 Hello, welcome back. Today I am going to be talking to you about six ways that you can help make life a little bit easier for a child or young person who is struggling with anxiety. I have developed this video in response to requests falling on from a previous video about anxiety and people said that they found those ideas helpful and they'd like more really practical kind of day-to-day tips. So here you go, parents, teachers, anyone working with a child or young person with anxiety, here you go. Number one, teach the child or young person about the physiology of anxiety. Talk to them about how it feels in their body when they're anxious and help them understand why this happens. So an anxious response is a perfectly natural thing. It's kind of developed this, you know, we have this fight-flight-freeze response and that is there to help us in times of crisis. Like if we were being chased by, I was gonna say dinosaur, my husband has taught me in adult life, dinosaurs and people didn't exist in the same time. The Flintstones was all a lie. We were Oxford University together when he first started mocking me for this. Anyway, so not running away from a dinosaur, let's use another example, a rabid dog or a lion or something. So that anxious response, it has a purpose, it helps us in those scenarios. However, we might have that anxious response when we don't need to run, we don't need to hide. It might be because we have been asked to answer a question in class, for example. And then our body is flooded with this adrenaline and cortisol and all stuff pumping around and we're ready to run, ready to flee, ready to fight and that's not really helpful right now. So it's helpful to kind of understand that because it's really scary when you have all this stuff going on in your body and you don't know why and you think it's just you. And you might think you're gonna die. That's the other thing. When you have a panic attack in particular, it feels like you're gonna die. I mean, I've had hundreds of the things and every time it feels like I'm gonna die. And it could be helpful to remind someone that during a panic attack, it's gonna be okay. And actually, the understanding that this is like a curve and that you will, you know, there'll be a peak when it feels really, really, really, really awful. But actually, that is going to taper off because your body can't sustain this response for a long period of time. So learning that, learning that this is a very finite, quick, short response, it will get better with every passing minute. But yeah, that it's normal and you're not gonna die really helpful. So yeah, explain the physiology. Number two, learn about their triggers. Now, it might be that this is a question of saying to a young person, what are the things that trigger your anxiety in them saying, Well, actually, it is cats or being asked to do games or being around people or whatever. It could be all sorts of different things. But it might be that they say, I don't know, because often we don't often when we struggle with anxiety, we live in this kind of state of anxiety, and we don't really know what's causing it. But if we journal for a couple of weeks, either with the support of an adult or on our own, and we take note of how we feel kind of throughout the day, maybe on a scale of one to 10 or very calm to very anxious, or using colors or animals, whatever we might find helpful. And we do that maybe every hour or each break time or something like that. We might begin to see a pattern. And if we can begin to see a pattern and begin to understand whether you know, what things or places or people or whatever it is that are causing the anxiety in the young person, then we can begin to work with them to think, What are we going to do about that? Some things we might think, Right, we can avoid that. Other things we might think, Well, we can't avoid that. So we're going to need to learn to manage it in some way. It's going to just depend on what those triggers are. And we'll respond to different things differently at different times, depending on the person, depending on the situation, and depending on what the triggers are. So yeah, but we can't even begin to think about what to do about those triggers, if we don't know what they are. So yeah, work with the young person to find out what they are. Number three, though, involve them in any decisions about them. So a really, really helpful parent or teacher might go, Right, okay, well, I have discovered that Rowena really feels very uncomfortable doing games. So I'm going to just take her out of the games for the rest of term. But that might not be very helpful for Rowena because actually Rowena might like to be involved in that decision, because it might be that she says she would like to try and get to games or she'd like to watch other people do games at first and then maybe join in or, you know, she might want to work with you to find ways in making games accessible. Now when we take the decision away from someone a we stop them from attempting to manage situations that are difficult. And actually it can often be good for us to try to do that as and when we're ready with the support that we find most helpful. Secondly, if you make decisions on another person's behalf, it can make that person feel quite out of control. And if you're struggling with anxiety, and you begin to feel out of control, it's not a great mix, let's be honest. Thirdly, in terms of thinking about this child, this young person's ability to manage their condition long term, then we need to help them build the tools and the skills in order to manage. And we take away the opportunity for learning when we make all the decisions for them. So if instead we kind of walk alongside them, and this is whether they're four or 14 or 44, then if we work with them, and help them and help their voice be heard and help to, you know, think help them to think what's the issue here, what might be supportive and kind of put them more in the driving seat, albeit with our support, then we are helping them to become a kind of advocate for change in their own life. We're helping them to become someone who can keep themselves more well, more healthy and manage better. So yeah, work with them, not for them. Number four, be consistently calm and supportive, be a safe base. So when we struggle with anxiety, it's really helpful when there are adults in our life who we know that we