Resources: Learn More

• “Supporting Your Child with Anxiety” (youngminds.org.uk)
• “Mind Bubbles: Exploring Mindfulness with Kids” by Heather Krantz

Things to Think About

• People may feel anxiety with or without a root cause
• Anxiety is sometimes connected to other mental health problems
• Anxiety can often cause unfair self-judgements

About the Guest

Lucas Mitzel provides therapy for children, adolescents, and adults, ages 5 - 30. He believes building relationships with clients is the most important piece of successful therapy. He loves what he does, because it allows him to walk next to people he would never have met had he chosen a different profession, as they work to make amazing life changes. He has the honor of meeting people at their worst, all while watching them grow into the people they’ve always wanted to be.

Christy Wilkie provides therapy for children and adolescents, ages 5-25, who have complex behavioral health issues. She combines her extensive clinical expertise with a belief in kids, and has a unique ability to find and develop their strengths. She works hard to be an ideal therapist for her clients, doing what is best to fit their needs.

Transcript
Understanding & Managing Anxiety (Community Chat series)

Featuring Lucas Mitzel, LCSW, and Christy Wilkie, LCSW, Dakota Family Services

Intro: 

Welcome! Community Chat recordings are presented by Dakota Family Services, an outpatient clinic with mental health providers in Minot and Fargo, North Dakota. Thank you for listening. 

Intro: 

All right. Welcome everybody to our Community Chat: Understanding Anxiety. So we all experience stress that can impact the way we live our lives each day. And if it's left unmanaged, often it leads to anxiety, so feelings of worry and fear and unease. So today we have Christy Wilke and Lucas Mizel, who are therapists at Dakota Family Services, and they're gonna talk about how you and your loved ones, including your children, can find relief from anxiety. So with that, I will turn it over to you guys. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

Thanks, Erinn. So I think a really good spot to start is just defining what anxiety is. So anxiety in layman's terms is intense, excessive, persistent fear or worry that basically something bad could happen. That can range from just in general something bad happening throughout the day and not knowing what it is, to something really specific, like fear of clowns or dogs or something like that. There's a lot of different kinds of anxiety that we see in the office. A couple of those would be separation anxiety. So this is the fear of separation from an important attachment figure. This could be typically a parent and it looks like kids being worried about either being kidnapped, somebody dying, car crashes. COVID brought about a lot of separation anxiety as well. Another thing that we see a lot are phobias. So this is what I'm talking about, fear of specific things. Thunderstorms, dogs, fire alarms have for some reason been very popular in the last few years, at least in my office. Social anxiety is fear of different social situations. Typically, people are worried about doing something wrong in public. And then there's just good old-fashioned generalized anxiety. So this is a very broad form of anxiety, general fear or worry, just that something is going wrong. 

Christy Wilkie: 

I like to, when I talk about anxiety with people, a lot of times people don't really realize that they're anxious until they realize that there's a different way to be. So when I try to explain to people what anxiety feels like, it's your brain constantly in a state of fight or flight. And fight or flight can look very different. Sometimes flight is more like avoiding or isolating and fight can be a, it can absolutely be aggressive, but it can also look like, and especially in high achieving anxiety, it looks like being overly productive or getting all sorts of things done to just try to get ahead of the thing that might be a threat. Anxiety really believes that anything that comes into your, your space could be, could be threatening to you. And I think that's the difference between, you know, anxiety and, and fear and worry. 

Christy Wilkie: 

When you're scared, it means that there's an actual threat. And yeah, you should probably be scared when there's an actual threat. And then your anxiety is kind of like, we don't really know that there's a threat, but we think everything might be a threat. It's kind of like the difference between having a functioning fire alarm, and one of those ones that wake you up in the middle of the night at three o'clock in the morning that's beeping because the battery is low. And when the fire alarm goes off, there's actual fire there. When the battery is just kind of beeping and it's just really annoying and you have to like figure it out, there's really no threat, but it causes that sort of anxiety to live in you. I kind of liken it to if you've ever lost your keys or you've ever been, it's like walking through a path and like a snake comes out and you all of the sudden have this reaction where your hands get sweaty and you feel stronger and like you can run faster and whatever. 

