7. Help The Child Localize Anxiety
Helping a child localize their anxiety will give them the power they need to start fighting back. For me, it came from my stomach. Anxiety always turned my gut inside out and upside down. I always felt sick, went to the nurse, couldn’t function and lost a lot of time in the classroom. Once I saw a doctor and he explained that my stomach issues were simply the physical manifestation of the anxiety, I knew that I could try to focus that area away.
Without meaning to, I learned to meditate in the process. Or at least, I learned some form of meditation. For the moments when my stomach went crazy, or when I would try to sleep at night, I would simply count. At first I just started counting and would end up in the thousands before I got angry. Eventually, I learned to count to 1. By counting to 1 over and over – essentially saying “One, one, one, one…” and focusing on that number, the image of it, seeing it appear and reappear, I lost that feeling in my stomach and was able to push the anxiety away.
To reinforce this point, I’ll tell another personal story. In High School, I was the lead in a play where I was “forced” to kiss one of the more popular girls in the school. I was, obviously very upset about the practice, but doing the act in front of parents and students alike brought back the anxiety that I had thought I defeated. Before the opening night of the play I spent about 30 minutes counting to 1 in the dressing room. I stared at the mirror and my eyes eventually closed as I focused in on that number. When the stage director came to grab me to start the play, I stood up and felt completely calm and full of energy. In another play, which happened later, I had to play an ape that ran out into the audience. In previous years, the ape simply ran to the back of the audience, sat down, then ran back when the time was right.
Over the course of my lifetime I had slowly overcome my anxiety and learned how to push it away, teaching my body to fight back. That let me be myself. An extrovert that loved making others laugh, and creating uncomfortable situations. So when my time came to be the “Great Ape” and run to the audience, I headed up to a random parent in the audience, grabbed their foot, ripped off their shoe and threw it at the person on stage that caused me to run away. The crowd loved it and I grew in confidence. I ended up sitting in the lap of the principle and stroking his hair, bringing more laughter and taking focus off the stage. At that point, I had my “meditation” and the confidence of being able to pull off these acts to fight back when my stomach tried to start an attack. That is your goal, help your student get to the point to where they can be themselves. Once they get one taste, they will fight day and night to overcome their issues.