Below are some ideas UMCR Night Team A has utilized when engaging community service recipients. These ideas can be modified to assist kids, teens and adults with a little modification and imagination.
When people are anxious ask them what worries them. For example, I'm worried that I'll get a bad grade” and then we recommend you do the following:
We can help them feel the anxiety more acutely, scale it, and then have them do deep breathing after which we scale it again.
"Wow! You can control that anxiety."
We can ask what advice they'd give a friend if the friend had the same anxiety problem. Ask the person to imagine that he/she is on a radio call-in show where the listeners are calling in for advice on what to do with their anxiety. You could ask the client to imagine that their anxiety was sitting in another chair in the office. What would you want to say to your anxiety? Have the client sit in a hot seat and play with both him and the anxiety. Have the child make up a story about what happened to the Anxiety Monster that made him/her/it become a monster.
Of course, there's always the unhelpful thinking intervention. And you might explore with the client how and when their anxiety helps them. Do they get extra attention due to it? Do they get to avoid things that they don't want to do? Where do they feel it? Can they make it feel even tenser and then just release it? What's the problem that they worry about? Teach them problem-solving and have them work out a plan/solution to deal with the problem.
We can't forget Exposure combined with Scaling and Relaxation techniques!
Have the person write or tell you a story where the worry comes true. What do they do next? How do they handle it? How do they feel now that the worry has come true? Who do they blame for the worry coming true? Can they rewrite the story where they are a hero and do battle with the worry and can they win that battle? What do they do or what would they have to do to win?
Discuss the benefits of staying strong even when bad things happen. Bad things do happen to good people. Do we give up and feel sorry for ourselves? What might we learn from adversity?
I hope you can find applications for these ideas and find them useful. Below is a real-life example where some of these techniques were used.
Client X has impaired his daily life functioning in school (he refuses to go), impaired social bonding/support (from his dad; has no friends, isolated from acquaintances); impaired functioning in the domain of vocational interest, resulting in client's perennial depression/anxiety that compromises his success(es).
We engaged the group in a collaborative session that introduced them to brainstorming ways to use coaching to help their children build persistence in completing chores at home as well as class work. The therapist and assistant also used vignettes to help the parents understand how social coaching is used to encourage social skills such as being respectful, waiting, asking, and taking turns across all settings. The therapist used role-playing to reinforce the parent's tools and increase their awareness of using polite language and regulating their affect to be successful in using these tools.
Thanks for letting me share!