Christy Wilkie: 

And that's really, really helpful when there's an actual threat. People who are anxious feel that way all of the time and it's very exhausting and really, it can get in the way of them having meaningful relationships and jobs, and those kinds of things. And when it starts to impact their daily lives, that's when we start to look at maybe we need to figure out some sort of different interventions for this. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

You can see anxiety in people. Typically there's a lot of physical symptoms that could be displayed. A lot of times people might fidget or shake their knee. They might struggle with finding the words like I am right now. With kids, you know, you might see difficulty with drop offs, you might have trouble falling asleep (that could be with kids or adults). Waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, nightmares, difficulty making decisions, getting physically ill is really common, so getting stomach aches, migraines, even. Some people break out in hives. Having a hard time concentrating. Kids will get stuck on things. The fancy word for that is perseverating. You can use that in trivia night. And second guessing yourselves, checking in. Lots of kids who are anxious, they tend to check in and just make sure that they're doing the right thing, because they don't want to do something wrong. That could be with their teachers or with you in general. It can be really challenging for kids. 

Christy Wilkie: 

I think it's hard to talk about anxiety without talking about control, the way that a lot of people choose to, or not even choose to, it's just kind of how they manage anxiety, is by finding control over situations. (I see the question in the chat and I'll get to it in one second.) And so that looks like all sorts of things for people, but even anxious people might even try to control a conversation so that there isn't something that might be said that they don't know how to respond to. Or they will just wanna be at home with their family. That's pretty typical with kids that have separation anxiety. They want everybody in one place so they know where everybody is and they want to know like where everybody's going, which is a form of control. 

Christy Wilkie: 

Sometimes, not always (there are super organized people that are not very anxious), however, sometimes overly organizing things is a way for people to manage anxiety that you kind of see. A lot of times people who are anxious want people to do what they want them to do. And so they kind of try to direct things in that way. And sometimes it comes off as feeling overbearing or that they're bossy, and that's not, that's not always the case. If you reframe that and look at it in a way where this person is trying to manage their anxiety in whatever way that they can to get through the day, it helps have a little bit of empathy for some of those responses. 

Christy Wilkie: 

The question [in the chat] is wanting to know how to be helpful to a young adult child who calls in the middle of an anxiety attack. That's a great question. There's lots of things that you can do and a lot of it is getting them into the here and now. Panic attacks happen when your thoughts get so out of control and they honestly do believe that they are in fear. And when you're in a panic attack, if you've ever been in a panic attack, your breathing gets really, really shallow. Your vision gets blurred. It's almost kind of like this. You get really sweaty. And so trying to bring them, we call it grounding. We try to bring them back down to reality. And there's lots of ways that you can do that. There's a 3, 3, 3 method where you say, what are three things that you can see, three things you can hear and move your body in three different ways. And that just kind of brings your brain back to thinking about where you're at. 

Christy Wilkie: 

A lot of kids will do this with their fingers and count. So it gets their irrational thoughts kind of under control. It gives their brain something else to focus on. It's getting them back into a mindful state of mind, into the present. If you're watching and you have feet, which some of you do, if you think about the way that your feet feel in your shoes, or the way that your pants feel on your legs, or the way that you feel sitting in your chair and just kind of move from your toes to your head, it just kind of brings you back to where you're at. And that's super helpful. Breathing is always helpful. When you have that shallow breathing, your brain believes that you're in danger. A lot of people who are anxious in general have shallow breathing and so we try to teach them how to breathe even just daily, normally. When you're breathing shallow, your brain is like, we are in danger. 

Christy Wilkie: 

So we have to regulate the breathing. I'm a big fan of square breathing, which is if you exhale all the air that you have in your lungs and then you breathe in and count to four, and then you hold it at the top of that breath, hold it for four, and then exhale at a count of four, and then hold it at the bottom of that breath for four. That sort of breathing and counting will get you kind of regulated too. We get that question a lot from parents that come in too, cause they'll be like, my kid's just really anxious. I I don't know how to help them in that moment. And those are all things that help. I'm sure Lucas has things that he does too. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

Yeah, really big. When it comes down to the grounding, another term for that is called mindfulness. And mindfulness has been shown to be really effective in handling anxiety. It's a little bit tougher to show, to teach kids how to do true mindfulness. And so the grounding techniques that Christie was talking about is a really easy way to do that. There's some other little tricks too, and especially at night. With a lot of the people that I see, at night when everything is calmed down, you're laying down, you're trying to go to sleep, that's when you get attacked with a bunch of different thoughts that are just really anxiety provoking. And so you need to, what kids say is, "I just need to stop thinking about that." And that's impossible. You can't just stop thinking. It's kinda like if I say, "stop thinking about a purple elephant," now everybody's thinking about a purple elephant, right? 

