Wellbeing

Hello everyone, 

The cycle of anxiety 

In this month's newsletter I wanted to talk a little bit about the cycle of anxiety.  The cycle of anxiety describes how patterns of stress can cause us to experience an ongoing loop. The cycle begins with a trigger, for example a child is worried about doing a maths test, they experience symptoms such as racing heart beat, crying, stomach ache, headache. The child chooses to skip school that day to avoid doing the maths test, this provides a short term flood of relief, tricking the child’s brain into thinking that in order to feel relief they have to avoid the situation all together. Therefore, the  next time the child has a maths test the worry becomes 10 x bigger, symptoms are worse, and  this ‘cycle’  is created.

Breaking the cycle 

The only way to break the cycle is to face the  fear. However this doesn’t have to be done cold turkey, it can be done one step at a time, for example the child might set a goal of completing five questions on the maths test and gradually increase this number,  they also might ask their teacher to have extra time or complete the test in a quiet space. Stress should also be understood as a normal human emotion that does not need to be pushed away, but rather to let the feeling peak and then pass.  Once the feared event has been faced,  9 times out of 10 it will  not be as bad as we think,  and we show our brains that a huge sense of  relief can be felt when we face our fears.

-Hannah 

Student Support and Wellbeing Officer 

Please get in touch should you have any questions related to student wellbeing, my email is Hannah.Jenkins@education.vic.gov.au