4. Help for Your Body

Let’s pretend again that you’re sitting in my counseling office. I’m in my cozy counseling chair, and you’re on the couch, with Lucy sitting next to you. Actually, she’s not sitting. She’s waving. Have I told you that Lucy waves? It’s her best trick—she holds up her little paws and waves on command. And not on command too. If we were in my office, she’d be waving at you right now, trying to get you to pet her or get me to get up and give her a treat. She does that at the beginning of every counseling session, which can sometimes be more than a little distracting. Okay—back to our session. I’m in my chair. Lucy has calmed down and is cuddled up right beside you.

I want you to tell me more about the last time you got anxious. Picture the scene. Think about what was happening around you. Where were you? Who was with you? Was there any conversation taking place? What did you hear? What did you see? Now think about what was happening inside of you. When do you remember the anxiety taking over? What did it feel like in your body? What did it do to your emotions? What did you do next? How did you work through it? I want you to write the answers to those questions below, just as you would if you were talking in my office with Lucy and me.

  

  

The more we learn about the Worry Whisperer’s ways, the easier it is to fight him. In this section of the book, we’re not only going to break down his ways, but also what you can do to help. We’ll talk about the Worry Whisperer’s best tricks and your best tools to use in the fight.

We’ve already established several things about the Worry Whisperer:

Part of his sneakiness is that he’s going to try to come after you on several fronts. We traditionally think of anxiety as an emotion, but it’s very much of a physical thing happening inside of our brains and bodies too. It’s part of what makes it so confusing and hard to tell that it’s truly the Worry Whisperer. He comes after us before we even recognize that it’s him.

The Worry Whisperer’s Tricks for Your Body

A False Alarm in Your Brain

I want you to hang in there with me, because we’re going to have a little science lesson for a minute. Consider this Anxiety Brain 101.

When you and I are sitting here in my office (we’re still pretending), we both have blood flowing throughout our brains, including to an area called the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is what helps us do a lot of important things, such as think rationally and manage our emotions. Next, I want you to imagine something that frightens you. Say someone interrupts our quiet conversation, banging on the door and screaming. The blood flow in your brain would change immediately. The blood vessels would constrict, shifting the blood away from the prefrontal cortex and to the amygdalae. The amygdalae are two tiny almond-shaped regions toward the back of each side of your brain. The amygdalae work as a unit, so for our purposes, we will refer to them as one—the amygdala. But it’s good to know that there are two, doing double duty together to store and interpret emotion. The amygdala has several purposes. It is connected to anger, aggression, fear, and even bonding with someone you love. The amygdala doesn’t think or reason. It reacts. In fact, it reacts before your prefrontal cortex even has time to think, and it is the perfect playground for the Worry Whisperer.

If someone did that, interrupted our time and started banging and screaming, what would you do? Jump up and run across the room? Scream yourself? I’m sure that Lucy and I would both jump toward the door to try to protect you, although I’m not sure either of us is very scary. But there it is again. Fight or flight. Freeze too. The amygdala is the part of your brain that reacts immediately (within a fraction of a second) with a fight, flight, or freeze response.

God designed you that way. Rather than something being wrong, it’s a survival instinct. In fact, you have this amazing sympathetic nervous system that comes online when your amygdala is activated. When it does, several things happen:

You truly are fearfully and wonderfully made. God designed your body to respond to threats and keep you safe. In less than a second, He is using the amygdala to get your body ready to run faster, fight harder, and even see the enemy better.

The problem is that the amygdala is notorious for false alarms. The amygdala attaches emotional significance to situations and forms emotional memories. A psychologist named Catherine Pittman says it’s like adding a Post-it Note to a memory.1 Have you ever had a reaction to something that wasn’t truly a threat? I think I have a very overactive amygdala, which means I have a high startle response. I scream way too easily. I embarrass myself lots. In fact, I often round the corner quickly at Daystar and scream when I see a co-worker. Of course, the co-worker is not a threat. Somehow, though, my amygdala has attached a Post-it that says when someone comes up on me quickly, it’s dangerous. My amygdala is wrong. Yours is, at times, too.