Lucas Mitzel: 

You need to replace the thoughts with something else. And so we kick the bad thoughts out and we think about something we want. So what I teach kids is something called, I call it "going to your happy place," where you think of a place you want to go. Maybe it's a memory that you've had, your favorite memory or it could honestly be just something completely made up that you wanna think about. And what you do is you describe it to yourself in as much detail as possible using your five senses. So what are you seeing when you're there? What are you hearing? Who's with you? What's the temperature like outside? Is there any wind? Do you hear any birds? And you just start playing this movie in your brain. And if you can couple that with deep breathing, your body gets very relaxed and lots of kids say that they just, they can't even finish the movie in their head and they just fall asleep. And that's because you're kicking out the thoughts that are keeping you up. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

Focusing on what you have control over. Anxiety's about fear of the future, something bad might happen, right? And if you're thinking about the past, typically it's how the past is going to impact the future because you made a mistake and you just, it hasn't come to fruition yet as to what the consequences of that are going to be. Anxiety wants us to think about the future when in reality right now, in this moment, in the present, things are okay. And if you think about the present, you're gonna start to feel better if you can focus on that. And that's where those grounding techniques are great. Going to your happy place, deep breathing, muscle relaxation is also a really good one and that's where you flex (for kids, I call it flexing just because that is easier to remember.) And you just go through your body and you flex for 10 seconds as hard as you can. I like to make it a little game. After the 10 seconds, you slowly release the muscles and you just keep doing that until you feel better. Some kids like to do just a very specific muscle group. Other kids like to go up and down their whole body. I got some kids that just like to flex their entire body all at once and they just keep doing that. And that feels good to them. It's really trying to find what works for you or for your kids and then practicing those things over and over. I think a lot of people make the very easy mistake of trying to get as many tools as possible, which is great if you have a bajillion tools, but if you only know how to use them at a sort of mediocre level, they're not gonna be super useful. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

And so I like to teach, find like two or three really solid skills, and then master those because if you can master a skill, it's very likely that it's going to work very frequently. Another thing that I tell parents to do is giving children choices that gives them the illusion of control. A lot of times with anxious kids, they, like Christie was talking about earlier, they want to have control over their environment because anxiety makes you feel out of control. And so they'll say things like, I don't wanna wear pants, for example. But you have to wear pants to go to school. So okay, do you wanna wear the red pants or do you wanna wear the blue pants? Now all of a sudden they have control over something and it doesn't really matter which pants they choose as long as they're wearing pants to school, right? So we just have to make sure that the choices that you're giving them are win-wins for you. That can, that'll often help kids who are struggling with anxiety, especially in the morning. That's a tough one in the morning. 

Christy Wilkie: 

Yeah, I think it's, it's also important to note that if you have a child or if you are an adult who's having panic attacks regularly, or is having excessive anxiety to the point where that's happening, that's probably one of those times where we would say, that's probably when you should maybe make a therapy appointment and see a professional about ways to manage that. Because I am in the business of prevention if I can prevent a child from ever experiencing a panic attack ever again, because that amount of fear can be very traumatic, that's what we do. We are all about how can we alleviate the anxiety before it gets to the point where it is a panic attack or if a panic attack is starting, what can we do before it gets to the point where it's super, super huge. 

Christy Wilkie: 

And a lot of that is everybody's anxiety is very individualized, and different things work for different people. A lot of anxious people will avoid or they'll use distractions and there's a time and place for all of those things. Distractions are great, but they're also temporary. It doesn't fix what's going on. It doesn't fix the, whatever it is that caused the initial anxiety. So finding a way to distract yourself to get through that really difficult time is awesome. But then when you're in a decent space to come back and say, okay, let's process through what it was that got us to that point. And a lot of times it is, it's a bunch of cognitive distortions that just need to be reworked a little bit. And I think that that's important to note. 

