E 241 Why Hope Is the Missing Link in Helping Kids with Anxiety

 Is your teen’s anxiety just normal stress — or something more? In this powerful episode, we unpack the science of hope and how it can be a game-changer for kids struggling with anxiety.

I’m joined by Sara Stockwell, a longtime educator, school psychologist, and mental health advocate who brings deep insight and personal experience to the conversation. We talk about:

✅ The real difference between normal anxiety and a deeper issue
✅ How to help kids who are paralyzed by fear and panic
✅ Why hope is more than wishful thinking — it’s a science-backed strategy
✅ Tools for parents, educators, and anyone who supports youth
✅ What to do if your child refuses therapy or won’t open up

Sara shares her own story of growing up with OCD and panic attacks — and how she’s now helping families and schools support kids through anxiety, trauma, and stress with practical, proven methods.

🎧 Don’t miss this heartfelt, informative, and hopeful episode.

🔗 Learn more about Sara’s work at Battelle for Kids: 
📌 Subscribe for more weekly conversations on parenting, anxiety, and emotional health 

 Struggling with anxiety in your family? If anxiety is causing tension, fights, or disconnect in your home, you don’t have to face it alone. I help parents bring more peace, confidence, and connection to their families. Let’s talk—schedule a free consultation today or email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

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Transcript

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining me today for the Teen Anxiety Maze. What is the Science of Hope? Have you ever wondered what that is actually about? I. Well, along with improving mental health, hope increases our self-esteem, and studies suggest that increasing hope can improve symptoms and daily functions, even of chronic illnesses.

So it definitely helps to promote hope in our lives. So today I have. Sarah Stockwell with me as a guest, and she has more than 20 years of experience in public education and mental health advocacy. Having served as the Director of Student Services and wellbeing, executive Director of Pupil Services and a school psychologist, she offers a unique perspective on mental health and education.

[00:01:00] As the leader of Wellbeing Labs at Battelle for Kids, Sarah specializes in curating research and facilitating professional learning on critical topics such as hope, resilience, wellbeing, and trauma responsive practices and education with the goal of fostering environments where both youth and adults can thrive.

So I am so excited to have Sarah here. I love educators and I love mental health. All the things, and you are all of those wrapped into one. So welcome. 

Sara Stockwell: Thank you so much, Cynthia, for having me today. I'm grateful to be here. Obviously this is a very critical topic for all of us and had a chance to listen to your podcast myself and was just impressed with your ability and really admirable work the people that you've had on and supporting youth and families and educators.

So thank you for having me here today. 

Cynthia: Thank you. I always say that I have dedicated my entire life to youth, and it's so true because I started teaching at [00:02:00] age 22, which is that beginning of your adult life. And I have never stopped working with youth this entire time. So it's definitely the love and I, it's so important.

And I want kids to grow up in a, in a beautiful world and environment where we're all worried about and. Taking care of those things. So tell us a little bit about what got you into this education, mental health role. 

Sara Stockwell: Yeah, so I would say it started back growing up myself. I experienced, unfortunately a lot of trauma as a child, and we moved a lot.

So really transient. I would spend sometimes only a semester at a time in school. And I missed school a lot because I had anxiety. So I remember my symptoms starting around the age of 18, or sorry, eight. I had my first panic attack and by 14 I was actually diagnosed with OCD. So I remember just feeling very kind of alone as a child, like, what's wrong with me?

I didn't really understand my symptoms and my feelings. And I thought as an adult, had I known [00:03:00] and had the strategies I probably wouldn't have at 17. You know, I started having suicidal thoughts and wondering if I could go on in living this way. And so I think learning those strategies and bringing those to schools, to young people is incredibly important and I've dedicated my life to that as well.

I also have children who have anxiety social anxiety, health anxiety. And I remember as a parent, the hardest day of my life was when I had to take my child to school and he was hanging onto my leg and crying and just begging me to stay there with him. He was having a panic attack and I had to walk away.

Mm-hmm. And it broke my heart leaving him there. So at that point, I, I started thinking about this commitment to. You know, teachers and educators and parents and all of us having the information that we need to best support our young people. And then obviously working in the schools and working with students with incredibly significant challenges, they turned to, to us, to educators for help.

And the gravity of that is not lost on me. I think we can't solve the mental health crisis in [00:04:00] schools. We know that one in six youth will experience mental health. But we can certainly as schools be partners in that. And I think we can be a source of hope and healing as educators. So that's kind of what led me to where I am today.

Cynthia: Yes, I love that so much. Well, at the beginning I talked about the Science of hope. Yeah. So that's something that you are teaching and I think you're teaching educators about how to do it, but also teaching youth about it. So tell us about that. 