Write about a time when your amygdala sent you a false alarm.

  

  

Amygdalae are helpful in dangerous situations, but they’re not to be trusted. In chapter 6, we’re going to talk about the only proven way to retrain the amygdala. For now, though, we just want to calm it down. We can’t train it if we can’t calm it down. Unless that calming happens, our bodies soon join the chaotic chorus of the amygdala, and then we (or our bodies) are really in trouble.

A False Alarm in Your Body

In this section of the little girls’ book, there is a cute outline of a girl in a superhero cape. I tell the girls to draw a picture of where they first feel anxiety in their bodies on that little superhero. In fact, it’s one of the first questions I ask girls of all ages who worry when I meet them.

I have little girls who tell me their tummies start to hurt. Some tell me their hands get clammy. Others tell me their chests get kind of tight. One girl told me she felt it first in her bow. Not sure on that one, but it sounded awfully cute. Most girls your age talk about having stomachaches or headaches. Some have talked about feeling light-headed and having trouble breathing. One girl even told me that her math problems would kind of swim in front of her when she got anxious during a math test.

What about you? If you had to draw in your outline of a superhero (which is you, by the way), where would you first draw the anxiety? Why don’t you draw yourself in a superhero outfit here and write in where you feel anxiety and what it feels like?

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It’s important to pay attention to how anxiety affects your body. The amygdala doesn’t communicate in words but in the physical sensations it creates. The bummer is that the amygdala really can cause you to feel sick. The headaches and stomachaches are real, even though your doctor may have told you that there is no medical basis. And now not only are you having headaches or stomachaches, but you feel panicked about getting panicked because of how bad it makes you feel. The great news is that we can make it stop. We can’t necessarily make the anxiety-provoking situations stop; those are just part of living in a fallen world, a world this side of heaven. But we can quiet the false alarms that anxiety causes. We can stop the anxiety-provoking situation from having so much power in your brain and body. The earlier we can stop the process, the easier it will be to fight the Worry Whisperer on all fronts. Because, as you know, the longer the alarm sounds, the farther its reach. And pretty soon, it’s not just our brains and our bodies reacting, but it’s our emotions too.

An Emotional Siren

Alarms are loud. They don’t go off without wreaking some degree of havoc. Your amygdala is just the same, and it likely has been since you were little. I meet with lots of parents of anxious little girls. The two things these parents say to me the most are these:

  1. She is SO emotional. Most often angry, but there are tears too. Definitely tears.
  2. When she gets that emotional, there is no way I can talk her out of it.

Maybe you remember. Your mom would tell you that it was time for bed when you thought you had thirty more minutes. You would try to convince her that you needed more time and suddenly find yourself on the floor, screaming. Or she would brush your hair for dance, and she just could NOT get those bumps out of your ponytail and it made you mad. Your parents were right—once you were upset, there was no talking you out of it. At that point, your alarm was going off with a lot of emotion and likely a lot of noise. Do you remember? Your homework right now is to go ask your mom or dad if they remember you having meltdowns when you were little. What would cause them and how did you behave during a meltdown?

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What about now? When do you get the most emotional? Is it because of something you don’t expect or can’t control?

Anxiety loves control and hates unpredictability. Your amygdala kicks into high gear when your parents tell you to do something right away, when you thought you had more time. Or the plans change when you weren’t expecting them to. Maybe you still hate change or surprises. I see girls who don’t even like Christmas or birthday gifts, because the gifts don’t end up being what they expected. It’s not that they’re spoiled or don’t like the gifts they received. They just had one thing in their minds, and it ended up being something different. Unpredictability.

As a little girl, when those things happened, you likely had a meltdown. As an older girl, you likely get disappointed and cry in your room, or your anger quietly builds. Quietly, that is, until . . .