Christy Wilkie: 

It is amazing to me all of the time, about how many times people come in and they talk to me about all these anxious thought they're having. Like, that sounds like you have anxiety. And they're like, really? Like, yeah, like that's actually, that's anxiety. And they just, because it's the way they've always been, that's just what they think everybody feels like. And so learning to identify it and put a name to it, helps you be in control of your emotions, which is so powerful. Not just with anxiety, but with depression, with sadness, even with happiness, with confusion, with jealousy, with any emotion that you're feeling. If you can just take a minute and say, what is it that I'm feeling? Not only does it help to have a word to put to it, but it gives you more control over what's happening to your body rather than your body controlling you. 

Christy Wilkie: 

So being able to identify it, name it, and then think, okay, now what do I want to do with that? What is a better way for me to work through this feeling than to just avoid it, is a really great way to work through emotions. Cause a lot of people are just like, we find ways to just like to steer away from it instead of stepping into it and saying, I am anxious. I feel that, I know that feeling. This is what it is and what am I gonna do with it? It's a very powerful experience for people to be able to say that I am anxious, this is anxiety, I know what this is, and I know what to do. And that's a lot of what we do in our office is helping people figure out what to do with those feelings that are really difficult. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

Yeah, and I think it's also important just to note that a lot of people experience anxiety and there's not really a real reason that day why they're feeling anxious. Sometimes people just wake up and they're feeling anxious and nothing necessarily happened. It's really hard to identify thoughts in that moment and there could be a reason. And maybe through talking it out we can get to like, oh, that's why I'm anxious today. But sometimes you can't get there and people try to rationalize their emotions and how they're feeling and trying to figure out what the root cause of that is. And the problem with that is that emotions aren't necessarily rational. They exist outside of reason. And so you don't necessarily need to have a rational, reasonable trigger for you to feel anxious. You can just feel anxious because you're anxious and that is super frustrating for a lot of people. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

But it's really important to acknowledge, like Christie was saying, I'm feeling anxious now what? Now what am I gonna do? And trying to be more solution focused rather than focusing on the why. Because the why can lead you down a rabbit hole of kind of, I mean judgment of yourself and judgment has never helped anybody. It doesn't make anybody feel good. So let's just, okay, we're anxious. Now let's use some skills and tools to try and make this better. If you can find a reason for it, if there's a clear trigger that's great, we can address that. And sometimes that does make it a little bit nicer just because there's a rational reason, but you don't always have to have one. So I think that's just important to remember. 

Christy Wilkie: 

Yeah, there's also another question [in the chat] that says, "Are there other conditions that can be linked to anxiety? And is anxiety a lifelong diagnosis?" And Lucas was just touching on that. With those thoughts about anxiety, the first thing we ask when people say, "I'm feeling anxious today," the first thing people say is why? And immediately that puts people on the defensive cause there might not be a reason, it just exists, it just is. And so automatically they're thinking, "if I don't have a reason to be anxious, there's something wrong with me. Why am I such a bad person?" And so then you get these self-deprecating thoughts that impact self-esteem. And then if you're an avoider, you're isolating yourself from people. And so anxiety and depression often live together and we do a lot of work with figuring out kind of a chicken and the egg situation, you know, which came first, the chicken or the egg cause we treat them both, a lot of times simultaneously because they bounce off of each other. 

