Welcome to the third module of LUNA! This week, you will learn more about avoidance and about why avoiding things that cause anxiety will not help your child overcome their fears. You will also learn about behaviors that we call “quick fixes” which can also make it harder to overcome anxiety.
You will spend about 30 minutes reading, watching videos, and doing activities. We encourage you to take breaks and come back to the material as much as you need. Remember, your child will also have readings, videos, and worksheets to complete in their own modules, which can be done on their own or with your support.
Previously on LUNA…
Over the last two weeks, you and your child:
- Learned that anxiety is a normal emotion everyone has, and a healthy amount of anxiety keeps us safe. The LUNA program is for kids and teens who feel too much anxiety too often or experience anxiety in situations where it isn’t helpful.
- Learned about the three parts of anxiety: The physical aspect (heart beating fast, sweating), anxious thoughts (expecting something bad to happen), and behaviors (avoiding feared situations).
- Set goals for the program.
- Brainstormed ways to keep your child feeling motivated and supported throughout this journey.
The Behavior Aspect of the CBT Triangle- The Avoidance Cycle
Last week, your child learned about identifying anxiety and other emotions by noticing how their body feels and by paying attention to their thoughts and behaviors. This week, we will focus more on the behavior aspect of anxiety by looking at the connection between your child’s anxiety and their actions.
It’s only natural for your child to avoid things that make them anxious, but avoidance will not help them overcome anxiety in the long run. Avoidance usually creates a cycle that makes anxiety worse over time. If your child avoids a feared situation over and over again, this will reinforce their fear and will not give them the opportunity to learn about their fears, making it stronger each time they do not face their anxiety. Repeated avoidance can trick your child into thinking that feared outcomes are more likely to happen, causing them to continue to avoid their fears.
Watch the video below to learn more about the avoidance cycle.
As you can see, it is important for your child to work on breaking out of these avoidance cycles by changing their actions when they are anxious. This is exactly what we will be focusing on in the LUNA program! We will teach you how to help your child identify and break out of these patterns.
To get more familiar with avoidance, let's take a look at some more avoidance cycle examples. Then, go ahead and take a look at the list of common avoidance behaviors:
Anxiety and Avoidance
As we have mentioned before, anxiety can be a very helpful emotion in certain situations. Anxiety is also a natural emotion which means that everyone gets anxious sometimes, and that's okay! But anxiety can be unhelpful if it is too intense or if your child experiences it in situations that are not really dangerous.
Just like anxiety, avoidance can also be helpful and necessary to keep us safe. However, avoidance is usually only helpful in situations that are truly and immediately dangerous. For example, if your child is feeling anxious because of a tornado warning in your area, it may be necessary for them to avoid going outside and to stay in a safe location. Also, if your child is trying to overcome their fear of dogs, but they know that the neighbor’s dog often bites and attacks people, it would still be helpful for your child to avoid the neighbor’s dog to keep themselves safe.
Remember, if your child experiences too much anxiety that stops them from doing things that they want to do, then avoiding things that make them anxious will only make the anxiety worse. But it’s important to know that both avoidance and anxiety can be helpful in dangerous situations. You can identify helpful vs. unhelpful avoidance by assessing whether an avoidant behavior is realistically necessary for protecting your child’s safety and wellbeing.
