School Based Anxiety Interventions
- Jul 23, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 27, 2024
Ring the bell! School is back in session! While some parents, children and adolescents are
celebrating the ending of long summer days and the beginning of a new chapter in school, others are struggling with the anxiety that accompanies this new beginning.
As a therapist, I have heard a lot of children and adolescents share that they are anxious to start the new year, and they are not alone! Their Parents/Caregivers also share with me that they too are anxious for what the new school year will bring for their child. If school anxiety is impacting your family, I want to provide you with tools you can begin to use today to help with anxiety management.
Before we look at ways to help calm anxiety, first we need to understand why it is that humans
have anxiety from a biological perspective. Inside each human brain is a tiny cluster of cells that
is named the amygdala that is the size of an almond. The amygdala is known mostly for the role
it plays in being the fear center of the brain that alerts us to threats of safety. When I see clients
for the treatment of anxiety, I refer to this part of the brain as “Amy” and explain that this part of
the brain is like a dimmer switch that is always on with its ideal setting on low, but when there is a threat to safety, the dimmer switch is turned up high (Sweeton, 2024). Once “Amy” sounds the alarm that there is a threat of danger, over 1,400 biochemicals are released (Sweeton, 2024) and a person will immediately feel the impact on their body with the symptoms of anxiety such as fast heartbeat, feeling shaky, difficulty breathing, trouble concentrating and so much more. I also share with my clients that while “Amy” can be viewed in negative light, we also need her to keep us safe. Everyday we encounter threats to our safety and those threats can be real or imagined. Can you think of a time in your life in which your thoughts were causing you anxiety? Now that we know what causes anxiety in humans, let’s look jump into ways to help manage anxiety.
Anxiety Management Toolkit for School Anxiety
Bring Your Calm to Help Your Child/Adolescent Regulate their Emotions Related to
Anxiety
It is so important for Parents/Caregivers to bring their calm when helping to ease the
fears of children/adolescents. By bringing a calm, gentle presence this will help the
nervous systems of a child/adolescent be able to find their own calm or at least minimize
the amount of anxiety/worry that they are experiencing.
What We Say Matters! Validate and Encourage
Validate your child’s/adolescent’s feelings. While it is easy for us to say things like “don’t
worry you will be fine” this can invalidate the feelings that your child/adolescent is trying
to express. I can speak from personal experience that when my sons were small, I never
thought that by saying that type of statement I was invalidating my sons’ feelings. So
please give yourself grace if you have done this. We are all growing as we go!
Validate and Encourage: “When I was your age, I was scared too for the first day of
school. I know that you are brave and can do this! I am so proud of you already!”
Teach Why We Have Anxiety in Age-Appropriate Language
With children, I make it simple when I explain why they have anxiety/big worries by
sharing that there is this special part to our brain called “Amy” and that her job is to keep
us safe, but sometimes she worries too much about things that cannot really hurt us.
Breathing Exercises
• Breathing Exercises for Adults and Adolescents:
I must admit that I never used to teach my clients breathing exercises until I
learned the science behind the benefits that breathing exercises can offer. When
we take a big, deep belly breath we naturally push on a nerve called the vagus
nerve which helps to induce relaxation in our bodies. In the words of one of my
first therapy teachers, “when your world is spinning out of control around you, the
one thing you can focus on controlling is your breath.” I teach my clients to take a
deep breath in, but to be sure to breath slowly out giving themselves time between
each breath, repeating three or four times.
• Breathing Exercises for Children
There are lots of different choices on the internet for teaching children breathing
exercises. One of my all-time favorites to teach children is “Hot Cocoa Breath”. I
do this by asking the children if they like hot cocoa with yummy whip cream and
usually I get an astounding yes! I then say I am going to teach you a breathing
exercise that no one will ever know that you are doing. I get to the child’s eye
level and ask them to pretend that they are holding a cup of hot cocoa in their
hands, with yummy whip cream on top. I then ask them to imagine breathing in
the yummy cocoa and vanilla smell and hold it in for a few seconds and then
when they breath out pretend that they are cooling down their hot cocoa. I cannot
tell you how many children, adolescents and even adults have told me that this
breathing exercise was one of their favorites to use in helping them manage big
worries/anxiety!
I have included a book below that I use in the play therapy room called, Breath
Like a Bear. 30 Mindful Moments for Kids to Feel Calm and Focused Anytime,
Anywhere (Mindfulness Moments for Kids) by Kira Willey. The children that I
work with love the creative breathing exercises in this book. Trust me! It is a gem!
Link: https://amzn.to/3XFbgVy
Thought Busters! Also known as Cognitive Diffusion
Have you ever had a thought come to mind and just that very thought alone caused you
so much anxiety? I work with clients of all ages that struggle with thoughts that induce
fear. How we respond to those thoughts can make such a huge difference in the way in
which we experience thoughts.
Adult Thought Buster Example: For example, Let’s say that we have the thought, “My
child is not going to be okay without me.” Your body is going to feel the dread of that
very thought and cause anxiety and worry. Drum roll please…. Here comes Thought
Busters to the rescue! Try saying that thought out loud in a funny voice or sing it in a
funny way! I promise this sounds silly, but your body will not react the same way if you
take the thought so seriously.
Child Thought Buster Example: I had a child that I worked with that did not like
country music at all! When her thoughts were causing her much anxiety, she would
imagine the worst country song and sing the thought in her head while she was on the
playground and reported back that it helped her so much. Of course, in the play therapy
room we rehearsed what this would look like, and I accomplished this by singing her
scary thoughts to her in a country music style on the ukulele. Trust me, I cannot sing or
play an instrument, but not having those gifts certainly helps me when I am teaching how
to use thought busters!
Boss Back to “Amy” for All Ages
For clients of all ages, I have explained that while “Amy” has a big job of keeping us
safe, sometimes she can be bossy and at times a big bully that keep us from doing the
things that we would love to do. “Bossing Back to Amy” is an internal dialogue technique
for all ages that can be used when someone has a thought that is causing anxiety. For
example, let’s say someone has the thought, “No one is going to like me this year at
school.” Being able to give “Amy” back that same level of bossiness could go something
like this, “Amy you don’t know everything! I am not listening to a word you are saying!”
Use of Anxiety Coping Statements for All Ages
Sometimes just having a simple anchor statement can help us cope with anxiety. Here are
some examples: “This feeling is normal and will soon pass.,” “I am not my anxiety.”
I encourage my clients to get creative and come up with their own spin on anxiety coping
statements that will work best for them.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog post! I hope that you found the anxiety
management tools to be helpful for school anxiety.
Smiles & Sparkles,
Edith Appleton, LMSW, NPT-C
Reference
Sweeton, J. (n.d.). Neuropsychotherapy for Clinicians.
Comments