 When anxiety has made our world get really small and really shrunk it, how can we make it get bigger again by finding what feels safe? That's the topic we're going to be exploring in today's podcast. So let's dive straight in. So one of the problems with anxiety is that as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, our world gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And how this happens by is because when things make us worry, they make us scared, they make us anxious, then our natural response is obviously to avoid them. That's what we'll naturally do. If something's horrible, scary, makes us feel bad, we're going to try to do less of that thing or go less to that place or spend less time with that person, whatever it might be. And each time we avoid that thing, our brain goes, oh, thank heavens we didn't do that or the terrible things would have happened. And the lack of exposure to that thing means that our brain doesn't get told, oh, actually, no, it was okay. And so then our well gets a bit smaller. And then the next time something else is a little bit scary, perhaps a little bit more into the world that we're still accessing at the moment. And something begins to feel a bit more fearful. Then we go, I'm actually going to kind of keep away from that thing, because that doesn't feel quite right now either. And our well gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So we see this all the time with kids who are really struggling to attend school, who perhaps start off by, I don't know, one time, putting their hand up in class and not knowing the answer and stumbling over the answer a little bit. And then they become fearful of putting their hand up in class in case they get called on and they don't know the answer again. And they're worried that their friends might like laugh at them, for example. And then perhaps they, so they stop putting their hand up, they stop doing that. They avoid that, that well gets a little bit smaller, they no longer putting their hand up in class. But then perhaps after a while they're so, you know, become more worried that, well, you know, maybe I won't actually share my point of view in a group task because I might be wrong and people might laugh at me. And if I don't do that, then I'll be safe. And so they stop participating in the group task. And then maybe after a while just going to class feels a bit too scary. And so they stopped doing that. And what can happen is that we can go from sort of a smallish trigger or kind of one thing and just gradually over time, the things that make us anxious and things that feel impossible to us become more and more and more. And we can end up in a situation where we have not uncommonly young people who will not leave the house or will barely leave their room, for example. This doesn't just happen with young people, happens with adults too. And I'm certainly one of those adults who has spent of my adult life many weeks kind of imprisoned at home, unable to take a step over the doorstep because the world has felt too big and scary. So how do we get over that? How do we start to make our world feel a little bit bigger? And I want to look at this from a positive proactive, gentle point of view because one of the issues with lots and lots of approaches to overcoming anxiety is they do often involve like directly tackling the tough stuff and saying, for example, our world's got scary because we're not doing that thing that scares us. But maybe it'll be OK. So let's maybe have like graduated exposure to it and then it'll be neutral or positive. And it tells our brain it's OK. And then we feel more able to do it. So for example, having a plan and putting our hand up in class and seeing what happens. And that can work really well. There's really, really good evidence for it. The problem is that if our anxiety, if our fear, if our worry is not irrational, if it's about something that's actually unpleasant, uncomfortable, scary, likely to go wrong for us, then trying to have exposure to that thing is actually going to kind of cause more trauma and more challenge. So we just need to be thinking is, you know, graduated exposure, anxiety, lack of ladder, whatever way you are thinking of doing it is this likely to do more harm than good. And if we're thinking, right, well, if, for example, I take the child I care for or I'm supporting and I put them in this situation that we want them to be able to do, is it going to go well? Is it likely to go well? Or is it that actually this situation is fundamentally not really suited to them and it might do more harm than good? If that's the case or you even begin to fear that's the case, or you just like a slightly more gentle approach to start with, then instead thinking not about how do I do the scary stuff? But what does feel safe can be a gentler, warmer, kinder, more nurturing way to just begin to expand that world out in the first place. Now, what do I mean by that? What does feel safe? This is about working with the child or the adult or whoever to just stop and take a look at how their life is right now, however small it has got and just stop and getting really, really curious about. OK, so I get that there's a whole ton of stuff right now that does feel scary, that does provoke anxiety or trauma response, that there's lots of things that are hard. But but within your day to day week to week experience, which are the better bits? When, where, doing what with whom feels a little bit calmer, a little bit happier, a little bit more possible, just drilling into their normal day to day experience and just looking for the slightly better bits. Now, we got a temporary expectations here and be realistic. We're not saying one feels great because, sadly, for some people, nothing feels great right now, but there might be some slightly less bad bits. And what we're doing here, we're trying to identify points of safety. So these will be places where they feel a little bit less triggered, a little bit more calm. These will be people whom they feel that they can trust, who make them feel safe and make things feel a bit more possible. This might be activities when they begin to forget about their other worries and perhaps get into the flow that take their mind away from things or distract them or just feel good. Or this might be something as simple as times of day when the child feels that they've got more emotional energy or however they might describe that more capacity to kind of cope. So many people will manage better at the beginning of the day before they've been kind of worn down over the course of the day, kind of using up all their mental energy to deal with each situation as it arises. So a good way to do this is just to sit and explore it at a time of calm with the young person or the person you're supporting