Children experience all kinds of anxieties and fears. It can range from mild to severe depending on the chronicity of problems. They are most susceptible to absorb conflicts that happen between their parents and it can stir severe anxiety in the children. Children witness break ups between their parents and can react to the trauma severely. Also, when there are losses and deaths in the family, they witness their family members grieving and they can sense the neglect of love and attention due to the grief of the parents and it affects the mind of the young child immensely. Also, when parents are not loyal to each other and betray trust by having affairs, children are then the ones who are deeply affected.
Children go through separation anxiety too when they start school and leave the comfort of their home. Children sometimes develop school phobia if their anxiety is not controlled when it is mild and treatable. Overprotective parents who tend to send wrong messages to their children about safety and do not allow them to face challenges and take risks, tend to feed into the phobias and fears of children. They develop all sorts of Anxiety disorders. Their level of confidence gets shattered and children develop low self esteem. Chronic Anxiety often leads to clinical depression as children begin to avoid engaging in hobbies and normal day to day activities due to the fear of failure or fear of rejection.
Impact of Child Anxiety
Anxiety can cause sleep disturbance, avoidance, isolation and withdrawal in children causing more damage to their personality and causing mental disorders. Anxiety should be treated at the outset to prevent it from becoming chronic. Appropriate interventions should be taken at early stages so that the child can function appropriately.
Shy children are more prone to developing anxiety disorders as they lack the confidence to face social situations and be comfortable around people. Lack of confidence can lead to a variety of disorders including social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, depression, nail biting, bed wetting, bruxism, stuttering, and many more anxiety disorders.
The question is, Is Anxiety treatable? What are the solutions to the problem?
Cognitive behavioral therapy has been utilized to treat Anxiety disorders of children. Teaching them deep breathing exercises, thought stopping, use of affirmations for positive programming, challenging mistaken beliefs, identifying cognitive distortions in thinking and work on self esteem can help children with anxiety management. Also, In Vivo and imagery desensitization techniques also help children face their fears and phobias safely by gradual exposure to the anxiety provoking situations.
How Can Hypnosis Address Anxiety Disorders?
Hypnosis is another way of treating Anxiety Disorders. During hypnosis, the child is put to a relaxed state of mind with interesting inductions, then offered a set of suggestions to help them with effective anchors, creative visualizations, metaphors and release of anxiety strategies. The child gets individualized and custom treatment by selecting appropriate scripts and suggestions to address their specific fears.
Almost, all anxiety disorders are the byproduct of low confidence level and bruised self esteem from constant bombardment of negative and critical remarks by caregivers, peers, teachers and relatives to the child. Therefore, all my hypnotic interventions geared toward addressing Anxiety disorders, include a series of sessions on building the child’s confidence level and empowering them with effective affirmations and suggestions.
Use of Audio to address Anxiety and Negativity
In addition, children are given relevant audio files of the sessions to listen to in between sessions so that the suggestions embedded during the session get reinforced and begin to modify the child’s behavior and coping skills. Sessions such as Child Anxiety release, nervous tummy, dealing with divorce of parents, separation anxiety, confidence kite, soar like an eagle, empowerment, dial up confidence, Circle of confidence. Crystal ball confidence, personal confidence and many more, are conducted to release the anxiety and equip children with appropriate and effective coping skills to manage anxiety and fears. They listen to the audios for further improvement and attain normal functioning.
Case Example
I helped a 16 year old boy who was clinically depressed and had Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
He came to me as his mother had divorced his father and he was missing his father. His mother had seen me for weight loss then depression due to going through the infidelity of her husband.
The father moved out with his girlfriend and this impacted my client very adversely. He started feeling depressed and lost his interest in hobbies and schoolwork. He was failing grades and stopped socializing with his friends. His mother got extremely concerned about these changes and brought to me for hypnosis. He also developed symptoms of anxiety and lost his confidence in taking tests, playing sports and suffered from sleep disturbance due to overwhelming negative thoughts looming over his head prior to sleeping.
I did sessions on healing white light, coping with separation of parents, garden of life in which the client is suggested to rake the dead leaves that represent old hurts, hatred, anger, resentment and all the other negative emotions. After raking the leaves, they are given suggestions to burn the leaves and watch the smoke go up high and high then find a new patch with fertile soil and plant seeds of hope, positivity, and optimism, cover with the soil and let the sunshine help the seeds grow. Clients visualize all these scenes in a hypnotic trance and the subconscious mind gets embedded with these positive suggestions to help the clients subsequently.
I also did some sessions of Anxiety release, negativity, releasing negative thoughts with powerful imageries like a puddle and burying the negative pit of the stomach at the root of a strong tree and cover it with bricks and stone etc. These visualizations helped him let go of his worry thoughts. Some sessions on test anxiety and insomnia were conducted to help him resume normal sleep so he is not exhausted during the daytime and can function better after getting a restful sleep.
In six sessions, my client began to feel happier, started to concentrate on his homework and accepted that his father had left home. He was also given a set of suggestions on releasing negative thoughts with effective guided imageries, hypnotic anchors, and a variety of visualizations.
Work on Self Esteem as a Holistic Approach
Following the sessions on Depression and Anxiety, I began to build up his confidence and worked on his self esteem so that he resumes his former glory and begins to cope with his life challenges. All the sessions of confidence mentioned earlier were conducted and my client showed a dramatic improvement in his confidence level. He started to get A grades again and this built up his level of confidence. He started to socialize with his friends and made plans on the weekends to spend time with them and had a great time.
His mother was so pleased to see these changes in her son and she thanked me for all the work that was done with the help of hypnosis. She referred her stepdaughters to me for their treatment of depression and Anxiety.
In this way, we see that hypnosis is a very safe and effective tool to eliminate depression and anxiety in children. It is perfectly safe and works more efficiently than just talk therapy.
If your child is showing symptoms of Anxiety, Phobia. Depression or has a habit disorder like nail biting, hair pulling, skin picking, fear of vomiting, symptoms of OCD, stuttering, School Phobia or low self esteem, it is not too late to contact Rekha Shrivastava at Blossom Hypnosis, 585-281-2988. I take great pride in helping my clients and offer quality, customized service to address these issues, as evidenced by the testimonials available on my website. I look forward to hearing from you.
Contact Blossom Hypnosis to get a free consultation. I offer sessions via Skype, FaceTime, Zoom and Google Meet for clients not residing in Rochester, NY. Due to COVID-19, I am currently seeing clients online only.
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