Our brains react. Our bodies jump on board. And our emotions quickly fall in line. When you were little, they fell in line loudly. Your emotions were more explosive in nature because you didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes you still explode, mostly at your mom or dad or a younger sibling, and you feel terrible about it afterward. But I would guess that these days, you’re more likely to implode than explode. You may get angry, but you’re silently yelling at the person in your own mind. Or maybe you’re not yelling, but you’re being critical. Or maybe you only feel comfortable saying critical words about yourself. The emotion is still there—it’s just directed inward, rather than outward. And that kind of emotion, anger especially, is destructive when it’s directed at anyone, including you. I once heard someone say that anxiety is anger turned inward. I think panic attacks can often be described that way too. They have to do with pressure we feel to some degree, but I think they’re also related to the anger we feel toward ourselves when that pressure is mounting.

The problem is that, whether the issue is little or big, whether you’re exploding or imploding, the amygdala isn’t reasonable. Your parents couldn’t have talked you out of your anxiety when you were little. And you can’t talk yourself out of it now—at least, not without the right tools. The false alarms really are just too much. And it feels like there is nothing that you or anyone else can do to fix it.

That’s another one of the Worry Whisperer’s lies.

If you could change anything about those times, what would you change?

  

  

We are going to get there. First, though, we need to understand a little more about the long-term impacts of a faulty alarm. With time, a faulty alarm just gets more faulty. The amygdala gets less trustworthy, and the longer that alarm goes unchecked, the harder it is to reset.

A Faulty Alarm

Do you know what the most common cause is for the false alarm? Worry. The Worry Whisperer, in other words. And chronic worry not only makes the alarm more likely to go off, but harder to turn off as well. It causes the amygdala to enlarge and develop what’s called a hair-trigger response. Robert Sapolsky, a stress expert and professor at Stanford University, says, “Chronic stress creates a hyper-reactive, hysterical amygdala.”2 Uh-oh.

Would you consider yourself a chronic worrier?

Here’s what happens, according to two psychologists:

The actual physical architecture of the brain adapts to new information, reorganizing itself and creating new neural pathways based on what a person sees, hears, touches, thinks about, practices, and so on. . . . Where attention goes, neurons fire. And where neurons fire, they wire, or join together.3

In normal person’s language, what that means is this: Your brain creates well-worn paths, just like the path between your house and your best friend’s. You learn those paths by heart. You don’t think about whether to turn right or left when you come to this street or that. You just know the way. Your brain learns certain ways by wiring neurons together and creating well-worn neural pathways. When we practice worry, even inadvertently, we wire those worry neurons together. When we practice bravery, which we’ll talk about more in chapter 6, we wire those neurons together and create new neural pathways. We also retrain our hysterical, hyperreactive amygdalae. Isn’t that great news?! We’ll come back to exactly how to do that soon. But it really is important for you to know that worry has an impact. And chronic stress or worry has an even worse impact.

Here’s something especially important for you to know: “Animal studies have found that after a prolonged period of stress, the adult brain will tend to bounce back within ten days, while the adolescent brain takes about three weeks,”4 according to authors William Stixrud and Ned Johnson. Your brain feels the residual effects of stress and worry. It’s got enough on its plate already in these years with all of the learning and growing it’s doing. We don’t want to add to the stress. We want to practice using the tools instead. You can do this. You ready?

Brave Tools for Your Body

Before we get into the specific tools to fight the Worry Whisperer in your body, I want to remind you of two foundational tools: UNDERSTANDING and DETERMINATION.

Again, I wish we were sitting together. If we were, I hope you would have had a few “aha moments” so far. That you would have said things like “Oh . . . that’s what was going on when I was so afraid of throwing up” or “I had no idea that my anger really had to do with worry.” Or even “Now I understand why I would get so upset when I was little.” I hope that this understanding helps you feel more understood yourself. I also hope it brings you a sense of relief—and of grace. The amygdala has been hijacking your brain for quite some time. The Worry Whisperer’s tricks have been working. It’s time for it to stop, which is where that determination kicks in.

