Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #622 Reducing Anxiety in Kids

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#622 Reducing Anxiety in Kids · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the.
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Speaker 2: Time poor parent who just wants answers.
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Speaker 3: Now, when children feel safe, when they feel that they
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Speaker 3: can trust their parents with their feelings, with their big emotions,
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Speaker 3: they're much less likely to experience those big emotions.
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Speaker 2: And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
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Speaker 2: and Dad.
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Speaker 3: It's Mental Health Awareness Monthlos doctor Justin Colson Here, I'm
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Speaker 3: here with Kylie, my wife from Under our six Kids.
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Speaker 1: Today a conversation that I think.
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Speaker 3: Is a really important one, just because I get asked
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Speaker 3: to speak in so many schools, so many workplaces, so
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Speaker 3: many offices, classrooms, webinars, whatever, about anxiety. Anxiety is increasing
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Speaker 3: in prevalence. We're seeing it with younger and younger kids.
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Speaker 3: And Kylie today we're going to talk about five things
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Speaker 3: that we can do to help to manage and mitigate
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Speaker 3: anxiety effectively in our children and even in ourselves.
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Speaker 2: When you think about the experience, is that just here
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Speaker 2: in Australia we've experienced over the last couple of years
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Speaker 2: with floods and bushfires and COVID and COVID.
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Speaker 3: Not to mention the international situation. And then there's the
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Speaker 3: economics through how.
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Speaker 2: The economic stress that we're experiencing now, wonder families are
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Speaker 2: feeling so much pressure at the moment, and sometimes as parents,
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Speaker 2: we're not actually intentionally placing stress on our kids, but
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Speaker 2: our kids are watching the pressure that we're feeling and
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Speaker 2: as a result, feeling it for us, like almost in sympathy.
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Speaker 3: I think it's really important that we define what anxiety
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Speaker 3: is and have this conversation so that we can be
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Speaker 3: aware of how our behavior could be affecting our kids
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Speaker 3: and their experience of anxiety, how our anxieties could be
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Speaker 3: transferring from us to them, and a whole lot more. So,
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Speaker 3: let's start with the definition. The Australian Psychological Society I
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Speaker 3: hope that I get this right defines anxiety as the
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Speaker 3: experience of a stressful event that is short lived and
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Speaker 3: natural and healthy. And also that result it's in fear,
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Speaker 3: apprehension and worry about the future. Okay, so it's short lived,
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Speaker 3: it's natural, and it's in response to a stressful event
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Speaker 3: where we feel worried and nervous anticipating what's coming, feeling
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Speaker 3: like what's coming is going to be bad.
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Speaker 2: So when kids experience anxiety in relation to going to school.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, they see school as stressful, and then they experience
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Speaker 3: a peak or a jump in worry, fear, and apprehension.
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Speaker 3: They think somebody's a daily event, right, that's it. Yeah,
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Speaker 3: So when we start to move from having an experience
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Speaker 3: of anxiety to having an anxiety disorder, what we're talking
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Speaker 3: about is a chronic, pervasive, ongoing issue of anxiety where
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Speaker 3: not every day, but most days they're experiencing that worry
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Speaker 3: that something bad will happen. Now, that's different to saying
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Speaker 3: to what we would call a motion based school avoidance,
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Speaker 3: or what it was colloquially known as colloquially known as
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Speaker 3: school refusal. That's just saying I don't want to go
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Speaker 3: I don't want to be there. But if I don't
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Speaker 3: want to go there because bad things are going to happen,
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Speaker 3: I don't want to go there because I'm worried that
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Speaker 3: no one will talk to me, that I'm going to fail,
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Speaker 3: that it's going to be horrible because of this, this,
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Speaker 3: and this. Even if I can't say why I'm worried,
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Speaker 3: I just don't want to be there because I know
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Speaker 3: it's going to be bad. That's when we're starting to
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Speaker 3: move into the realms of anxiety. So there's a distinction.
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Speaker 3: It's an important distinction. Emotion based school avoidance just means
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Speaker 3: I'm having a silk because I don't want to be
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Speaker 3: at school, whereas I don't want to go because it's
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Speaker 3: going to be bad and I'm nervous, worried, anxious, apprehensive, fearful.
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Speaker 3: That's when we're stepping into the anxiety realms, and anxiety
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Speaker 3: is on the rise with our kids. The best started
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Speaker 3: that I can find with the Australian is Chitte of
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Speaker 3: Health and Welfare, which is the government agency that collects
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Speaker 3: all of this stuff, shows that anxiety disorders were the
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Speaker 3: second most common disorders among all children aged four to eleven.