Sara Stockwell: So at Batel for Kids, we actually have a series. We have series four families and communities where we provide them kind of training on what hope is, hope and resilience paired together.

And then we do coaching in between that. And then we also have a series for educators. And really, so the science of Hope, we often think of hope is something very informal. I hope you have a good day. I hope you're doing well. Mm-hmm. But there's actually 30 years of research on hope that there's about 2000 studies alongside, you know.

Positive psychology. It's neuroscience, educational [00:05:00] psychology, and it's really this idea of three things. It's goals, pathways, and agency. And it's the idea, this idea of I believe that my future will be brighter, so I have some optimism. I can have a plan, I. To do that, right? I have a plan and I have alternate ways.

I know life's gonna throw me a curve ball so I can then have a plan to adapt and be flexible. And then the most important part is your belief in yourself. So your agency, right? Do you believe that if you put in the effort and you do the things that you can impact your life? And so we've actually taken the science of hope and resilience and combined it into four areas.

And so I won't go through all of them, but I'll just give you a couple examples and for our listeners today, so. One of those is charting your course, right? So do you have future goals? Do you have wishes and dreams that are meaningful to you? Do you have plans for your future? Do you believe that your situation will get better, right?

Mm-hmm. So if you think about that in the context of anxiety, like what are the small goals that you can set for yourself and do you believe that you can make that better? Mm-hmm. [00:06:00] Another one is master your mind. And that's really, really important for anxiety, right? That's really powerful in building hope.

So, do you understand your thinking patterns? Do you understand your feelings and emotions and can you regulate those in the face of adversity or in the face of challenge? Yeah, and that just really kind of gives us some of that power to over our anxiety rather, rather than us feeling like it control us and it builds our confidence.

So in schools, we don't have to be counselors. As parents, we don't have to be counselors to practice these, these strategies. And that's one of the goals of the work that we do. 

Cynthia: Hmm. I love that. Well, one of the things that I really educate my clients about is that everyone has anxious thoughts, like there's nothing wrong with them.

This is at one of the thousands of emotions that we can have, and anxiety is actually in our bodies for a reason, and that it's there to protect us from things that we might need to be anxious about. But. Most of the time when we're not going to school or when we're, you know, [00:07:00] not learning to drive or not asking people on dates or all the things that teens feel anxious about, and then they just stop their life because they feel that feeling.

I just talk to them about sometimes some people's alarm system inside their body. Goes haywire and is not working correctly and makes things too uncomfortable and hard to do when other kids don't experience quite as much alarm. And sometimes well always trauma and abuse and things like that kind of trigger that to go higher than someone else, but so.

Because it's normal to feel anxious sometimes or to have anxious thoughts. It's really hard for kids and families to decide, okay, is this a normal situation that's going on, or is this a problem that we need to take care of? And what is your advice for parents and teens and schools, like how do they differentiate between the [00:08:00] two things of this is what everyone goes through and this is a problem.

Sara Stockwell: Yeah, that's a really great question. I'm so glad that you asked that because this is a challenge for everyone, as you mentioned. Mm-hmm. And it shows up differently in every person. Right. So you may, your child may be experiencing irritability, maybe you see perfectionism, maybe they're beginning to withdraw.

My child started showing physical symptoms, more headaches and stomach aches. Mm-hmm. Students that I've worked with have just become really kind of angry or aggressive, and so. I kind of live by this rule of ask the questions, right? So rather than assume or wonder, like, let's ask the questions and you'll be really amazed at what you uncover.

Sometimes youth don't have the vocabulary to really explain it. So I love using something called a three point check-in. And what this does is it really just opens the dialogue for the adults in the situation. And so I use a head, heart, body. And so I talk about like, what thoughts are coming up for you, what questions are you asking yourself?

Are you kind of stuck on a certain thought? That's [00:09:00] our head. And then our heart is what feelings are coming up, you know, how are you feeling? What emotions are coming up? And sometimes for younger children, I'd use pictures, right, to help them maybe point to the pictures to describe it. Then your body, what sensations are in your body and, and giving them some of the language.

Are your, are your palm sweaty? Is your heart racing? You know, are your legs jittery? And that not only helps the adult to begin to just kind of dig into, okay, what we see on the surface as these, what we would call behaviors. Underneath, is there anxiety there, right? Mm-hmm. It also helps the youth, the child or the teenager to begin to build awareness.

I can tell you I did not have early intervention in terms of counseling, and it took me a very long time to understand what was going on in my body. Mm-hmm. So that's really, really important. I would also say. Get them connected. Right. With, with a mental health professional, whether that be a school counselor or a school psychologist, or a clinical the average delay from the time a [00:10:00] person has symptoms to when they get treatment is actually 11 years.