Have your parents ever called you stubborn? I hope so. You’re going to need that stubbornness now. You’re going to have to be determined in this fight, even when it feels like it’s not working. Even when it feels like you fall right back into the Worry Whisperer’s ways. He’s not going to win. But your brain has created well-worn paths. Creating new ones takes a little time, a lot of determination, and the right tools.

Know Your Triggers

When do you get most anxious? I want you to think back on ten times you’ve gotten anxious in the past few months, or even years. List those here, and then list beside them any themes, such as change or unpredictability. Also notice if they happen in similar situations or locations.

  

  

The more we can anticipate anxiety, the earlier we can start the fight. So let’s start with paying attention to the where of worry. Then we’ll move to the how.

Listen to Your Body

Go back to the drawing you did before. Where do you first feel the worry in your body? That knowledge is one of your most important tools in the fight. The amygdala takes over within less than a second, as you know, but those milliseconds are crucial. The longer we give the Worry Whisperer power, the stronger he becomes. Sooner is stronger for you. You want to start fighting him when you first feel his attempts to take over. Sooner is stronger. Where does he start with you?

Breathe

The first thing I want you to do when you feel him coming after your body in the place you named above is to BREATHE. I know, you’re already doing it. But he’s telling you to do it faster when he takes over, which will only make things worse. I want you to SLOW DOWN. In fact, there’s a specific way I want you to breathe, and we’re going to practice together now.

Put your hand on your leg and draw a square with your finger. As you slowly draw the first side of the square, breathe in. As you draw the next side, breathe out. Keep doing this until your square is complete. Research says that it takes six seconds for the chemicals being released in your brain by the amygdala to dissolve.5 That’s about one and a half squares. I would make it a four-square rule, though. It will give your brain time to reset (and it’s easier to remember because, you know, foursquare).

Let me go ahead and say that I used to think all of the deep-breathing hype was kind of silly. That is, until I really tried it. I sometimes speak in front of several thousand people at once, and I still get pretty nervous. I will often stand over to the side and do square breathing before I go on stage. Or I’ll do it when I’m having a conversation with someone and start to feel frustrated. It really does help—with worry and with anger too. Here’s why:

Breathing is actually nourishment for your body. There are several cool things that happen when you take deep breaths. One is that the blood vessels in your brain dilate again, which enables your blood to flow back to your prefrontal cortex. In other words, you can now think clearly and manage your emotions. Also, breathing from your belly in particular kicks off this amazing series of events. Do you remember the game Mousetrap? It’s a little like that.

You breathe deeply from your belly. Your lungs expand and press on your diaphragm wall. The diaphragm pushes your abdomen out and also pushes on your back, putting pressure on your spine. The pressure on the spine puts pressure on something called the vagus nerve, which happens to be the longest cranial nerve. It reaches all the way to your brain. This pressure quiets the vagus nerve and turns on the relaxation system of the body. In other words, it lowers your blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate. It also removes something called lactate from your blood (which increases feelings of anxiety), and it increases alpha brain waves, which are related to a sense of calm alertness. It even releases serotonin, which is connected to feelings of enjoyment, contentment, and impulse control.6 And there you have it. Mousetrap that brings you back to a place of calm and being able to regulate your emotions . . . all from a few square belly breaths.

Grounding Games

It starts with breathing. Any time your brain is stuck in the worry loop, I want you to start with breathing. Basically, breathing is the most important tool in your toolbox, because, as you can tell, none of the other tools will work until your brain can reset. It’s not capable of logical thought until then.

So you’ve reset your brain with square breathing. Now we need to get you out of the loop. One of my favorite CBT techniques is called grounding. There are several of what I refer to as “grounding games” that I use in my office with girls.

You may have noticed that worry lives in the past or future, not the present. The thing that’s looping in your brain is usually either something that happened that you keep rehashing in your mind OR it’s something coming up that you keep playing out because you feel anxious. Worry doesn’t live in the present—which is exactly where you need to be. Grounding games do just what the name implies. When you’re anxious, it’s like you’re free-floating over your body in some other time frame, and these games grab you by the ankles and pull you right back to the present.