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Speaker 3: So we're not talking about teenagers here. The numbers go
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Speaker 3: up during adolescence, but we're talking about primary school kids
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Speaker 3: four to eleven, second most common disorder six point nine percent,
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Speaker 3: seven percent of all kids are showing up with anxiety,
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Speaker 3: most common among girls.
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Speaker 2: That is distressing, yeah, really distressing to think that our
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Speaker 2: four year olds, five year old, six year olds are
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Speaker 2: experiencing anxiety to the point that we have a diagnosis.
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Speaker 1: It really is so.
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Speaker 3: With all children age four to eleven with a mental
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Speaker 3: disordered children with a major depressive disorder on average, miss
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Speaker 3: the most days of school with their symptoms, usually about
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Speaker 3: two weeks in the last twelve months, more than twice
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Speaker 3: as high as for kids with anxiety disorders. We're looking
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Speaker 3: at six days in the last twelve months on average,
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Speaker 3: and more than three times as high as for kids
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Speaker 3: with ADHD four days. So anxiety is definitely having an
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Speaker 3: impact on the experience that kids have. I think, I mean,
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Speaker 3: there's so many things we could talk about here, but
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Speaker 3: why don't we just focus on solutions because it is
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Speaker 3: Mental Health Awareness Month and we just want to give
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Speaker 3: parents some solutions to help with the challenges that they're having.
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Speaker 2: Well, I'm curious what might be the first one.
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Speaker 3: The first one has to be the quality of the
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Speaker 3: attachment relationship between parents and children. When children feel safe,
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Speaker 3: when they feel that they can trust their parents with
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Speaker 3: their feelings, with their big emotions, they're much less likely
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Speaker 3: to experience those big emotions, and when they do, they're
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Speaker 3: much more likely to either regulate them themselves or get
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Speaker 3: the help they need from a parent who is caring
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Speaker 3: and trust worthy. Kind of goes back to that really
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Speaker 3: important discussion you and I had on Friday, in our
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Speaker 3: world do better Tomorrow episode. Being able to trust your
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Speaker 3: parents with your emotions helps you to regulate them better,
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Speaker 3: and it helps you to function better, which means that
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Speaker 3: you can learn better, you can socialize better, you can
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Speaker 3: get outside and engage in physical activity better. You can
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Speaker 3: kind of do everything better if that secure attachment is there,
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Speaker 3: which means parents have to be soft, warm, nurturing, involved
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Speaker 3: and compassionate.
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Speaker 2: In some ways, they almost have to leave their big
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Speaker 2: emotions as an adult at the door. Because often the
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Speaker 2: things that our children will share with us will I
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Speaker 2: don't want to use the word trigger, but they'll evoke
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Speaker 2: emotion in us. But if our children feel like in
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Speaker 2: the sharing that it actually is hurting us or creating
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Speaker 2: anger in us, they'll be less inclined to want to share.
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Speaker 1: You're exactly right.
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Speaker 3: I wrote about this in my new book, and I'd
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Speaker 3: love to share something that I wrote about in here.
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Speaker 3: I was actually I had to chat a couple of
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Speaker 3: weeks ago on the podcast with a lady called Anna
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Speaker 3: Spargo Ryan.
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Speaker 1: She's an author.
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Speaker 3: She's a mum who suffered with depression, anxiety, and major
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Speaker 3: psychopathy during her life, and she lamented in the podcast
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Speaker 3: and also in her book that I read A Kind
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Speaker 3: of Magic. She said, how could I call myself a
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Speaker 3: mother if I couldn't take my kids to a nearby
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Speaker 3: play center without having a panic attack in the car park.
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Speaker 3: So I'm raising this because as much as I'm highlighting
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Speaker 3: the importance of having that secure attachment and saying we
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Speaker 3: need to be compassionate and trustworthy and present for our kids,
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Speaker 3: quite a lot of parents are dealing with their own stuff.
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Speaker 3: They're dealing with their own anxieties, they're dealing with their
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Speaker 3: own mental health challenges. And she's just sort of saying,
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Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know how I'm supposed to
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Speaker 3: do this. In her memoir A Kind of Magic, she
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Speaker 3: described the way that her anxiety affected her to the
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Speaker 3: extent that she would try to take her children somewhere,
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Speaker 3: but she was so overwhelmed by the psychological cost of
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Speaker 3: her anxiety that she would literally sit on the side
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Speaker 3: of the road in the car waiting for the adrenaline
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Speaker 3: to wear off.
