Some questions in life are so multifaceted it seems silly to try and boil it down to its essence. How might you possibly catalogue all the previous small and significant traumas that become stored in the body, unravel them to see where each thought of panic and tension arises from?
And do you even need to know where anxiety comes from to begin to remedy it?
No.
The reality of anxiety is while the causes are infinitely varied and deeply complicated, it is more useful as a starting point to take a big step back and look at the overarching reasons why anyone might feel anxious.
From this perspective there are two main reasons. Disconnection and projection.
We can always argue about the origins of and increasing prevalence and diagnosis of conditions like anxiety. It is possible that more people were anxious in the past but the ability to recognise it was either not there, or, people had more pressing matters to deal with such as wars or famine. However it may also be that our living conditions have changed to such a degree that our stress responses are over-stimulated and we are now living in a chronically activated stress state.
Disconnection.
Is this something you feel you can relate to? How much time do you spend outside in nature? How much screen time are you faced with each day and how much messaging in the form of advertising or news are you bombarded with?
And what have the past 4 years been like for you? What long-lasting mental, emotional and physical effects do you experience after lockdowns and loss?
We no longer live a life in tune with our environment. Life is about relationships and that is where we experience a deep and abiding sense of connection. With ourselves, others and the natural world around us. Nowadays, we live in a box, drive in a box to go to work in another box to pay for the box where we will return at the end of the day. We carry little boxes in our pockets to stare at and turn on big boxes at the end of the day to unwind. Where is the sense of connection in that?
Living a life that has changed so rapidly from generations before has an impact on our children. We don't know what we don't know, the effects of our current lifestyle are often slow to surface. What is obvious though is the way we are living and our recent covid experiences have caused anxiety in children to skyrocket. This manifests in many ways including social anxiety and school refusal. It can lead to a cascade of issues resulting in isolation and depression.
Projection
A natural consequence of living in a disconnected state is you have no sense of presence in the moment. Living outside of the moment causes us to think projected thoughts.
That is, thoughts about the past i.e. things that have happened that you cannot change, and thoughts about the future; i.e. things that have not happened yet that you have no control over.
The problem is, any projected thought that comes from a sense of disconnection is necessarily going to be negatively oriented. It's a protection mechanism built into your brain to help you survive. From this state your brain wants to review the past and keep negative outcomes front of mind in order to minimise the chances of it recurring. It also wants to think of the possible negative future outcomes in order to be prepared for worst case scenarios. It makes sense. But it's not helpful. There's no self-belief or objectivity here as the state of disconnection from which these thoughts arise assumes that you cannot relax and trust yourself to be able to handle any situation.
Okay, so what's the solution? These are things we grapple with as adults, what hope do we have to help kids to deal with it?
We need to start with creating a toolkit of connection practices that become our way of life. We are talking about a way of thinking here and a state of being. There's no magic pill, it's a matter of finding a better way to live, and practising it every day. Once we change our relationship to ourselves and the world, our thoughts will change with it.
What will connection practices look like?
These are all age dependent, yet accessible. Start small and scale it up.
Breathing.
Sounds simple but you literally can't live without it. What many don't understand is it is possible to breathe enough to survive but not to thrive. When we are stressed our breathing becomes shallow and then our muscles lose the memory of how to do it properly. The best way to calm down immediately is to first focus on breathing. Breathe slowly and deeply into our bellies. The main thing for relaxation is the out breath needs to be longer than the in breath. Deep slow breath in, deep slower breath out. Always softly, without exaggeration or strain.
Time in nature
There are so many reasons for why this is beneficial - everything from the effects of natural light on the brain to soil microbes that increase serotonin production. Despite our modern pretense, we are human animals that are meant to be a part of the natural environment. Our health has evolved to be dependent on this and it can't be replaced by anything else.
Lay in the grass. Take a barefoot walk in the garden or a forest. Sit and look at the branches, flowers and leaves of plants. Observe their textures, colours, scents and shapes. Use every sense to engage with the outside world and watch what it does to your sense of being. I assure you, there are no problems here in nature, everything just melts away.
Movement
Our bodies love to move, especially children's bodies! Being hunched over a screen sends messages to our brain that create restricted and depressive thoughts. Put down your phone, stretch your arms out wide and look at the sky with a smile on your face. Do you see how different that feels?