My favorite grounding game is called 5-4-3-2-1. Let’s play it now. In this game, you’re going to use all of your senses:

What are five things you see right now?

What are four things you hear right now?

What are three things you feel right now?

What are two things you smell right now?

What is one thing you taste right now?

As you answered those questions, your focus was re-centered on the present. The senses do that for you. It’s part of why I like square breathing as a way to deep breathe. The sensation of drawing a square on your leg is grounding in itself. Plus, you can do it sitting at your desk at school—or over to the side of a stage before you walk on—and no one will notice.

Other grounding techniques include colors and words:

Name everything you see that’s the color blue.

Name every word you can think of that starts with the letter R.

Or you can do math:

Count backward from a hundred by sevens. (I know that’s hard. You can do it.)

Do as many times tables as you can remember.

You can also run cold water over your hands, which is a great one at home or even at school. Talk with your parents about asking your school to let you leave class briefly to go to the bathroom for the cold-water-hands trick when you are anxious. Grounding games re-center you by requiring focus. Focus pulls you out of the loop of your anxious thoughts and back to the present.

Mindfulness and Memorizing Scripture

Another word you’ve likely heard in the past few years is mindfulness. Mindfulness is similar to grounding, but while grounding techniques pull us out of the loop and bring us into the present moment, mindfulness is more about paying attention to the moment without judgment. Grounding techniques are great to practice when you’re looping and anxious. Mindfulness is helpful at any point. In fact, there are some great apps out there to help you practice mindfulness. Two of my favorites are Calm and Headspace. (Some of the apps out there, however, can get a little funky when it comes to faith, so if you’d like to try one, maybe check it out with the help of an adult you trust, such as a parent, counselor, or youth group leader.) Even simple belly breathing is a form of mindfulness. Mindfulness involves focusing on what’s around you, what’s happening inside of you, even a word or phrase.

I think one of the best mindfulness exercises we can do is to memorize Scripture. In fact, it’s another thing I would have you do pretty soon after starting counseling. Actually, why don’t you stop reading and start now? Find a verse you love about worry. You pick. I want it to be something that brings you peace and comfort. Write your verse here.

  

  

Now I want you to memorize that verse. You can practice mindfulness by saying the verse over and over and over any time. Focus on the first word, then the second, and just pay attention to where your thoughts go as you’re doing it. Don’t judge your thoughts—the Worry Whisperer would love to get you offtrack in that way. If you get distracted when you’re practicing mindfulness, that’s okay. Don’t get mad at yourself. With mindfulness, you’re supposed to let thoughts pass by like waves on a beach. You can even picture them that way in your mind. So say your verse to yourself over and over—when you’re worried and when you’re not.

I just sat here for a minute and practiced mine. I picked Philippians 4:6–8 (ESV):

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers [and sisters], whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

God’s Word changes us. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. It does not return void, meaning it always comes back bringing something with it. Just from my few minutes of reading that verse and meditating on it, I noticed something I haven’t ever noticed before. “Peace . . . will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” God’s peace guarding your heart is exactly what I want for you—and for me—as we fight the Worry Whisperer. I also saw another version that said, “Meditate on these things”7 rather than “think about these things” at the end of the passage.

God’s Word tells us to meditate. To meditate on Scripture is, in fact, scriptural. It strengthens our faith and our brains. Just eight weeks of practicing mindfulness, according to research, not only decreases amygdala activity but actually makes the amygdala smaller.8 How cool is that? Memorizing and meditating on Scripture changes our hearts and our brains. It brings peace in the moment and strengthens our faith for the future. But there is one more thing you might have to do before you get to that peace.

Move

There are times when breathing just won’t work. Neither will mindfulness or playing grounding games. You can’t focus on a verse, let alone memorize it. Your anxiety has made you antsy and agitated. No thoughts going by like waves on a beach. They feel more like a frog dodging traffic. In those moments, it’s time to move!