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Speaker 1: And then I've got this quote here.
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Speaker 3: She said, all the times every part of me was
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Speaker 3: shouting yes, I want to do these things with you,
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Speaker 3: and I still said no. And then she just writes
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Speaker 3: about the pain of letting her kids down because her
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Speaker 3: own anxieties. But then those anxieties so easily transfer to kids,
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Speaker 3: And so we've got to be that safe place, that
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Speaker 3: secure place for our kids.
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Speaker 1: And that means we've.
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Speaker 3: Got to somehow pull it together even when we don't
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Speaker 3: feel like we can. It's an enormous challenge, it's so hard,
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Speaker 3: but the research tells us really clearly that that's got
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Speaker 3: to be the number one protective factor.
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Speaker 2: What's the number two?
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Speaker 1: I'm going to suggest.
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Speaker 3: Other connections, other relationships. So when children have friends at school,
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Speaker 3: friends at their extracurricular activities, at their church, or other
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Speaker 3: religious or ethnic activities that they participate in, whatever it
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Speaker 3: might be, having friends, having connections, having social relationships gives
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Speaker 3: you something to look forward to. So even if you're
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Speaker 3: nervous about X, Y and Z, at least you know
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Speaker 3: you're going to be there with a friend, or at
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Speaker 3: least you know you're going to be there with a
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Speaker 3: parent who cares. The quality of relationships is critically important
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Speaker 3: if we want to help kids to move through their
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Speaker 3: anxious moments.
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Speaker 2: I think having grown up with a parent who struggled
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Speaker 2: with a lot of emotional challenges herself, The one thing
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Speaker 2: my mum did that has blessed my life time and
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Speaker 2: time again was surrounded me with good people. And it
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Speaker 2: wasn't actually my peer group that were the biggest blessing.
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Speaker 2: It was the other adults in my life, the other
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Speaker 2: adults who were able to keep their emotions in check
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Speaker 2: because they actually weren't as emotionally.
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Speaker 1: Attached psychological distance. Yeah, and so.
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Speaker 2: They were able to listen to my heart without being
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Speaker 2: caught up in the emotion of it and allowed me
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Speaker 2: to process through them when my mum wasn't able to.
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Speaker 3: It's a really valuable addition to the conversation. I'm thinking
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Speaker 3: about same age peers. But you've highlighted the importance of
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Speaker 3: having that I guess for one of a cliche sort
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Speaker 3: of word, having that village around the child.
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Speaker 1: Trusted adults.
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Speaker 3: And it's harder and harder to find that, but when
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Speaker 3: you can grab it, hang onto it, use it as
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Speaker 3: so so important.
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Speaker 2: What's number three?
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Speaker 3: So the third thing that we can do if our
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Speaker 3: children are experiencing anxiety is help them to experience I guess,
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Speaker 3: to lean in, to have hope, to find a way
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Speaker 3: to push through it. That there are some times where
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Speaker 3: we don't want to discount, disregard, or otherwise shove off anxiety.
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Speaker 3: Anxiety sends really important signals, and we should never try
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Speaker 3: to eliminate anxiety from our lives. Anxiety helps us to
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Speaker 3: be safe. What we're dealing with when we're talking about
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Speaker 3: the mental illness issues surrounding anxiety, is when we have
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Speaker 3: an over active anxiety system, essentially where it's it's like
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Speaker 3: this alarm going off all the time. Most of those
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Speaker 3: things are false alarms. So helping kids to distinguish between
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Speaker 3: the false alarm and the real thing is really important,
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Speaker 3: and one of the best ways we can do that
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Speaker 3: is to remember that avoidance reinforces anxiety. So when our
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Speaker 3: child says I don't want to because I'm fearful, afraid, apprehensive,
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Speaker 3: whatever it could be, our job then is to gently
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Speaker 3: work with them to find ways that we can move
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Speaker 3: them towards it. Whether they can become curious about it.
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Speaker 3: Todd Kashton, who's been on the podcast a couple of times,
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Speaker 3: has talked about the importance of curiosity in terms of
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Speaker 3: well being and moving through anxiety. Whether they can become
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Speaker 3: hopeful because they believe something good will happen, if they
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Speaker 3: can push through it. But having the power to push through,
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Speaker 3: having the power to be hopeful or curious or optimistic
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Speaker 3: and work through that anxiety is often really really valuable.