can trust who are calm and non judgmental and they're kind of a safe space that we can go to. It's like attachment theory, having these safe spaces, safe bases that we can kind of explore the world from. So if that young person knows that when they're with you, that they're safe, then that kind of kind of gives them a bit of a boost and enables them to, you know, maybe try a few different things, maybe stay present a bit more, maybe, you know, face that it is a little, it really helps. And some of the ways in which you do that are really simple. So just things like talking in a really nice measured way, thinking about your breathing and things like that can make a really big difference. So particularly if someone is struggling with an anxiety attack, for example, being in the presence of someone who is really calm can really help to calm them down. So thinking about your breathing, then often you'll find that their breathing will naturally begin to mirror yours. On the other hand, if their panic makes you panic, then you can kind of, yeah, bounce off each other and it gets worse and worse and worse. So you might have to really consciously think about slowing down your breathing. You don't necessarily even need to talk to them about their breathing. Just you focus on yours and you'll find that in time they'll kind of fall in sync with you. And yeah, having those kinds of people in your life, and I say this as an adult who struggles with anxiety and has such adults in my life too, they can be like, you know, like when you're playing computer game and you're running out of your energy, it's like an energy boost. It kind of helps you manage that a little bit longer. It's like a big bear hug that restores you a little bit and makes you able to manage just a bit more. It sounds odd, but it really makes a big difference. So yeah, try and be that adult, the calm, supportive, caring, non-judgmental adult. Number five is that routine can be really, really helpful. So having a think about what the day-to-day looks like and how that can be managed in the best way and trying to make that as kind of, yeah, make it relatively predictable for the young person. That doesn't mean to say sometimes you won't push boundaries, but it's good for them to know what's going to happen each day and for things to maybe happen in a similar way, because we can become much less anxious when we become more familiar with things, when we know what to expect. And so as an adjunct to having that kind of routine and knowing what to expect, we need to prepare a young person if there is going to be change or if they're going to face a new situation. And we should again then be working with them and thinking, right, how are we going to tackle this together? What do we need to do? What are the possible difficulties and issues that we're going to face and what do we need to do to manage them? So routine and then thinking about how we face different scenarios when there's going to be change. And then finally, number six, is that you should aim high and encourage this young person to aim high. So sometimes we think that someone who is struggling with anxiety, that that's going to stop them doing things, that it's going to mean that, you know, their ability to achieve academically or achieve in their hobbies or to kind of manage socially are going to be, you know, less than their peers. And that may be true sometimes on some days in some ways. But you will, you know, when you lower your expectations and they lower their expectations of themselves, then that's a certainty. However, if we aim high and instead of thinking, I can't, we think, how can I and we think about what measures need to be put in place to make it possible for that young person to try, then we create a scenario where perhaps they can do some of those things. And you can end up either in a very positive upward cycle or a very negative downward cycle quite easily with this. When we aim low and we say, you can't, you can't, you can't and that young person gets used to thinking that, then that feeds back into that kind of negative self-esteem, that negative cycle of self-belief and assuming that you can't do things. And so then you become more and more certain that you can't do things and you try less and less and less. Conversely, when we think I can and we think what do I need to do to be able to manage to do these things and we find that we can do things even if they're very small things that gives us a bit of a boost. That makes us think, okay, well that was okay. I mean it wasn't easy but I managed it. Maybe I can do the next thing. And so we can end up with this upward cycle. And so it's great if we can support a young people to still chase what they would like to achieve and just think, okay, so you might need to approach this in a different way than other people. We might need to put different support in place. We might need to do more planning and we might need to give you a bit more space afterwards to recover from it. But maybe you can. Let's think about how. How can I? How can you? However, we do need to be flexible because sometimes we will put lots of planning in place to enable a young person to try to do something. And then either they will try and not succeed or they might decide very last minute when you've done loads of work to support them that they're not going to try. And we need to be flexible and accept those things because if we don't they're not going to try again. And that is just a reality of living with anxiety is that things can be quite unpredictable and you might really really want to do something really really want to try something. And at the last minute it seems undoable. But do you know what? Maybe next time maybe next time you will. So yeah be flexible be accepting that not every attempt will be a success. And that's okay. That's true in life for all of us right? Okay so there you go your six things. I hope that you can use some of these to support a child or a young person in your care. Or actually to be fair most of them would apply equally if you have an adult friend. Do let me know. If you have other ideas comment down below. If you have other things that you think would be helpful to add to the list. And also let me know if there are other things you'd like me to make videos about. If you like the video please give a moment to give it a thumbs up. 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