Supporting Youth Experiencing Worry and Anxiety
It can be challenging to know how to understand and support young people experiencing worry and anxiety. Access resources on definitions, strategies, and tools to support youth.
Recognizing and Managing Anxiety in the Classroom
This course is designed to help educators navigate the nuances involved with recognizing and addressing anxiety and stress in K-12 students. John Piacentini, PhD, ABPP, Director, Center for Child Anxiety Resilience Education and Support (CARES) joins his colleagues, Monica Wu, PhD, Kate Sheehan, LCSW, and Emily Ricketts, PhD in discussing common manifestations of anxiety. Video vignettes engage the learner to better understand various ways in which anxiety may thwart a child’s academic, emotional, and social development. Practical strategies for individual and classroom use are offered ...
Anxiety and Avoidance: How Negative Reinforcement Fuels Anxiety
While it may sound counterintuitive, avoiding an anxiety-inducing situation can make the anxiety worse. Watch this expert explanation of how avoidance can lead to more and more anxiety in the future.
Common Patterns of Anxious Thoughts
Anxiety can cause patterns of thinking known as cognitive (or thought) distortions. Watch this expert explanation of common types of anxious thoughts and how these patterns can impact a child’s ability to grow and learn.
Emotion Regulation: Getting Back to Comfortability Demonstration
A helpful emotion regulation tool is the Feeling Thermometer and its handy color zones for manageable (or less manageable) emotion states. The “green zone” is optimal for learning and communicating with others. Watch this demonstration of how to use the “Getting to Green” handout to identify individual strategies to stay in your optimal performance zone.
Feeling Thermometer Demonstration
The Feeling Thermometer can help us talk about our feelings without oversharing. It emphasizes how manageable or unmanageable we feel so we can help ourselves spend more time in manageable feelings and bring emotion regulation skills to unmanageable moments. This tool works for all ages, from very young children to very mature adults. Watch this demonstration of how the Feeling Thermometer can be used at home.
Mindful Breathing Demonstration
Box Breathing (also called “tactical breathing”) is a breathing exercise that controls the pace of our breath: guiding the breath from a dysregulated pace (associated with stress, anxiety or panic) to a regulated breath (associated with calm and focus). Watch this demonstration of how Box Breathing can be led in a group setting.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation Demonstration
Progressive Muscle Relaxation is a technique that involves flexing and releasing certain muscle groups as a way to relieve muscle tension. Watch this demonstration of how Progressive Muscle Relaxation can be used as a calming technique.
Separation Anxiety
Reassurance and bargaining are often intuitive responses to soothe an anxious child, but they can actually encourage more anxiety. Watch this expert explanation of how reassurance and bargaining fuel the anxiety spiral.
Social Anxiety and Feel-Think-Do
Anxiety affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Watch this expert explanation of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can create an anxiety spiral in a child with social anxiety.
Soothing With Your Senses Demonstration
Soothing with Our Senses is a helpful strategy to allow our senses to naturally soothe anxiety, stress, and upset. Watch this demonstration of one of the ways you can use sensory awareness as a grounding technique when emotions are intense.