Tish Cohen has started up an unique author blog called Waits at the Window. In it, she talks about the issues that her new book, Inside Out Girl, deals with, things like anxiety (which she's given purple hair) and learning disorders. While it pulls mainly from her own life, it's also an important place to open up a dialogue around these issues, and moving forward she plans to talk to experts in the relevant fields to gain their insight as well.
Today, Tish has given us permission to reprint one of her posts, and I'm putting it out there for everyone to let me know what their anxiety looks like -- I've already decided that mine's red with feathers and claws.
Giving Children's Anxiety a Name, Face, Even Toenails!
Jennifer Kolari's blog post has certainly hit a nerve among parents.
I've heard from quite a few people dealing with this very thing.
Further to Jennifer's suggestion to give the anxiety a name, my own
therapist has suggested to me that I also give it a face. This is
cognitive behavioral therapy and should work for your own anxiety or
your child's -- it certainly helped me.
I was told to come up
with an image of what my anxiety looked like -- short or tall, what
color, etc. What I came up with was a tangle of purplish-brown hairy
lines with cartoon eyes, hands, and feet. Right away, my own creature
was sort of cute in an annoying way. He only came up to my knees, so I
was the one in power. But the greatest thing about creating a separate
persona for my fear was that it then existed outside of me -- no longer
within. It wasn't a part of me, it was a little being I could order
away from me if need be.
For example, if I was going to a
reading and was nervous, I could imagine this hairy beast, tell him he
was not allowed to follow me (bookstores tend to frown upon purple
hairballs hanging around, don't they?). My therapist said to give him
(see -- already he has a gender, ha!) one spot in the house where he was
allowed to exist and banish him to his spot when you want to get rid of
him.
So if your child is experiencing anxiety, ask her what her
anxiety looks like -- if it could look like anything in the world. Let
her create this creature in great detail and laugh over little parts of
it -- the ragged ears or yellow teeth. Then have her name it, decide how
large or small it is. Let her discuss it's odd habits, then pick the
spot where it's allowed to live. Your child will have so much more
power over her anxiety, you should see an improvement right away. And
as she banishes her little creature to its spot more and more, the
creature's strength will gradually begin to fade, leaving your child
free from its ugly cracked toenails more and more.
