Child Anxiety Treatment

CBT is based on the idea that how our thought processes and actions have an impact on how we feel. Our emotional health improves as we learn to modify spurious thinking and dysfunctional behavior. Anxiety affects children and teenagers in the form of cognitive abnormalities that exacerbate their anxiety. Kids can learn to manage their emotions by learning to recognize their stressors, learn how anxiety influences their behavior, and how to substitute their cognitive distortions with cognitive retraining.

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Kids learn to deal with their stressors in little steps using CBT. Children are taught to change negative thinking with positivity, as well as to distinguish between genuine and false thoughts. CBT includes some “homework” for kids to practice new patterns of thought and adaptive coping skills at home, and it equips them with lifelong skills.

To know how CBT works, it is necessary to first fully understand how anxiety functions. Since the kids learn that avoiding the stressful situation helps in reducing worry, at least temporarily, serious unmanaged anxiety is likely to get worse over time, rather than getting better. However, when the child — and, in fact, the entire family — tries to prevent arousing those concerns, they grow in turn grow stronger. The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to erase avoidant behavior.

Exposure and systematic desensitization are some of the most essential CBT approach for kids with anxiety. The underlying notion is that kids are exposed to the things that make them anxious in a controlled, gradual manner and a safe environment. The anxiety decreases as they become acclimated to each of the prompts in turn, and they are prepared to undertake more intense ones.

Conventional talk therapy, in which the client and therapist investigate the causes of their anxiety to modify their behavior, is significantly different from exposure therapy. We attempt to change behavior in exposure treatment to get rid of anxiety.

Separation anxiety, fears, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and social anxiety are among the conditions for which exposure therapy is useful.

The Bully in the Brain

For kids with anxiety disorders, the procedure begins by supporting them and their families in separating themselves from the anxiety and perceiving it as a separate entity from themselves. The clinicians do this by having students think of it as a “bully in the brain,” and push the kids to name the bully and speak back to him. 

We explain that we will teach youngsters how to deal with bullies, giving them the impression that they can control their worry rather than having it control them.

It’s also critical to assist children in comprehending how their worry is influencing their lives. I might draw a diagram showing what a child can’t do because of their anxieties, such as sleep in their bed, visit a friend, or have meals with their own family, and how it makes them feel. It’s critical to help youngsters comprehend how anxiety works and gain their trust since the next stage — facing their anxieties — is contingent on them believing me.

Exposure therapy, based on Robert Frost’s observation that “the only way around is through,” gradually and methodically helps the child face his or her fears so that they can learn to handle their anxiousness until it passes rather than responding with assurances, fleeing, prevention, or ritualistic behaviors like hand washing.