When You Can No Longer Reason With Anxiety

Anxiety can actually paralyze my son. He can get himself so worked up and sick over situations that he cannot function. His anxiety is usually brought upon from new situation and things. Most of the time I can reason with him and help him work through his anxiety. We will do these things to help ease his fears:

·        Read social stories

·        Watch a video about the thing/ place/event

·        Look at pictures of the thing/ place/ event

·        Make a craft about the place/event

·        Talk positively about the thing/ place/event

·        Do a walkthrough/ trial run before the place has many people or before the event

·        Allow him to have a warm-up time where he just can sit back and observe until he feels comfortable

All of these things help get him more familiar with the new thing, place, or event. It usually helps ease the anxiety of the unknown. However, there are sometimes that I cannot reason with his anxiety. Nothing I can say or do will help his fear at this point. Actually, continuing to talk about it makes the fear worse.

I was talking to his therapist about this last week. Her advice was when he reaches this point, I just need to stop. She said to no longer talk about it or do anything else to prepare him. I just need to step aside, and let it happen, so he can try to work through it.

As a parent, this is super hard. I hate seeing my child extremely upset. But, he is going to need to learn how to face his fears. Currently, he is very scared about going to Kindergarten Registration at “the big school”. I have stopped talking to him about it because all talking does is bring him to tears. All I can do now is pray that God takes away his anxiety over this situation and replaces it with HIS peace.