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Teen Anxiety Relief That Works: How One Journal Helped My Pre-Teen Cope with Big Feelings
The Day That Felt Too Much: From the Teen Anxiety Workbook. Have you had one of those days yet? The kind where your pre-teen climbs into the car after school, quiet, eyes watery—or worse, bursts into tears and won’t tell you why? I remember the first time it happened with my daughter. She had just started middle school. A new schedule, harder homework, a bigger building with kids who suddenly cared a lot about clothes and followers on social media. It was overwhelming—and I could see her shutting down. I did what so many of us do. I said, “It’s going to be okay.”I tried, “Everyone feels this way sometimes.”I…
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Inside the Kids Anxiety Journal: Tools That Help Children Feel Safe and Seen.
Anxiety in kids often has two very different faces—depending on who’s looking. For us, the parents whose children live under its weight every day, anxiety is personal. It’s not just a label—it’s a constant, exhausting reality. It’s the “big grey cloud” that quietly follows your child everywhere and sometimes looms over the whole family. It shows up in morning meltdowns, bedtime battles, and the heartbreak of watching your child shrink away from things that once brought them joy. But from the perspective of social caregivers—teachers, coaches, school aides—anxiety might look more like behavior problems: trouble making friends, shutting down in class, acting out, or not following directions. To them, it…
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How to Calm Down From Anger or Other Big Emotions: Emotion Regulation for Kiddos with Anxiety (7–8-year-olds).
My daughter has anxiety. While we have been on a journey of overcoming selective mutism (which is rooted in anxiety), I learned about and experimented with many calm down from anger techniques. Before I even started to understand how essential it was for my child to learn to calm down from anger, the house was like a battlefield, day after day. Her being very young, some sensory issues, academic struggles were fueling my child’s emotional rollercoaster. At school, where she was mute, my daughter would hold it together, and all the anger, frustration, and emotional aftermath from the inability to speak and socialize like other kids would trigger explosion of emotions during…
