Building Confidence & Managing Anxiety For Teens

Speaking Works also has a branch for kids classes ‘Young Voices’ and this summer I joined forces with a fantastic Clinical Psychologist - Dr Catherine Pitfield from Roots Psychology - to run ‘Back to School’ workshops for children. After a fully booked first session, we are running more throughout the summer and an online webinar for parents.

We felt that children needed a bit more support to help them return to school post lockdown. Most adults have never taught how to manage our emotions, deal with anxiety or be taught how to speak with confidence.

Here is a useful excerpt from Dr Pitfield’s recent blog on anxiety for teens:

Anxiety is a really healthy normal response, which helps to protect us. By learning more about anxiety and why we experience it, we can see that it is not harmful and find ways to manage the difficult feelings it brings up.

To simplify the brain, we could say it is divided into three sections:

1.     The “lower brain”: Houses the “fight or flight” path. It is key for our survival and detecting danger.

2.     The “mid brain”: Involved in the development of emotion and stores memories.

3.     The “upper brain”: The thinking part of your brain, responsible for planning, organising, thinking about consequences and language.

Our brain will essentially always try and keep us safe and alive, but it can over-respond to perceived threats and danger. The lower brain acts as an “alarm system” in the brain. It scans for danger signals and is capable of turning on the “fight / flight” response. When we are anxious the human brain essentially shuts down, and we can become stuck in the lower part of our brain.

The “fight / flight / freeze” response:

Imagine if you are walking across a road and a car is coming at you quickly, if you use the thinking part of your brain to think about what colour the car is, who is driving, what make the car is, different routes you could take to get out the road, etc.; you risk being hit by the car. So you don’t want to use your thinking system, you need to use your “emergency” system (the lower brain).

The lower brain doesn’t think, it does. It sends a “threat” signal to your body and your body will take over, you will get a rush of adrenaline to prepare you to either fight, flight or freeze; “fighting” the car is not useful, “freezing” will have you stopping in the road, so instead you will “flight”, you will run out of the road. Here the brain has done its job, it’s kept you safe.

During the “fight / flight” response, your brain releases adrenaline into your body, this makes our heart beat faster to help pump blood quickly round our body, this is because if we are to run or fight, we need our legs and arms to have blood available for our muscles. Our lungs need to breathe faster so as we get more oxygen going in to the body. We take blood away from non-essential organs at that time, so if we are in immediate danger we divert blood away from our gut and digestive system. This is a really effective system if we are about to burn this adrenaline off (by running / fighting) but if we are just sitting then this leaves us feeling really uncomfortable.

Once the danger is over (the car has gone past) and you are safe your brain will start to reset. Imagine, you have just managed to avoid being hit by a car. You will feel a sense of relief and the adrenaline you felt in your body will start to leave. However, as you walk home you may be more hypervigiliant; paying attention a bit closer to other cars and speed. It’s a way of our brains focusing more on potential threats to keep us alive. Over time this hyper-vigilance leaves us and our brains have reset to a normal level.

It is an evolutionary adaption to focus on risk. We are designed to remember negative memories more than we are positive events. It is survival – we are more likely to survive if we see things as more negative or risky. However, it feels incredibly uncomfortable to live with so much anxiety, so we need our thinking brain to rationalise and think about whether we need to be so worried or afraid.

Here is a useful video of Anxiety explained by Teens, for Teens:

More detail on the workshops:

Worried about your child’s transition back to school? We can support your child to build confidence and emotional resilience through fun and engaging workshops. Through fun and engaging tasks, we hope to instil skills that will benefit children into their future. 

Catherine and Jude are passionate about teaching children “life skills” to support them to thrive at school and beyond. Children and young people need to learn about how to manage their feelings and emotions and how to interact with those around them. Something that is even more significant this year to help children to return to school with confidence.

What will be covered:

- Changing habits with the body, mind and voice
- Reflecting on ‘life in lockdown’
- How to understand and manage anxiety
- Increase confidence within communication and friendships
- Developing skills to improve mental wellbeing
- Build self-esteem and resilience
- Creating A Toolkit: Breathing & mindfulness