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On this episode
Confronting anxiety is easier said than done. It’s hard enough with adults, but with children it’s even more tough. Anxiety keeps us safe, but often we over-predict that something bad will happen and under-predict our ability to cope. The key is to learn how to manage anxiety before it becomes a problem.
This week’s guest is educational psychologist Nicky Odgers. She specialises in working with kids who are feeling anxious about attending school. A lot of what she helps kids with applies to adults – things like mapping thoughts and emotions to physical sensations, replacing negative thoughts with more realistic ones, and practicing techniques to help us relax.
Anxiety can interfere with our lives and become a problem if it goes unaddressed. Naturally we want to avoid things that cause us anxiety, but this stops us from learning that we can cope and that the terrible thing we fear may never happen.
Show links
More episodes of You Are Not a Frog:
School Anxiety Support for Parents – Facebook group
My Anxiety Handbook: Getting Back on Track, by Sue Knowles, Bridie Gallagher, and Phoebe McEwen
What to Do When You Worry Too Much, by Dawn Huebner PhD
Helping Your Child with Fears and Worries, by Cathy Creswell and Lucy Willetts
Get Your Sh*t Together, by Sarah Knight
The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, by Sarah Knight
Download the episode’s workbook and CPD form. You can use them for reflection and to submit for your appraisal.
About the guests
Nicky Odgers is an educational psychologist with a particular interest in school anxiety. She helps parents and schools to support children and young people to feel less anxious about attending school, to better manage their emotions, to develop their confidence, to initiate and sustain positive relationships and be more successful in their learning.
Follow Nicky Odgers
Reasons to listen
- To learn about anxiety in children and teenagers, and how it can manifest as school avoidance
- To gain insight into how anxiety affects adults, including healthcare professionals, and how to manage it effectively
- To understand the thought patterns, physical sensations, and behaviours associated with anxiety, and how to address them to prevent avoidance and build coping skills
Episode highlights
Epidemic of anxiety
Anxiety as pathology
Thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and behaviours
Safety behaviours
When is it right to step in and offer help
Anxiety in healthcare
How to persuade someone their fears are unfounded
Mind-reading
Teaching people to solve problems
Worry time and worry monsters
Distracting yourself from worry
Helpful safety behaviour
Helping anxious people
Neurodiversity and autism
Nicky’s tips for managing anxiety
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Rachel: When was the last time you confronted your anxiety about something? It’s easier said than done. Isn’t it. When we feel anxious, we tend to avoid the thing. That’s making us feel that way. Obviously, nobody wants to feel anxiety, but when we avoid tackling our problems, we keep enforcing that land behavior. And tackling the issue then becomes harder and harder. But there are small steps that we can take that build up to finally addressing the things that are worrying us. [00:00:27] Rachel: Now many of us are not only coping with our own anxiety, but…