Just twenty to thirty minutes of exercise a day has been proven to reduce anxiety,9 which is amazing in itself, but movement also resets the brain, much like breathing. So when you can’t breathe slowly or do some of the more thoughtful practices, get outside. Go for a walk. Jump on a trampoline. Run. You may need to release some of that energy before you’re able to do the activities that will get you out of the loop. In fact, you can do them at the same time. Walking and belly breathing, for example. You could take a mindful walk (or run), where you pay special attention to all of the sights, sounds, and smells around you. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried yoga, but it involves movement, breathing, and mindfulness. Moving will also give you something else that might be important in your anxious agitation:

Space

If I were meeting with you for counseling, I’d also be meeting with your parents. One of the things we’d talk about is what they can do once your amygdala becomes activated. Honestly, it has more to do with giving you space than anything.

Let’s say you and your parents got into an argument last night that made you anxious. Maybe they told you that you weren’t going to get to attend a concert you’ve been looking forward to, because you had to go visit your Great-Aunt Ethel. You cried a few tears. Your volume got louder. Their volume got louder. Then it was hard to breathe. The Worry Whisperer had taken over by way of your amygdala. And their amygdalae jumped right into the mix.

It’s time for space. In fact, what I would do with you all in counseling is come up with a code word. When either one of you said that code word, it would mean that you take a break. Each of you would go to your own room, or to a certain space to calm down. Maybe it’s your room. Maybe you go for a run. But you each go somewhere you’re able to process your emotions and calm your amygdala. Because basically, once your amygdala starts talking to their amygdalae, nothing good happens. Two amygdalae never have productive conversations. They don’t use words, only reactions, remember? It becomes like a tennis match—you react, and then they react. Back and forth and back and forth until the problem is bigger than it was when it started, and you’re likely grounded (and I’m not talking about grounding games).

Talk with your family about a code word and about the concept of space. Tell them I recommended it. Then I want you to come up with something that I wish every girl your age had hanging up in their room or in the notes on their phone.

Coping Skills

I want you to think, for a moment, about emotions on a 1 to 10 scale. When was the last time you went to a 10?

  

  

What helped you calm back down?

  

  

Whatever it was is actually a coping skill for you. One of the best things we counselors ever do is help you realize what coping skills work best for you. My guess is that you already know what they are. I want you to list twenty of your favorite coping skills here. They can be coping skills that are productive, or not so much. Include a few of both. Maybe don’t include scrolling through social media or eating or things that can sometimes end up hurting more than they help, or even get us into an addictive situation. But what makes a difference for you when you’re at a 10—whether it’s a worried 10, a sad 10, an angry 10, or any other kind of 10?

  

  

Sleep

Yes, I said it. And you need it. You need it even in the midst of final exams. You might especially need it after a sleepover. Sleep deprivation increases activity in the amygdala. In other words, the Worry Whisperer is a lot louder when you haven’t gotten enough sleep. I’ve noticed that sleep makes me feel better physically and emotionally. Getting a good night’s sleep is sometimes the only thing that gets me out of a funk. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, sleep “recharges your brain and improves your focus, concentration, and mood.”10

Studies say that you need between nine and nine and a half hours of sleep per night in your teenage years. Do you know how much studies say that you get? Between seven and seven and a quarter hours.11 That’s not enough. What would you say you average? Research also says—you know what I’m about to say—you need to get off screens at least an hour before you go to bed. Sorry, but it’s one of those things that really is backed by research. When you keep looking at your screen, the light keeps your brain from producing the melatonin that tells your body it’s time to go to sleep. So you have a harder time falling asleep and are often more restless once you get there. “Sleep is brain hygiene,” says Dan Siegel, a psychologist I really respect.12 He says that when we don’t get enough sleep, “the glial cells that are crucial for cleaning up the neurotoxins that build up in our brains . . . can’t do their jobs.”13 The toxins just stay. Inadequate sleep also

I don’t know about you, but those things make me want to get more sleep.

