 Today we're thinking about why when a child or indeed an adult is anxious it's important that we don't totally avoid the anxiety-provoking thing. Now this is tricky because if we are caring for working with supporting someone for whom a person, a place, a situation makes them very very anxious then our gut instinct is often to go okay let's take you away from that and I most often see this with children who are experiencing school anxiety. Now what we need to understand is a little bit about how when we avoid the anxiety-provoking thing sometimes we can make things worse inadvertently. So what happens is our brain goes I can't go to school I can't be in that place the world will end and it might not be that if we actually picked it apart and talked to the child that they'd feel the world would actually end but they feel on some deep visceral level that bad things will happen this will be bad it will be horrible I can't do it so they get very anxious they might get really distressed they don't want to go there and we don't want them to be distressed so we don't make them go that's a completely normal human kind reaction however when they then don't go and do the thing go to the place be with the person do the experience that makes them feel that things will be horrible and the world will end and ah then what their brain says is whoa few okay good if we'd have done that thing all these terrible things would have happened but we didn't do it and it was okay we better not do it again and it makes us a little bit more anxious next time and what we need to do instead is to provide positive or it doesn't have to be positive even neutral experiences of the thing place situation experience about which someone is anxious to try and break that thought pattern we're trying to create what we call cognitive dissonance so we kind of disrupt our thinking basically so when I'm going I can't do this thing I can't go to this place I can't have this experience because it feels too awful and the world will end what needs to happen is for a supporting adult to scaffold and support my access to that thing so I can do it and go oh actually the bad things didn't happen it was okay I managed and we need to make sure if we're going to essentially expose someone to the thing that worries them that they do not have a negative experience the very last thing we want is to build into that cycle of anxiety for the the kid to feel I told you so I told you if I went awful things would happen and they did and now we definitely can't go we need that not to happen so we've got a plan and prepare and scaffold really carefully but if we're able to enable them to encounter the thing and it's okay doesn't have to be unicorns and rapes even if it's just okay and they manage then that begins to make them think okay the thing didn't happen maybe I can do this maybe I can try the next step so a really graduated approach to this is the best way introducing things really slowly planning really carefully putting the right support in place and crucially using our if then planning so actually thinking through why are we scared of this thing place situation what are the things that we think might happen and crucially what can we do if those things do begin to happen so you might for example have a child who's really really anxious socially and they're really worried that if they go into a situation with people that everyone will start staring them or they'll say something stupid or they'll begin to feel very worried and then we would think okay what strategies technique or support do we have in place to enable you to begin to recognize that this is happening and to change the situation or change how you feel are their breathing strategies relaxation strategies whatever it might be so really careful planning what we can't do to break this cycle is just to throw the kid in and hope for the best because we may end up compounding their fears feeding into the worry but with support scaffolding good preparation we can provide them with that neutral or maybe maybe positive experience that shows them that it's okay I can do this let's try the next step