How To Tame New Situation Anxiety for Kids With This Simple Step

Long story short, anxiety is a result of your body deeming something in the environment or future as threatening leading it to kick into a sympathetic nervous system response where the body “revs up” in preparation to fight the dangerous thing or run away. 

And in real life situations like having a pop quiz, being on stage at a dance competition, or going into a birthday party with kids a child doesn’t know - there are few times in life that running away or fighting actually solves the problem. 

This is why one of your big roles and tasks as a play therapist is to help your client’s nervous system feel safe when it’s okay to feel safe.  To help their body and nervous system understand that although their ice cream cone has now fallen on the ground (which is a HUGE bummer that should be validated!) they are actually safe and this is a problem that can be solve and is not life threatening. 

One of the interventions I wanted to share that can be game changing for kids with anxiety is how to help their bodies prepare for new events that trigger anxiety.  According to Lisa Dion, one of the four threats of the nervous system is the unknown.

The unknown can be anything from flying in a plane for the first time, visiting a new city, going to a new school, getting a new teacher, or hiking a new trail. The unknown can be threatening and triggering both because at times kids will catastrophize in their heads about what it might be like OR they have no concept of what something will be like and no template of what is expected for them. 

And I get it! I totally like to check out a menu of a new restaurant, look at the map of a new airport, or spend a little too much time looking through photos of Airbnbs or the hotel pool setup.  We do this all the time as grownups because we have access to the technology to answer our questions about what things will be like quite quickly.

And kids?  They likely don’t have the technology or the skills to identify this as something that is important to decrease anxiety. 

So how does this apply to therapy?  Typically this is an intervention that I am beginning with the parents and children together and depending on the family I might give the intervention as homework OR we can do some of the work together in the office. 

Together with parents we brainstorm what the child might encounter with this new event. Then the parent and child can decide if they want to do the following together as a therapy homework assignment or in session together.

The main thing is to look up pictures of what the event or thing may look like.  The more you can get pictures of the actual thing the better BUT a photo of anything close a child might experience can be helpful. 

This might be a picture of the new teacher’s face from the school directory,  a picture of the hotel a child will be staying in, a picture of the dentists office, OR a picture of YOU and your office for new clients! 

Once the child has access and views the picture you can take them (or hand it off to the parents) to ask processing questions about how the child feels seeing the photo and what thoughts are coming up.  It is a great spring board to ask about any further questions a child might have that may lead to generating additional pictures or conversation!

Once a child can actually SEE the environment or new situation, typically anxiety falls drastically! 

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