As you have learned, anxiety can show up in your body and your thoughts. As a reminder, here are some sensations associated with anxiety that you may notice:
Inward
- Feeling cold / frozen
- Feeling hot
- Racing heart
- Numbness
- Tense
- Headache
Outward
- Shivering / shaking
- Sweating
- Fidgeting
- Trembling
- Blushing
- Stammering
- Hyperventilating
You can learn strategies to decrease the anxiety scale and the physical feelings associated with anxiety. We call these strategies “coping skills” or “coping tools.” Coping skills can help make you feel calmer in the moment. A key part of coping skills is that they should help your child face their fears, not avoid them.
When your child practices coping skills daily, they can work to lower their baseline level of anxiety to a more manageable level over time. Then, when the time comes to face their fears, your child can use their coping skills to help them approach the situation, rather than avoid it. Facing your fears is the most important part of cognitive behavioral therapy and LUNA, so we think of coping skills as helping your child get ready to accomplish their goals through facing their fears in what we call “mission plans” in LUNA. These strategies will not get rid of anxiety; however, they will help your child manage their anxiety better.