Christy Wilkie: 

And is anxiety lifelong diagnosis? It is. I mean if you're an anxious person, you're an anxious person. There are going to be times in your life where you are not as anxious. There are going to be ways that you can manage and cope with it. It's not like you get an anxiety diagnosis and it's the end of the world, and it's like, you're gonna feel like this forever. That's not it. Anxiety is very, very well managed with therapy and medication combined, but also a lot of people aren't into medications and we use it as a last resort too. There's a lot of research that will say that going to therapy regularly is just as effective as taking a medication for your anxiety. So working in collaboration with medication and therapy is always kind of your best bet. But yeah, once it's there, it's there. I mean it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily go away. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

I think there's a lot of diagnoses that are you know, Christy was mentioning depression. Something we see a lot with families is like with ADHD. ADHD has a tendency to mask anxiety a bit. And when you start treating the ADHD, I've had numerous parents be like, oh my gosh, we created anxiety, because the ADHD medication created anxiety and that's not how it works. It's the ADHD was masking the anxiety and now the thoughts have settled with the ADHD and now, oh here we go, this underlying anxiety is now coming out and able to speak. Trauma can cause really bad anxiety. That's a little bit of a different, there's a very clear cause as to why the anxiety is happening and you can, you can treat that, but there can be some lasting results from trauma. There's a lot of connections between anxiety and other diagnoses. I would say anxiety is probably the biggest diagnosis that we have in the clinic. 

Christy Wilkie: 

The other thing too with ADHD, just cause we're on, it's a wormhole, I'm sorry, but ADHD also oftentimes will mask depression. And what happens when you slow down those thoughts of ADHD with either medication or whatever, or therapy, is that then kids become aware of how what they have done in the past is impacting other people. And so they have those thoughts of, oh my gosh, what's wrong with me, why did I do that? And they're able to process why kids maybe don't wanna hang out with them or why people respond to them differently. And there are a lot of emotions that come with that because they're responding to the way that kids have always, this kid that maybe has ADHD has always treated them. And so that is difficult. And so we always tell parents that once you get rid of the ADHD, there might be other stuff that comes out underneath of that. And that's not to say that we're creating something different, it just means that's always there. They were just co-occurring together. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

Something we see a lot with people who have anxiety is, I call it a rabbit hole. What happens is something, something occurs, it could be like a school related incident or just anything. And what they do is they start connecting these events that create a sort of panic like, I failed my test, which means I'm going to fail the quarter, which means I'm gonna fail my grade, which means I'm never gonna get into college, which means I'm never gonna be successful and nobody's ever gonna love me and I'm gonna die. It just, it spirals out of control and it's really hard to pull somebody out of that when they're in the middle of doing that. It's important that you are patient during that time, that you are calm, and if you can get a word in, having them just stop, taking a breath, doing some grounding techniques and focusing in on the moment. That's a really big thing with anxiety, if you are picking up that theme. And then focusing on calming the body down. If you can calm the body down and make you[rself] physically calm, the mind starts to follow because it's not registering that there's, you're showing your brain that there's no threat. 

Christy Wilkie: 

I think the other thing that I wanna touch on, and anybody who's listened to me talk at all in the last three months, I talk about how mental health in the springtime is worse than it is any other time. And it's pertinent that we're talking about this in the height of the spring. It's counterintuitive because we think all the time that mental health should be worse in the winter, especially living in Fargo, North Dakota cause it's dark and it's cold and we're socially isolated and whatever that might be. But the the opposite is true. Springtime is the most critical time for mental health and there's a lot of spring anxiety. If you look at things that happen in the spring, there's a lot of beginnings and there's a lot of endings and that creates a lot of anxiety. Anytime that there's change in anybody's world, that's when we create conditions that are perfect for having anxiety just come out and say hello. 

Christy Wilkie: 

And so when the weather is changing, people are graduating, you're going to prom, you're taking finals, you're getting into colleges, there's sports, there's tournaments for sports, there's all of these things that are causing anxiety. And not only that, you have people who really are much more comfortable at home. Not everybody wants to be outside, not everybody wants to go to a party. Not everybody wants to see everybody that they haven't seen. And so for anxious people, specifically, feeling the pressure to be a part of those social engagements causes them to either have a boost of anxiety or even to cause some more depression that's happening because the thought of having to go out and socialize and do all of these things that are not as expected of you in the wintertime, causes a great deal of stress and anxiety and all of those things. 

Christy Wilkie: 

And I think because people feel like they should feel better in the spring, that's even worse because it goes back into what's wrong with me? Why is everybody else hanging out outside and golfing and going for walks and I don't wanna do that. I don't feel like that's a thing I wanna do. Then they start to think that there's something even more wrong with them that might not go away. We are always very vocal during the springtime about normalizing how easy it is to feel crappy when the weather's good because we hear all the time, well just wait till the sun comes out. You just need a little sunshine. No, sunshine does not work for everybody. It's not the end all be all for, for every person. And then for a lot of people, it makes it worse. So I just wanted to make sure that we, we touched on that too. 

