How Teaching Children Visualization Can Help Calm Their Fears

The most common reaction a parent has to her child’s anxiety is fear. You may worry that her anxieties or phobias are your fault, and that you are somehow lacking as a parent. If a major life event has touched your family, such as a death or divorce, you may worry that your child will never get over her nervousness and phobias. But now is not the time to stick your head in the sand. Instead, confronting fear head-on allows you to give your child the control she needs to take back her life again.

Take heart that anxiety in children is a very normal thing. In fact, one out of every eight children will experience anxiety to some degree during childhood. It is very rarely caused by “bad parenting.” Most parents are just trying to do the best they can with the resources given to them so don’t beat yourself up. Instead, help your child to overcome her fears by purchasing a self-help program that can give you the tools you need to fight phobias and nervousness. But as you begin this journey, it might help you to know how anxiety in children differs from anxiety in adults. We’ll discuss this aspect of the issue first, and then delve into how you can help your child work through her fears.

The Stress Response in Kids

Every human being has a built-in “fight or flight” response that kicks in as a result of a sudden burst of terror. This stress response was our only means of survival back in the caveman days, as we had to fight back or flee in response to true life-or-death situations. Basically, the same emotional and physical response floods us nowadays, as we avert a near car accident as our ancestors felt when avoiding a saber-toothed tiger. Our pulse quickens, our blood pressure skyrockets, our breathing becomes shallow, and we begin to sweat. We also may experience a sense of impending doom, fear that we are losing control, or worry that we are about to die.

Children experience the same fight or flight response as adults, but the fear can be exacerbated because children might not understand what’s going on. They may become afraid of the physical and emotional charge, and that fear can make the fight or flight response more intense. This leads to a vicious cycle of fear begetting fear, which can be difficult for your child to overcome without help. In addition, the fear can create neural pathways through the brain, which are a kind of “short cut” to the fear reaction. In other words, your child learns to trigger the fear response more quickly when confronted with the same situation.

Remember, though, that this is a learned behavior in response to a perceived threat. So that’s actually good news – that means the behavior can be unlearned, too. Your child can benefit from a self-help program that emphasizes stress reduction as well as specific techniques designed to break through phobias and patterns of nervous behavior. Let’s take a look at some of those techniques now.

Self-Help to Reduce Stress

Many parents rely on implementing a self-help program to help ease their child’s stress levels and help overcome phobias. Many of the kinds of help available to people who suffer from anxiety are just too controversial for use in children. For example, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications are not generally recommended for use in children because of the possible side effects they can produce. Psychotherapy can be helpful to children, but many kids resist seeing a therapist on a regular basis – and it can be highly expensive, even if you have medical insurance.

Self-help has several benefits that make it attractive to both parents and kids seeking relief from anxiety. First, it’s completely private and affordable, so there is no need for insurance companies to get involved. Secondly, self-help programs are customizable, meaning that you can follow the techniques that work for your child and discard the rest. And finally, self-help techniques can be used by everyone in the family, normalizing the therapy and making your child feel less of a special case and more of a part of the family.

Visualization to Reduce Stress

One common technique in self-help programs is visualization, also known as guided imagery. Basically, you have your child lie down in a comfortable position and guide them through the visualization process, having her visualize herself in a peaceful setting such as the beach. Visualization is often used as a part of meditation, allowing people to sink deeper into relaxation. This technique can have profoundly positive effects on the physical aspects of stress, as it decreases your heart rate and your blood pressure. It also promotes blood flow through the body, increasing the oxygen level in your blood stream. All of these physical changes can help calm the stress response in your child, allowing her to relax.

Exposure Therapy and Visualization

Another type of visualization can be used to help your child combat her phobias on a more direct level. You can guide your child through imagining any scenario that triggers her phobia, focusing on having her imagine a positive outcome to the situation. For example, if your child is scared of riding the bus, you can walk her through guided imagery of waiting at the bus stop, climbing onto the bus, riding the bus to school, and then getting off the bus upon arrival. This technique is a combination of visualization and exposure therapy – exposing your child to the very source of her fears, and helping her learn a positive response to that fear. In time, she can “de-program” her fear response to the trigger, and conquer her phobias.

A self-help program that utilizes visualization can help your child overcome her fears and will give her the tools she needs to combat stress for the rest of her life. You can also learn and implement these techniques as a part of your daily routine so that you can learn to reduce stress and handle difficult situations in your own life.