Taming our anxiety

Warning: personal story ahead.

While at university for my post-graduate degree, I came across a specialist who said these memorable words to me: “It sounds like you are feeling anxious about this”. This was the first time someone pointed it out to me, and the first time I realized that I had anxiety. These words changed my outlook on life.

You read that right, I’m a psychologist and I didn’t recognize my own anxiety until I was 23. Hearing those words helped me realize that I am a person who experiences the emotion of anxiety at a high level, and that this stands as an obstacle in my life. I’ve realized that anxiety is the feeling that does not let me live a rich and meaningful life, or experience life to its fullest.

Let me also point out that even though I didn’t realize I had anxiety until my early 20’s, simply naming my intense emotion as “anxiety” was so powerful.

If I’d quote Dr. Dan Siegel, writer of The Whole Brain Child, we have to “Name it to Tame it”! A vital and central part of my work with children and teenagers, is to help with their emotional vocabulary - so they can identify and “name” their emotions, and help with their emotional understanding and further complex emotional world - so they can “tame” their emotions!

Let’s not overlook the concerns many of us have regarding this 2020-2021 school year, and how many of our children and teenagers may already be feeling anxious. It is so important to teach them about the emotion of anxiety, before even trying to intervene and cope with it.

Another post coming soon in what to teach children about the feeling of anxiety.