Christy Wilkie: 

And I mean, and even when we look at proms, I mean I had, I had some kids in here today where they're younger and their peers are graduating and so they've got these friends that are moving away and they're like, they're gonna start this whole new life and they're gonna forget about me and they don't wanna, they're not gonna wanna care about me anymore, so I'm losing all of these friends. And so helping them figure out how to keep those connections and how to maintain relationships and understanding that it might be different, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna go away. And how can we appreciate what you have now without worrying about what might be in three to four months, and what can you do to maintain those relationships if it's an important relationship for them to keep. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

Outside of work, you know, whether it be family members or friends who struggle with anxiety. A lot of people that I find that I talk to don't seek help because they are worried that they might be taking a spot from somebody else who needs it more, or that they're just over exaggerating what's going on, or whatever other reason there might be. And I think it's important for people who are listening or people who are listening in the future to this, that if you are struggling with any of these things, you don't have to feel this way. Like this isn't how life was supposed to be and you can, you can make it better. And just because you're not the worst person or the have the worst symptoms doesn't mean it doesn't suck. And it doesn't mean that you can't, you shouldn't seek help. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

We honestly, and Christy and I will scream this on the mountaintops, we would prefer you come in when it's easier, when it's not as bad, because it's way easier to fix it. When you wait until like you are having panic attacks every single day or you develop a phobia or you're afraid to go outside of your house or anything like that, that is way more complex and difficult to work through than something where it's just a, you're just worried overall and it's hard to sleep or something like that. Now that's not to say that if I did just describe you as the somebody who's scared to go outta your house, you can also fix that. We, you know, we can work through those things and all of of this is treatable. That's one of the great things about anxiety is that it is treatable and you don't have to feel like this anymore if you don't want to. 

Christy Wilkie: 

Yeah, I think there's somebody that said yes, that's exactly how I feel. I totally get that and what we are seeing right now because believe it or not, we are making progress of lifting a mental health stigma. So what we see a lot happen is that parents are way more willing to get help for their kids than they are for themselves. So they'll come in cause their kids are having some anxious thoughts or their kids are are struggling and then through that process, cause we bring parents into the process every time when we're seeing kids, cause education for parents is a huge part of what we do. We start kind of listing off the things that their kids are doing and maybe what the diagnosis might be and you can kind of see the parents start going, they're like, do you think maybe I have some of that? And I'm like, you know, a lot of mental health stuff is genetic and so, if we can get someone in the door for their kid, we're also seeing that our colleagues and we're referring out the parents to say, yeah, like let's get you in to see somebody. Let's let's see what we can do to help you feel better too. And I think that that's just almost more of a generational thing that we're seeing where it, yeah, it's, it's becoming way more common for kids to go to therapy. Like they talk about it, they tell their friends about it, and they talk to us about their friends going to therapy. And so if getting a foot in the door with your kids is also what gets you help, that's great. But we also want you to know that you don't have to do that. 

Christy Wilkie: 

Like you, if you are struggling, you can come in and get help and you are worthy and deserving of having a full life, even if it's just bothering you a little bit. Like that's literally what we do, is help people feel better and it's all relative, it's all relatively speaking. 

Christy Wilkie: 

How can kids be supported for their anxiety when they're at school? How can parents and teachers collaborate? This is a great question. Lucas and I talk to schools all of the time about all mental health diagnoses and how they can manage these. And one of the big things I think, and teachers are so busy, God bless teachers, right? Like they have so much on their plate and it's like asking them to do one more thing feels like a lot. And I totally get that, but the biggest thing I think that teachers can do is communicate with, and parents need to advocate for their kids, but to have there be communication between the two back and forth. 

