If children were taught early on in life the symptoms of anxiety and how to manage them, then our world would be a much healthier place.
Anxiety disorders are very common in both children and adults. The most common type of anxiety disorder in young children is separation anxiety, and in older children and adults is generalised anxiety.
Generalised anxiety means that the person worries about a lot of things which can be a tough thing to deal with. In our clinic, we work with both of these types of anxiety disorders on a daily basis and the first thing we do is to normalise the feelings the person is having. Anxiety is very common and the more we all understand this, the better we can individually and collectively navigate our way through it.
In fact, we need a bit of anxiety to keep us safe. Think about how quickly our bodies react when we come across something dangerous; it’s that part of the brain that alerts us to danger. Anxiety becomes a problem however, when we start acting in our everyday life as though we are coming face to face with danger, continually.
Anxiety is caused by our thoughts. Yes, it is this simple. The way you think, creates your feelings. When children or adults are anxious, they think that they cannot cope and that the world is a dangerous place.
In the clinic, we teach children to recognise all the ways that they can actually cope and point out all their strengths to them. When someone is anxious, it’s as if they forget that they can cope and all of us can cope, possibly very well, when we are taught how to.
Often, a child who is anxious is actually a very sensitive person who thinks a lot. This is a good thing but sometimes we can overthink, and this then can cause stress in the mind and the body.
In the clinic, I work with the child’s parents to teach them how to help the child to see that things are not as dangerous as they think. I teach the child to ‘catch’ the scary thoughts and to pause for a minute rather than letting them settle down in their minds. Bringing awareness to our thoughts, in each moment, is the key to taking control of them, rather than having the thought take control of us.
If your child begins to continually avoid things i.e. school, parties or their normal activities, this might be a signal that something is wrong, or causing a sense of anxiety in your child. It is best if the parents look for help and advice quickly and this is nothing to be ashamed about. We all go through tough times, including our children. Talking to you child is the best first step, without making them feel under any additional pressure. Talking to a professional can really help also.
Anxiety is easily helped with CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy). This is very good for children because it is easy to understand and they can have fun with it in therapy.
We understand in the clinic that it can be scary for a child to come to therapy so we often call the sessions ‘lessons’. Actually, I learned this from a very sharp 8 year old who asked what we were going to do in today’s lesson. It made the whole thing much less scary for him and made the whole experience more normal.
CBT works very well for adults also and can make a huge difference in someone’s life. Adults have often had the anxiety for a long time and are relieved when I tell them that it is thoughts that are causing it. It makes it seem manageable as often the anxiety can feel very overwhelming.
Anxiety and low mood very often go hand in hand. Sometimes the person can feel low because they’ve been anxious for so long. It is easy to see how someone can become low if they’ve been anxious for a long time. All that worrying is exhausting!
If children were taught early on in life the symptoms of anxiety and how to manage them, then our world would be a much healthier place. Children catch on very quickly once they are helped to see that the ‘pain’ in their tummy can sometimes just be anxiety and that there is nothing serious wrong with them. This is a relief to adults also.
Interesting fact: often anxiety appears when we don’t know what exactly we are feeling.
In the clinic, I teach the children all of the different emotions and together we look at whether it is anxiety they are feeling. Sometimes, what they really feel is hurt or anger. Or sometimes anxiety can be a symptom of unexpressed hurt, anger, sadness or other emotions.
Children are often taught that anger is bad but we teach them that anger is okay. In fact it is very normal to feel anger towards someone. We teach the child how to notice when they feel angry and how to express it. We do this ‘lesson’ with adults also and it can be such a relief for people to realise that it is okay to be angry, just as it is okay to be anxious, and more importantly thay there are tools we can learn to manage.
At the Dublin Adult and Child Therapy Centre we have a team of professionals who work with Young Children, Teenagers and Adults on various different types of Therapy. For Children to access the clinic the Senior Clinical Psychologist is the first point of contact for parents to come in and do what’s called a Parental Intake. This is an opportunity for parents to go through development of their child to date and to go through the concerns they are currently having. The Psychologist will then recommend who best on the team to work with the family. Marie O’Sullivan our CBT Therapist works best with this presentation in young children and Adults. Sessions are 1 hour long and done once a week.
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