Dan Siegel, along with a guy named David Rock, have another idea that I think is really important for us both. They call it a healthy mind platter. It’s a little like the food groups you learned about in science, but it’s for your mind. David Rock says these are the “seven daily essential mental activities for optimum mental health.”14 I would also say they’re seven activities that help keep the Worry Whisperer quieted down. They’re what we could call preventative practices in this war against worry. I wrote about them in the book for your parents (if your family routine changed after they read that book, now you know why).

Here’s what was in their book:

Focus time is time that your daughter spends focusing on specific tasks, which challenge and give her brain opportunities to make connections. Schoolwork would be a primary place for her to have focus time. Learning or practicing a skill is also focus time.

Play time . . . strengthens her problem-solving and cognitive abilities, at the same time decreasing stress. In play, she uses her executive functioning skills in planning the play, and she uses a whole host of other skills, such as adaptability and intentionality, in executing it. It also teaches her to handle frustration and creates more flexibility. . . . So play not only lowers her stress in the short-term but teaches her skills to prevent stress in the long-term.

Connecting time is time for your daughter to relate to others and the world around her. Relationships strengthen the connections in her brain and help her discover more of who she is. Connecting time can be with family, friends, pets, or nature. All are important to her growing body and mind. . . .

Physical time is a significant deterrent and antidote to anxiety. Exercise releases endorphins, which are neurotransmitters produced in the brain that reduce pain. Exercise also increases the serotonin in her brain, which is often known as the “happy chemical.” Over thirty minutes of exercise yields the greatest results. . . .

Time in is basically time for your daughter to reflect. This time can include mindfulness but cannot include screens. It’s where she has space for the creative and reflective thoughts that kids need to de-stress and to grow. Having quiet time, reading, writing, and creating through art are all examples of time in.

Down time is non-focused time. It’s the deliberate doing nothing and “being bored” that . . . is a rite of passage for kids. Down time is an important part of children learning to entertain and problem-solve for themselves. It’s also often the first to go in a busy schedule. . . . This time is lying in bed before sleep, relaxing in the bath, sitting on a swing in the yard. Down time recharges the brain’s batteries and helps it “store information in more permanent locations, gain perspective, process complicated ideas . . .” according to Stixrud and Johnson.

Sleep time is needed for optimal brain growth. Anxiety is worsened by frequent sleep deprivation. The authors of The Yes Brain explain, “Adequate sleep is necessary to allow the inevitable toxins of the daytime’s neural firing to be cleaned up so we can start the day with a fresh, cleaned-up brain!”15

Now let’s go back to my office. I want us to create a pseudo report card for your healthy mind platter. Here’s what I want you to do: Write the type of time in the first column and the hours you think you spend each week doing them in the second.

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Next, I want you to go back and give yourself a letter grade on each type of time. How’s it going? Mine is honestly not so great. I’m more of a focus and less of a physical kind of a girl. I literally felt so convicted writing about this that I just got up and walked Lucy for thirty minutes. I also needed to reset my brain because I was getting anxious about my writing deadline and how much I have left. It helped. I came back fresh. All of us could improve in these areas, but they’re good goals. And they’re preventative. We want to continue to think about preventative practices we can use against the Worry Whisperer.

Really, we want three types of practices: preventative, immediate, and lasting. We covered the preventative and immediate practices in this chapter. You know what to do preventively to keep your amygdala and body in a healthy place so that the Worry Whisperer has less opportunity.

Name three of those things here:

  

  

You know what to do in the immediate to stop the false alarms in your brain, body, and emotions so that the Worry Whisperer has less impact.

Name three of those things here:

  

  

Now let’s talk about change. It’s about more than just prevention or help in the moment. It’s about learning to think differently. It’s about being freed up from the thoughts that can so easily consume our minds and our hearts and keep us from being who we want to be. It’s about lasting change. And that change is coming. Keep reading.

What are five things you’ve learned in this chapter you want to remember?

  

  

What are five things you would tell a friend?

  

  

A Few Brave Things
to Remember