When the pandemic first hit, I remember speaking to a friend whose child, undiagnosed with any neurodivergence, had been behaving very differently to normal. After an initial ‘settling in period’, her son appeared happier, less anxious, less likely to have behavioural outbursts… he was just better all round. However, when the post-pandemic return came, the ground underneath them shifted. On his arrival at school, he had a tummy ache, felt sick and kept asking questions that he knew the answers to. It was clear that the change had provoked a significant amount of concern for him, and as weeks went by, his symptoms only seemed to worsen.
Dubbed the ‘new pandemic’ by some sources, childhood anxiety is tearing through our schools as a place that was normally safe suddenly felt cold, clinical, and unsafe. In addition, children have thrived when some of the demands of the classroom were removed. Working quietly at home has been a gamechanger for children who find the busy environment a distraction. And so here we are, 18 months on, battling the unforeseen plague – childhood anxiety.
Dr Sian Peer, therapist with Marisa Peer (founder and creator of RTT, Rapid Transformational Therapy), spoke with Radio Stoke about anxiety. She highlighted above all else that there is a profound difference firstly between feeling anxious and suffering from anxiety.
Feeling anxious is a temporary feeling of anticipation and unease around that. Anxiety, however, is a bigger problem. Anxiety does not just ‘ease up’. Currently, because of COVID, spaces look different to what they did previously, and it has created a culture of fear. When someone feels anxious, and then enters an environment where fear is present, the anxious feeling escalates. If we then continue to go to this space with the anxious feeling, the anxiety becomes a learned behaviour.
Fortunately, through the power of RTT, there are some brain hacks that we can implement to get powerful, quick results. As a Rapid Transformational Therapy practitioner, I have seen first hand some of the amazing results produced by the methods we deploy.
In the ‘I Can’t to I Can’ 5 day challenge, an RTT programme specifically designed for children in primary schools, children will explore 5 steps which will help them to emerge from the cocoon of anxiety. Diving into the theory behind the thought processes in a way a child can understand, children will explore how their minds work, and learn techniques to help them rapidly transform their negative thought loops into positivity.
Marisa and the gang have compiled an information pack for primary schools to engage them, with the hope that a programme such as this, which can be delivered through PSHEE sessions or similar, can reduce the levels of anxiety that are felt across the many children in the UK who have been impacted by the pandemic. Techniques such as this, I feel, have the power to reduce the shockwaves of the ‘hidden pandemic’ and improve the outcomes of our precious young minds.