or brainstorming it for yourself and you can do it as a conversation. You can do it through play with a younger child. We might be using our toys and acting it out and role playing it with an older child. We might take something like their timetable and walk through it. And I have a really simple written tool that I use. And it just has three headings at the top. What, who, where? So what, who, where? And then for each of those headings, it's got school and home. And so you end up with six boxes. What, who, where? And for each of those, you've got it at school and you've got it at home. And then within those boxes, we are just writing what feels good, safe, happy, calm and which brainstorming any so the what, any activity, things that feel good, feel safe, feel calm, feel happy. We think about that at school. We think about it at home. We do for the where the same. We think about which places, which spaces feel calm and feel happier, feel more possible, reduce that anxiety or don't provoke it so much. Again, we do it at home. We do it at school and get really, really specific here. It might be that there's a particular little nook that feels really, really safe or a specific seat within a classroom that feels safer, for example. And then we do the who are their faces. Are there people who make the young person feel more able to do things, more able to access, more able to be and continue with their day to day life? The reason we do it for home and for school, then you could choose whatever context you want, whatever context the person has exposure to, but is to try to learn between the context so we can move between them. So, for example, if there are activities at home, which somebody felt really, really comfortable doing and they made them feel a bit calmer, a bit happier, then I'd be thinking about, well, how can I apply those within the school environment? Is it possible for them, for example, to get a bit of a brain break and an opportunity to reset participating in? I don't know. Maybe they say at home, when I'm skipping, everything else goes when I think, OK, could they do a bit of skipping? It doesn't really matter. And we should never be judgmental about what comes up here. It's about helping the young person to find their voice and to share with us what works for them. If they can't name these things, if they can't find them, then we might do this kind of through observation and just notice that better times, places, activities over a little bit of time and try to collect them and use them as our springboard. And as with all these activities, it doesn't have to be written, doesn't have to be spoken, can be done through art or play or music or drama or whatever you want, whatever way works for communicating with the person that you are working with. But the thing that we're trying to do here is just try to think when feels a little bit better. And once we've collected even a small number of ideas here, our next question is, OK, how can we do more of that? How can we take this little thing, this place, this person, this activity that feels just a bit more doable for a young person whose world is rapidly shrinking? And how can we take that knowledge here of this bit that feels more doable and use that just to expand their world out just a little bit? For example, if there were a person that they named that made things feel a bit more possible when they were with them at school, is there someone who could be brief to check in with the child regularly if they don't have the time, the capacity or the perceived skill to do that? Then they might instead just be someone who literally catches that kid's eye across the corridor every now and then. These things can make a big difference. Just knowing there's someone who's got you in mind, gives you that little mental boost saying, hey, I see you. I notice you. You've got this. Can actually really, really help us just knowing a bit like if you're stood on a stage about to do a presentation and maybe you're not someone who likes to do that kind of thing. Just catching the eye of someone you knew in the audience, giving you a bit of a thumbs up and yeah, you've got this. You've got this would make you feel more possible to do that. And just the same way for our young people walking around school, adults who they trust and care and who they know have got their back just a head nod and a smile can give them the energy just to do the next step. So we're looking, we're looking for people, places, things that feel a bit better. And then we're thinking, how can I take that and use it elsewhere in their day? Use it to help them to manage other places, faces, activities that feel harder. It's not going to magically make them be able to do everything. But we can use it in two ways. One, to ease the anxiety in some situations that might feel hard. So for example, if they're in a place that we know they feel more challenged by, then we might introduce an activity or a person that feels safe for them to try to make that thing feel more possible. And the other thing we can do is to use our safe places, people and activities proactively. So actually thinking about regularly giving a young person access to exposure to these things that feel a little bit better, the kind of feel the emotional bucket and get us to a point of good regulation, managing, coping, able to do this. So then when they're then exposed to are the situations that feel a bit more difficult, a bit more challenging, more anxiety provoking, they're in a better place to give it their best shot. So. Binding those safer people, places, things is a, I believe, gentle away than some of the other strategies, which I do absolutely advocate for the right people at the right times for trying to make our world a little bit bigger as it's shrinking with anxiety. And a really crucial thing here is as we find that world shrinking to notice that, to realize it's happening and to be thinking proactively, what can we be doing to try and at least hold that shrinking if we can? Because anxiety, that horrible anxiety monster that's always sitting on our shoulders wants to make our world as small as possible. And we want to say, I'm not having that. I'm going to take control. We're going to do something different here. So hopefully this gives you some ideas about preventing that world from getting too, too tiny. I would love to hear how these ideas work for you. Do talk to me on the socials and let me know what else you are trying as well. I hope there were some helpful ideas in here that you felt that you could take away to use with young people or indeed adults that either yourself or those in your care. Thank you for tuning in. If you like what I'm doing, then you can support my work by sharing it. 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