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Speaker 3: Of course, if there's a screaming, barking dog on the
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Speaker 3: other side of the fence, you don't want to push
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Speaker 3: through that. There's a good reason for that anxiety, and
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Speaker 3: so we've got to be able to be discerning.
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Speaker 2: I really appreciated the interview you had with Anna Spargo
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Speaker 2: Ryan recently because she talked about that. She talked about
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Speaker 2: being able to actually label it with her kids when
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Speaker 2: she was having an anxiety attack in the moment and
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Speaker 2: just explained to them that right now, my brain's sending
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Speaker 2: me messages that I'm not safe, But she said, I
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Speaker 2: know that I am, and so I just need a
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Speaker 2: minute to just take some deep breaths and get back
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Speaker 2: on track, because we're going to have a great time.
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Speaker 2: And that acknowledgment is so powerful. It helps our kids
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Speaker 2: to recognize that even though this is what I'm experienced
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Speaker 2: right now, I actually can discern between fact and fiction.
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Speaker 1: For those who are interested.
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Speaker 3: That was episode six hundred and nine of the Happy
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Speaker 3: Families podcast back on the fifth of October for Mental
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Speaker 3: Health Awareness Month. Number four being outside, being outside and
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Speaker 3: particularly being active and outside. There's something remarkable about being
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Speaker 3: in nature. I say it all the time. Nature is
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Speaker 3: fueled for the soul. Being outside in nature powerful powerful,
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Speaker 3: especially moving your body, exercising, getting lost in the moment,
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Speaker 3: getting caught up in flow. It's a really powerful antidote
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Speaker 3: for anxiety.
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Speaker 2: And number five, so number.
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Speaker 3: Five is actually kind of a provocative one, but helping
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Speaker 3: kids to forget all about themselves by thinking about other people.
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Speaker 3: So service volunteering, are going out of the way to
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Speaker 3: make a difference in someone else's life. It's amazing what
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Speaker 3: happens to all of your stuff when you forget that
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Speaker 3: you've got it because you're so busy helping other people
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Speaker 3: and specifically helping them to work through really hard things
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Speaker 3: that they're already dealing with.
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Speaker 2: One of our children recently has been going through a
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Speaker 2: little bit of a hard time. She's been really struggling
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Speaker 2: with you, finding a friend group and just you know,
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Speaker 2: typical teenage challenges. But the other day she just had
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Speaker 2: this feeling to reach out to a friend and just
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Speaker 2: check in, and so she just sent a text. So
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Speaker 2: it was hey, Naomi, just checking in. I just wanted
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Speaker 2: to make sure you do it okay. And she got
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Speaker 2: a message back that just was so beautiful. And this
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Speaker 2: friend actually came and talked to me and she said,
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Speaker 2: I don't know how your daughter knew. She said, but
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Speaker 2: we had only just about an hour before received news
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Speaker 2: that we'd lost a really close friend of ours to cancer.
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Speaker 2: And she was just blown away that this little kid,
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Speaker 2: because this is an adult, this little kid, for all
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Speaker 2: intents and purposes, teenage kid, had reached out to her
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Speaker 2: and she actually did it because she was feeling low herself,
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Speaker 2: and it just elevated her. And the rest of the
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Speaker 2: day she had a spring and a step and just
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Speaker 2: felt so good that, in spite of her challenge, that
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Speaker 2: she was able to make a difference in someone else's life.
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Speaker 3: So there are five ideas they will make a difference
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Speaker 3: for anxiety. Will they get rid of it, No, but
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Speaker 3: we don't want to get rid of it. Will they
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Speaker 3: help you to manage it better? One hundred percent, Yes,
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Speaker 3: whether it's.
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Speaker 1: You or your kids. There are so many more ideas
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Speaker 1: that are out there.
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Speaker 3: I wish we could talk about them all, but the
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Speaker 3: podcast just can't go for the next three weeks. So
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Speaker 3: we hope that if you're dealing with any anxiety issues
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Speaker 3: at home, that you can be calm and peaceful and
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Speaker 3: work on that relationship with your kids yourself, but also
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Speaker 3: that these ideas are helpful for you and for them.
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Speaker 3: The Happy Famili's podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from
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Speaker 3: Bridge Media.
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Speaker 1: Craig Bruce is
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Speaker 3: Our executive producer, and if you'd like more info about
14:16
Speaker 3: the things we've talked about today, please check out Happy
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Speaker 3: families dot com dot au.