Sometimes You Just Have To Listen

As we have been working with some of the techniques that Sunshine’s Psychologist suggested to us to try (you can rediscover some of these here) we began to realize that many of his ideas just seemed to spin Sunshine from one panic attack to the next until she got to the point she was giving up and not even trying. I can’t say I blame her since everything just seemed to be so based on her behaviors and truly not addressing her anxieties. One thing I have to say is that Sunshine is a well behaved child so long as her anxiety level is low or she stays calm. We finally just backed off quite a bit from what he wanted us to do and began to ask Sunshine what she felt would help her.

Last night as I was tucking her in bed she told me that she wanted to make an anxiety chart. I asked her what she imagined this chart to look like. She explained it to me by saying, “So many times my anxieties run at 130, at church they are mostly at 110, but I need them to be empty or at 0.” The thought that came to my mind was a thermometer. I promised her that we would put something together. This morning we set out to do just that. (I hope to get some pictures of our chart for you soon, but wouldn’t you know it my camera batteries are dead.)

To make this chart have more meaning I created a journal for Sunshine to write the information she was gathering from her chart. This has proven to be very interesting. She woke up too early this morning and was very crabby, I asked her what she would rate her anxiety level at. She answered with a 40. I drew a small thermometer on the page and we marked it with a value of 40. Then she had to answer several questions: 1. Why do you feel your anxieties are at a 40? 2. What might bring your anxieties down? 3. How do you feel with your anxieties at this level, happy, sad, mad, or anxious? 4. How is this affecting your behaviors? After all the questions were answered and the data entered into her journal we were ready to move on to taking action to improve her overall anxiety level. Since she decided her anxieties were up due to lack of sleep, she chose to take a short nap or rest to bring her anxiety level down. We did just that took a short rest. When we got up we again made a new journal entry with all the same steps above. At one point she got in trouble, so I made her enter this data in her journal. We then ended our day by re-examining where she was on her chart before bed, as well as looking back over the day. At the bottom of the page I wrote two sentences describing her BEST moments or accomplishments of the day.

I know this is kind of hard to follow as I try to explain it without pictures. I will be doing another post down the road here complete with pictures as to our progress. I truly believe sometimes the answers lay inside our child, they know how they want to feel, as well as have great ideas to make this happen, but sometimes we just need to stop and listen and allow them to express themselves. I truly believe that Sunshine learned a lot about her own anxieties today, and she definitely took away a sense of empowerment over them or ownership to some of the reasons they maybe occurring, and an understanding that she does have the power to do something about them.