Anxiety is the 2nd most common mental health concern for Australian children of all ages (3).
Anxiety is a completely normal and necessary part of life when it is not excessive. Anxiety has very high heredity, as well as being affected by the people around you. Your brain may be highly reactive to stimuli and may perceive danger where there is none. Sadly, your survival brain is much older than your thinking brain, and it hasn't really caught up in terms of understanding that even though having a test at school or struggling with peers may be uncomfortable, it probably won't physically hurt or kill you! For this reason, it sounds the alarm and tells you there is danger!
Anxiety is experienced when your survival brain (see the Dr Dan Siegal video under emotional regulation) perceives a threat. It releases hormones, adrenaline and cortisol to help you either escape this threat, fight it or freeze. Thinking is not necessary as far as your brain is concerned, which is why often, you will feel sick, butterflies in your stomach, tightness in your chest, your heart and breathing speed up and you may feel a lump in your throat, dizziness, light-headedness or tightness in your head. Your arms, hands, legs and feet may feel tingly or shaky. These are all important messages your brain is trying to give you about the situation you are in. When you learn to notice these messages, you can get out of this situation or use strategies to manage how your brain and body react. Your mental health professional can help you or your child with this.
Using your breath can be a way of bringing your thinking brain back in control. There are several breathing techniques you can use for this. Below is one of them.