Christy Wilkie: 

Because if a teacher doesn't know that a child is suffering from anxiety, they maybe don't understand why things that are not difficult for some kids are difficult for that kid. Or why we need to have different things in place to get them into the building. Kids with separation anxiety specifically, school drop-offs are like the worst. And so we really have to work closely with the schools to figure out a way to get those kids into the building. Working with their therapists, we talk to a lot of teachers and I advocate for my kids to say, you know, this is a kid who really does need to have some sort of fidget. This is a kid who needs to know what the schedule is. If there's going to be a change in the schedule, let them know upfront. Because any sort of change that comes out of the blue is super anxiety producing. Gym time, specifically gym and music classes, tend to be very difficult for kids who are anxious just cause there's so much going on and there's so much sound and they don't have control over what's going on, that it just causes them to honestly want to avoid gym class. 

Christy Wilkie: 

I have some kids that don't wanna go to school at all because gym, they know that gym is coming and so they're worried about gym and then gym is there and then that's terrible and then they're trying to recover from gym and their whole day revolves around gym class and they end up just not going to school. Fidgets: for some kids, they absolutely work and I know that they're a pain for some teachers and we try to talk with teachers about that too, to to just say if we're gonna say that a kid needs a fidget, we're not gonna give 'em something that's like super loud and spiny and whatever. But kids who really, really need fidgets want them and they will do anything they can to not get them taken away because they really, really do help. So, communication I think is the biggest thing. There's a lot of people that aren't necessarily super comfortable with telling teachers that their kid has a diagnosis, and I totally respect that also. And so then what can we do with the parent on the front end to see what we can do so that school is successful. But every kid is different and every plan is different and we try to meet the needs of the kids in any way that we can. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

Helping kids find ways to communicate to their teachers is also something that Christy and I do. We help give them scripts or little catchphrases that they can use. And so helping, like one kid I work with, he gets really, really nervous to talk and so, but when he's in distress he kind of shuts down and so it's just like a card and a different color of a card. So like red means I am done, I need a break, you need to like, let me go. But he feels worried about asking that. And so finding creative ways to communicate or helping your kids communicate with their teachers, this can, this is another really helpful thing that therapy can do and help give them confidence in order to do those things. But communicating with your kids as well. Even just like asking what is going on at school, like when you are feeling anxious, what are you thinking about? 

Lucas Mitzel: 

I can't tell you how many times I've had parents come in and saying like, oh they're anxious, but we don't know what for. And I'm like, well did you ask them? And they're like, well no. And so then I just, I ask them and they're like, blah, this. Having open communication with your children, if you notice that your children are feeling anxious, especially if you struggle with anxiety yourself, being open about that can help create a really positive communication style or flow between you and help open that up. The last thing we want to do with anxious people is have them not talk about what's going on in their brain because they will blow things up way more than they need to. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

One of my favorite analogies I use for people with anxiety, is anxiety likes to cast shadows on problems. So it'll take something that's small, like a little gecko and make it look like it's Godzilla. That seems to resonate with people a little bit. When you actually sit down and you look at the issue, it's just this little gecko that you can manage a gecko rather than Godzilla, or use whatever you want for that analogy. That's just the one I like cause I'm a nerd. 

Lucas Mitzel: 

The comment [in the chat], wanting to start therapy but wanting to wait till after vacation. I would just challenge you a little bit to imagine what the vacation would be like if you had skills to manage your anxiety a little bit better. That sounds like a much more relaxing vacation and maybe a little bit more productive vacation and taking only a week off is not gonna hurt anything. You're not gonna get behind or anything like that. Even with one session, you can get some pretty useful skills to manage some stuff or even just try. So that would be my only challenge for that. 

Christy Wilkie: 

Lucas and I work pretty fast. Like if you come in and you're not doing well, like we are gonna give you skills that you can use in the meantime the first time that you're in here. I think people have it in their head that they have to like dedicate 12 weeks where this is what they're working on uninterrupted in order to make strides in therapy and that just isn't true. You can come in, in one session and find a lot of understanding with who you are and how your brain works and how we can help you find ways to cope that are specific to you and that doesn't take a full 12 weeks. We can give you some of those skills right off the bat because we don't want people suffering, we don't want people to feel that way. 

Outro: 

Thank you for listening to this Community Chat presented by Dakota Family Services. To make an appointment with one of our mental health providers or to learn other ways to Mind Your Mind, go to dakotafamilyservices.org.

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