I recently heard about a 3rd grade classroom that engaged in an exercise to determine which of the students were “worriers” and which were “warriors.” Now, granted, I don’t know the details of this particular exercise, so I tried my best to withhold judgment about the purpose or benefit of such an activity. In spite of my best attempts, however, I was left confused and dismayed that children were being asked to divide themselves into two mutually exclusive categories, one of which was clearly perceived as superior. It made me think about how often we—as parents, teachers, caring adults, members of the larger society—fail to recognize and strengthen the courage inherent within our most sensitive and anxious children.
Worriers are warriors. In fact they are among our bravest, strongest warriors. Think of the courage it takes for a socially anxious child to step foot into a classroom or onto a playground. Imagine the strength it takes for a child worried about being excluded or teased or not knowing what to say to attend summer camp or a classmate’s birthday party. For children who worry—whether it is about potential catastrophe, separation from a loved one, trying something new, or being rejected—the everyday requirements of life demand courage. What if we helped our worried children to recognize their inner warriors? Wouldn’t this not only minimize the stigma of anxiety, but also give children a new and much more empowering way of viewing themselves?
Here’s how you can nurture your own child’s inner warrior:
- Explain the nature of worry in a way your child can understand. Worry is natural and normal.
Here’s how I explain it to the warriors-in-training I work with: Worry is our brain’s way of alerting us to danger or making us pay attention. But some of us are born with a very sensitive “worry brain” that sometimes misinterprets or exaggerates the level of danger and is so loud that the other parts of our brain can’t see or think clearly.
For those of us with a loud and sensitive worry brain, we need to find ways to calm and quiet it and give voice to the other parts of our brain that can help us move past the fear and take action. The idea here is to normalize worry, take the shame out of it. Shame results in hiding and silence. What worry needs is a voice, to be brought out into the open. If we can name a feeling, we can tame it.
- Explain ways to tame worry. Sometimes, the worry brain just needs to be reassured — i.e., that most kids feel nervous on the first day of school, trying out for a sports team is scary, taking off and landing on an airplane makes a lot of people feel anxious.
Other times, it needs a plan, such as making a list of all the different things you can do if you find yourself with no one to play with at recess, what to do when you walk into a room of people you don’t know, or when you need to get a shot at your doctor’s visit. The plan might include preparing, like doing a practice run or talking ahead of time about what will happen that day at school/camp/the doctor’s office/the birthday party. It might even require contingency plans, including what to do if X, Y, and Z might happen (even if the likelihood of these happening is minor).
Other times, it needs to be corrected, because it is keeping you from seeing things clearly. These “worry glasses” make everything blurry and distorted, like when worry makes you feel something bad is going to happen even if that is unlikely. If we take off the worry glasses, we can use the “thinking” and “deciding” parts of our brain to help us see that everything is okay, that nothing bad will happen, that we can take action in spite of the worry.
You may feel like the plane is going to crash, but if you take off your worry glasses to look at the situation more clearly, you can think about how unlikely this is to happen. You may feel that no one will like you at your new school, but if you really think about it, you may realize that there have been lots of people who have liked you before and that you know how to be a good friend, which means you have some control over the situation.
In other words, you don’t have to follow or believe your worry brain. Instead, you can think and decide what to do using other information, based on the evidence or on the plan you developed.
- Explain how to be brave. Being brave — being a warrior — isn’t about not having fear or worry. It’s about having fear, but doing it (whatever “it” is) anyway.
We do ourselves and our children a disservice by implying that courage is the absence of fear or worry. Worry and fear are like a big wall in front of us. We can keep staring at the wall and staying behind it. Or, we can start bumping up against it, eventually breaking it down, climbing over it, or finding within it a hidden door we never knew was there.
We decrease the power of our worry and fear when we are brave and push against and eventually through that wall. The only way to feel less worried or scared is to summon our courage and get used to doing the thing we feel afraid of, whether that thing is trying a new activity, asking someone to play, getting on an airplane, or dipping a toe into the swimming pull.
For anxious, worried kids, there need to be some attempts to do what is difficult (with the requisite preparing, supporting, and pep-taking described above). Instead of protecting children from doing what it hard or scary or makes them worried, we need to help them to bump up against that wall, again and again, even if that bump is only a tap. Even the smallest of taps against that wall get called out and celebrated as acts of courage, the way of the warrior.