Wellbeing & Culture

Coping With Anxiety

On October 8th,  I went to the Resilient Kids Conference with Julie Reid. There was so much great information and inspiration from the conference and I would like to share some of the wisdom I gained with you. 

Anxiety Coping Toolkit (Inspired by Dr, Jodi Richardson):  

Anxiety is contagious.  If parents, teachers etc. are struggling with anxiety, kids can pick up on that.  Just a few weeks ago the Heraldsun showed research done by the Royal Children’s Hospital, finding that half of Victorian children are having problems with anxiety.

It’s normal to experience anxiety.  Anxiety is just one of the many emotions we have, that serve a purpose and that is normal to come up in our day to day lives. There is a difference between normal and problematic anxiety.  There are three good questions that can help differentiate if the anxiety is problematic.  Is the anxiety frequent? extreme? and getting in the way of daily activities?  If it is a yes to all three, you may just want to start by looking for more information.  If you notice your child has problematic anxiety and you get your child connected with some help, it can change the trajectory of their life. The important thing is to know about the anxiety, to know how to calm it and why it is there.  It is important to be in control. 

One fantastic way to bring anxiety down (one of the mentioned coping techniques for the tool kit) was to get the anxious person ‘out of their head, and into their body’.  Anxiety is all about being in ‘our head’, over thinking, worrying about the things that haven’t happened yet.  Getting ‘out of the head and into the body’ is about being intentional about not making the time for overthinking, by making your body move, feel, taste, smell, or breathe. 

More information on Anxiety: 

Royal Children’s Hospital: https://www.rch.org.au/anxiety/ 

Resilient Kids Conference Speaker: Dr. Jodi Richardson: https://drjodirichardson.com/ 

Cheyenne Mason – On Behalf of the Wellbeing & Culture Team