Creating a movement practice to change brain function is such an easy way to increase positive energy or dissipate negative energy. Going for a walk is perfect and can check off the time in nature box too. Dancing is another action to suit any mood. You can do an angry dance, sad dance, happy dance, whatever. Find a song that expresses your feelings and go nuts! You won't feel the same when the song is done. Dancing brings you into the moment and releases the stored energy of past hurts. Win-win.
Being creative.
This is an interesting one as many forms of creativity can be confrontational to the creator- its a psychological process that brings out the vulnerability of expressing your inner self and feelings of inadequacy if your skill level doesn't match your vision. Being an observer of your thoughts during this process can highlight where your anxiety is hiding, should you feel ready to face it head on.
But there are many ways to express our innate desire to be creative that are less confronting for anyone who is prone to perfectionism. Building blocks, simple crafts, making a meal, role-playing and story making, gardening. We don't need to be tackling fine art pieces to be creative. All these things are taking elements and rearranging them in new ways, teaching us how well we're able to adapt and change our world. This is the real meaning of creativity.
Positive self talk
The more we practise connection, engaging our senses to live fully in each moment, the better place we will be in to hear the truth.
The lie that anxiety is telling us is: things have happened and will happen that we can't deal with - but we can. We may rage and grieve and have a terrible time of it when real tragedy hits, but if it does, as long as we eventually find our way back into the moment, we will go on to have happiness again. Our anxious thoughts are falsely assuming that things won't eventually work out.
And here is the truth.
It's all okay. It all has been okay and it all will be okay. Living is safe and dying is safe too. Spotting the self-talk that assumes we are not okay and challenging the beliefs that create those thoughts is the work.
How does the process look when anxious thoughts arise?
“I can't do this. I don’t know how. Everyone else is better than me already and I’ll never catch up.”
In thinking this thought, I would have to believe that not only do I need to be able to do this well, I need to be good at it instantly. I would have to believe that not only do I not currently possess certain skills, but that I don’t actually have the ability to eventually figure it out. It also makes the assumption that my value is based on my ability to compete with others.
There are so many negative beliefs that underlie an anxious thought. Retraining the brain to think differently is about catching these thoughts that don’t serve us and purposely telling ourselves new things to begin to replace the old ideas.
This now looks like “I can’t do this. I don’t know how. Everyone else is better than me already and I’ll never catch up.”... “Hold on - I might not know how to do this now but everyone needs to start somewhere. I can learn things in my own time. Even if I don’t become an expert I’ll learn plenty of new skills and lots about myself along the way and that’s all that really matters.”
These new thoughts require us to adopt a whole new set of values and beliefs. We will need to believe in the value of investing in ourselves without an immediate expectation of productivity. We would need to see the value of learning as part of developing our whole selves and not just a particular skill. We would need to value participation over perfection.
These are the values and beliefs that are easily lost in a heavily tested, competitive educational environment with children saturated with comparative ideals perpetuated by social media. How could you NOT be anxious under these conditions?!
Fortunately, for children, early childhood is the easiest time to program in these positive growth mindset thoughts. We can repetitively use language to instil anxiety busting feelings.
Having a go is more important than being perfect.
Life is an experiment.
Failure can be fun.
I’m probably not going to be great at things when I first get started but I WILL get better over time.
I am enough as I am, no matter how well I do.
I won’t always get along with everyone, but there are lots of people who will see the unique value of who I am.
Hard things might happen to me, but I can trust myself to find a way through.
And here is the crux of the matter.
Anxiety is not trusting that things are going to be okay.
Truthfully there will be things that happen that won’t be okay to begin with! But trusting in ourselves to handle whatever comes our way is the only remedy to feeling good in a world we cannot control.
All this is why we created a collection of books to empower children to see the choices they make in everyday thinking, the choices that mean the difference between feeling good or suffering, even in challenging circumstances.
Books such as "How the Worry Caterpillar Becomes a Happy Butterfly" Big Book for shared reading.
Anxiety is like a little caterpillar eating holes in our peace of mind. Learn to recognise the feeling of anxiety in the body and the thoughts that cause it. Explore situations that provoke anxious thoughts and develop positive self-talk and simple emotional management strategies to transform the worry caterpillar into the happy butterfly.
If you are a teacher and would like to see more books to support wellbeing, see our collection here.
If you are a parent and would like to see more book to support challenges with anxiety, see our collection here.
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