to be more helpful. 

When you've done this list (which is not threatening because it's your list not theirs!), start on a couple of theirs to alter. And gradually keep this exercise in mind on any day they state negative thoughts.

There are ancient ways of dealing with anxiety that have been brought into our modern world. 

Three of these are:

• acupuncture
• EFT tapping (which is accupressure)
• microcurrent therapy

They wouldn’t still be used if they didn’t work! And they all target a re-flow of decent energy in the body to lower cortisol levels and stand the frightened/hurting brain down.

Let's define them in turn:

1 Accupuncture is an age-old traditional Chinese method of resetting the body’s energy to first rate standard. It works by inserting ultra-fine needles at certain points on the body that are linked to energy pathways or flow. They are then activated by the practitioner’s hands or by electricity to unblock blockages.

2 EFT tapping seeks to do the same without the needles. The many pressure points are reduced to nine key ones, and tapping on them produces the pressure to activate the flow of energy.

3 Microcurrent therapy seeks to do the same but at the cellular level. The cells are the batteries of the body, of course. Dud batteries means no energy or at least disrupted energy!  Sensors are placed on the body. They detect malfunctioning cells and send back into the body (painlessly and non-invasively) a corrective energy dose via tiny micro or pico current. Like recharging batteries.

You can call these things what you like: pseudo science, placebos or whatever.

The fact is they’ve all proved to work well for various people who’ve tried them. That’s enough to not overlook them!

From veterans, to children, to abuse survivors, to addicts, to those in pain – the evidence is out there. Some hospitals in the UK even offer these treatments. And there are many independent practitioners.

However, we're talking home use here. And the solution I’m interested in here is finger tapping for anxiety.

The reason is, I’ve found with young clients it’s a really useful little home work exercise that has three benefits:

• It’s unobtrusive if your child needs to use it when out and about and they get anxious.
• It’s dead easy to learn: even toddlers can learn it by rote without understanding how they’re having an effect.
• It puts your child in charge – because anxiety is usually future-faced about what might happen and they think they have no control (sometimes they do have, and we have other activities here that help with that).

So which area of the hand is involved?

A strategy for ignoring “heads” and choosing “tails”

Sometimes the situation we find ourselves in does seem as random as tossing a coin. And we get annoyed, sad, frustrated, anxious etc when it isn’t to our liking. But we can change all that.

How? Because our attitude to the situation determines how it will pan out. So, here’s a magic way to trick our brains (or our children’s brains) into getting heads instead of tails!

It goes like this: “Even though X, I choose Y.”

Let’s have a couple of examples. You get up one morning. The children are grumpy. It’s raining. They’re morose and bickering. Anxiously wondering how they can do what they planned. Get them to say: “Even though it’s raining, I choose to [do xxx / be happy / enjoy getting wet].”

NOTE: Be funny – MAKE  IT FUN! Act the part!

In other words, encourage them to change their response (and choose how to do it).

Another one. What’s on the table isn’t their favourite food. Encourage them to say: “Even though it’s not what I wanted, I choose to [enjoy it / be grateful / sort out my hunger anyway].”

In the therapy room, I’d have encouraged it as a game for us to practice, for later needs. So the child would give me a theoretically bad situation to respond to, one that would make them anxious and distressed – and I would invent a new way of thinking, following this pattern. Then I'd give them one. Just a few turns each. It reinforced the idea of turning things on their heads to help our emotional reaction change.

I guess you’d call this acceptance. Sounds dead obvious, but see if you can help your children be less cross, angry, frustrated, upset, or stressed when the “coin” falls the wrong way. This change of attitude can stem the flow of cortisol in their bodies and change their outlook – and the atmosphere in your house! – entirely. 

I guess if we model it, osmosis will do the rest!!

The Body, Words, Focus strategy is great for changing feeling states. But there’s an even quicker method. 

An anchor is a unique stimulus that will trigger the desired feeling state – and you choose what the anchor will be. (Best to make it one that isn’t going to happen accidentally!)

When your child is super excited, confident, and feeling good about themselves, get them to eg flick their wrist, or squeeze their thumb or scratch their neck (whatever!). This is the trigger action they’re anchoring into their system to bring forth the feeling.

Encourage them to feel the highest intensity of that good feeling – and then set the anchor.

Do it 2-3 times in succession. Feel > anchor > feel > anchor. 

Sounds mad? It’s proven to work!

When your child needs to feel that wonderful, confident, happy feeling again (eg when anxiously facing a test or a hard task), they must do that action to trigger the feeling.

Note: it’s essential to set the anchor while the desired feeling is as strong as it can be. So watch out for those moments they feel really good, and get them to set a trigger before the feeling’s faded again.

Of course, the trigger could be playing a specific song on their phone while they feel really happy. And that would be the anchor for the feeling. When they need to, they'd play the tune and the feeling comes flooding back.

Hasn't we all heard an advert's theme tune and immediately remembered what was advertised?! Those ad folk do it deliberately. But thumb squeezing anchors work too!

Turn an empty box (a cereal box?) into a worry box. 

Have your child put worries in the box every time they come up with one (you can be a detective and hear anxious/negative things like “I can’t do...” or They won’t...” or “What if...?” as well).

If your child can’t write, ask them what you should write on the slip of paper and then let them put it in the box.

If your child is slightly older, you can invent a chest, truck, ancient box or whatever else instead of physically putting the worries in a cardboard box. Depends on your child and their imagination. And their willingness to imagine and describe this fantastic box that will keep the worries shut in for the time being.

Now for the important bit: worries sitting in a box are still there!

So – each night, you both imagine together where your child would like to send the worries box so it won’t bother them overnight.

Get them to name a place, describe it in detail (ask a few questions to help them), and explore together how the box will be (mentally) put or buried or tied up or locked – or whatever your child’s imagination comes up with – in that place.

The power of imagination is huge. Together, shut your eyes and agree that the box is being sent there and settled for the night, all in detail. Make it vivid. Check with your child that it's there safely!

Then say goodbye to it (and the worries it contains) and open your eyes. Agree you won't think about those things again until tomorrow. 

You can also ask them the next day, or at another convenient time, which worry they'd like to deal with.

Maybe your child got overstimulated or seriously anxious about something that leads to poor behaviour – the key thing is to help them calm down. They won’t hear a word you say otherwise. Their thinking brain is offline.

So – calm them first, then have that discussion about what’s going on for them!

Any creative activity increases serotonin levels in the brain (the happiness hormone), so the activity will help relieve their stress and anxiety.

But time out doing something quietly alone (or with you, which is often better, by the way) is equally important to create a bodily, physical break.

And burning off excess energy and/or cortisol (the stress hormone) also helps them calm down.

Here are 20 ideas to use according to what you might have available. You can download a printable copy of this chart and keep it handy. (There are many apps for printing from a phone btw!) Download PDF