Self-Help Resources for Anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health challenges among youth today. Whether it’s social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, or panic attacks, excessive worry can interfere with daily life and personal growth. Learn more about the signs of anxiety, effective coping strategies, and where to find support.
FAQs
Lifestyle examples are powerful. Consider showing by example and include your children in these activities. Begin with exercising, turning off the news, TV, all devices. Stop social media, go on a drive vs home with TV. Spend quality AND quantity time with your kids. Unplanned time where talking is encouraged. Go on walks. Sit in a park. Talking, laughing and sharing are key interactions that help a child feel safe and listened to.
- Time management
- Organization
- Initiation and Completion
- Attention
- Metacognition
- Flexibility and Shifting
- Working Memory
- Resilience
Providing the support that children need to build these [Executive Function] skills at home, in early care and education programs and in other settings they experience regularly, is one of society’s most important responsibilities. Growth-promoting environments provide children with “scaffolding” that helps them practice necessary skills before they must perform them alone. Adults can facilitate the development of a child’s executive function skills by establishing routines, modeling social behavior, and creating and maintaining supportive, reliable relationships. [developingchild.harvard.edu]
There are therapeutic providers who only focus on blended family needs. [See referral process] [dealing with divorce], [balance relationships]
Anxiety has many names. Stress, scared, worried, tense but these are not all bad. Debilitating anxiety is bad and there are many things that can be done. Among the greatest is exercise that achieves an elevated heart rate for 30–60 minutes each day. Exercise is so powerful that consistent exercise nearly always brings down dramatically the need for meds.
Also see video:
Trauma of any kind is very serious. This can be self-inflicted or inflicted. Both should be treated with extremely good therapists who specialize in trauma informed therapy. EMDR Certification is a key beginning when searching for a therapist and they should have many years of full-time practice as well.
VIDEOS
BOOKS
Heartwounds by Tian Dayton, PhD
Surviving Childhood Sexual Abuse by Carolyn Ainscough and Kay Toon
