Highly Sensitive Children and Anxiety
Many children who are highly sensitive struggle with feelings of fear and anxiety on a regular basis. Anxiety is a full-body experience for highly sensitive children: it may cause physical trembling, rapid heartbeat, sinking feelings in the stomach, headaches, spikes in blood pressure, reduced or excessive appetite, insomnia, and feelings of being on “high-alert”, such as waiting and watching for the next terrible thing to happen. Many people in our children’s lives may want to minimize their anxiety, not understanding how truly intense it is for them. They may say our child worries too much, or whatever is making them anxious is not that big a deal. For our Highly Sensitive Child (HSC) however, their anxiety can feel like a desperate, life-and-death situation.
At the root of most HSC episodes of anxiety is a feeling of being unsafe in some way. Understanding that our anxious children are feeling unsafe is an important part of helping them cope. If you understand that their body feels like it is in danger, then it follows that in order to reduce their anxiety the HSC first needs to feel safe in their body. Without this feeling of safety, no words of reassurance will really sink in and be believed. Trying to reason with them when they’re feeling unsafe may even have the unintended effect of causing them to feel more alone or as though there is something wrong with them for “over-reacting.”
A key intervention that any caring adult may use with a highly sensitive child who is experiencing this type of anxiety, is to validate their fear and display empathy. This doesn’t mean that you have to validate the circumstances, especially if you think their reaction is out of proportion to the situation at hand, but it does mean that you acknowledge the enormity of their emotional and physical experience. This helps the child to feel seen and supported. This validation can take the form of these three steps:
1. Reflect what you observe is happening in their body: i.e., “I notice you are crying and your hands are shaking,” or “you don’t seem very hungry today.”
2. Inquire about other sensations in their body: i.e., “What do you notice about your breathing right now?” or “Is your body in pain anywhere?”
3. Express empathy and compassion: i.e., “What you are feeling is really intense,” or “That must be really hard to feel so upset.”
Once you have acknowledged and validated the intensity of the child’s experience, it’s important to help them regulate their physical sensations and emotions to regain a feeling of safety in their body. Here you may suggest strategies that you have found helpful yourself in calming down when you are upset or afraid. You may also tailor your suggestions to what you know works for your child. Rather than focusing on whatever is causing them the anxiety or trying to rationalize them out of it, the goal here is to help them know they’ve got your support so that they can come back to a calm baseline. A few sample conversation starters could be:
1. “When my body feels stressed out or in pain, I like to lie down and take some deep breaths. Would you like to try that with me?”
2. “I’ve noticed that sometimes you need some space alone when you are having intense feelings. Would you like to take some time in your room and then I could check on you in 10 minutes to see how you are doing?”
3. “I know you are having a lot of feelings right now and I want to talk about them with you, but first let’s try to help your body feel safe. Do you want to go for a walk with me outside to see if that helps your body feel better?”
As a parent working with your child around anxiety, one thing to remember is that it is better to help your child contain it, rather than tell the story about it. You may have had the experience already of opening space for your child to talk about what is causing them anxiety, and then feeling like they get stuck in a loop of worry about how bad things are or could get. So, while talking about it can be helpful to some degree, more often for children it is helpful to focus on shifting their bodily experience of the anxiety. If they regain a feeling of safety in their body, often whatever situation was seeming to cause their anxiety is not as threatening.
If you’re not really sure what techniques to try to help your child feel safe in their body, here are few tried and true strategies that tend to be helpful for HSC’s with anxiety:
· Exercise
· Getting outside in nature
· Breathing exercises
· Relaxing bedtime routines (for insomnia)
· Listening to and/or making music
· Doing a creative project
· Reviewing plans ahead of time (if they are anxious about certain activities)
There are many other strategies which support HSC’s in addressing anxiety, including visualization exercises and grounding techniques I’ve written about in prior blog posts. If anxiety is a chronic issue for your HSC, it is important to address it on multiple levels. If you aren’t sure where to start, I recommend some of the coping strategies videos on my website. I’m also always happy to do a discovery call or one-time 90-minute consultation to look at what may be causing your child’s anxiety and come up with some tailored strategies.
Carolina is an active and proud member of the Sensitive Empowerment Community! Learn more about this wonderful group through Julie Bjelland’s website at https://www.fatfreecartpro.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=342244&c=ib&aff=383793. There are numerous free and paid resources designed to support Highly Sensitive People on this site!