And so over that time we can see it get worse and worse and then it's harder to treat, right? Mm-hmm. So I would say that would be another big piece is, is get professional opinion. If you're not sure because it can't do any harm, if anything, it's gonna help. So that would be my recommendation there.

And then the other piece I would just say is. Anxiety is rooted in fear and uncertainty. And so throughout this full process, just really creating safety and support, right? Mm-hmm. We innately want to feel loved and supported and cared for. We've all, whether we have anxiety or not, we've all had experiences where we have fear, right?

Mm-hmm. And so fear is normal, as you said. Anxiety is normal, as you said, and it's when it becomes I don't wanna say debilitating, but when it becomes so much that it's overwhelming and it's beginning to interfere. You're avoiding going places, right? You're withdrawing from people. That's when I think that having that extra professional support is really important.

Cynthia: Yeah, I always describe it to kids as paralyzing [00:11:00] because it's like, it's, it's just like they can't make the next step. They can't do the next thing because of, of that fear or just how uncomfortable it feels. And I I have not experienced a panic attack, but I know my daughter has. And I experienced lots of other people's panic attacks when I was in school, in the school setting.

And it just feels so terrible to them that they can't imagine that there's not something wrong. Like, and yes, there's something wrong in the fact that the alarm system is going off in the wrong, for the wrong reasons, or too intensely for what the situation. Needs. But it's still, I mean, it, it, they just can't understand like, there's got to be something wrong with me.

Why would I feel like this? So I just, I spend a lot of time normalizing you know, feeling uncomfortable because we're gonna feel uncomfortable and we have to figure out. And I [00:12:00] think that's kind of like hope. Like hope doesn't say nothing bad's ever gonna happen, or you're gonna be happy every day of your life.

It says that when things are scary or sad or just challenging in some way, I know that there's a better thing that's gonna happen. I know that I'm gonna get out of this and I'm gonna move on to something more exciting. And so. I talk a lot about even when you feel really uncomfortable, get up and go to school anyway and go to the job interview anyway and ask the person on a date anyway, because that's gonna help your brain realize, oh, this isn't life and death.

This isn't gonna kill me if I go to school. This isn't gonna kill me if I choose to do this. You know, things that are not. Life threatening, though our body is saying it's life threatening. So Yes. 

Sara Stockwell: Especially in a panic attack, right? Yeah. People, I'm dying and you don't die [00:13:00] from panic attack. You feel like that.

You certainly feel like that in your brain. But yeah, I think you make an important point, which is this isn't permanent. Your body can't physically stay in this state permanently, right? Mm-hmm. And so it will pass. And how do you kind of. Help yourself through that until it passes. Mm-hmm. And that is the hope piece, right?

If you know, like, okay, this is not going to last forever. Mm-hmm. And this will end and there's strategies I can learn to help myself cope as it then certainly, yeah, you feel more hopeful versus mm-hmm I'm gonna feel like this forever. This is never going to stop. Right. Those are two very different mindsets.

Cynthia: Oh, definitely. Well, I know when you were talking about it takes 11 years to, to get that help or to have a diagnosis or whatever. I know my daughter had anxiety and she says, I think her first panic attack was at seven or eight, and I didn't even know it, and I didn't know it until. It was this year in 2024, she and I recorded a podcast together, mother and daughter, talking about [00:14:00] anxiety.

And she said it on that podcast and I'm like, what are you even talking about? Like I didn't even know that. Like I knew about her panic attacks when she was in college because I was leaving my house and going to her, trying to help her because she was so, it was so extreme. And that's when she was diagnosed when she was in college because she was like, something is wrong like this.

I should not be feeling like this all the time. And I always had excuses for it. And I feel so bad as a mental health professional that I didn't realize that it was anxiety. But I could always, you know, pin it to something else. And so that's, you know, one of the things that I've kind of told those stories to, to the people that, you know, my listeners or whatever, they kind of know that I struggled with this because, I mean, no parent wants to say, oh, my child has anxiety.

And. I wasn't really trying to avoid it. Like if, when, when she did get [00:15:00] diagnosed, I'm like, well, thank goodness. I'm so glad that we have some something we can go from here. And like why is, why is this so why are so things so challenging? And she started taking medication, which was the best thing ever.

And I mean, everybody has to do their own thing and some people do fine without it, but she needed something to turn that volume down. And once that happened. She's been so much better so that I, I have a lived experience because I don't experience anxiety in that way where I. Where it paralyzes me or stops me from, from doing things.

And so I just was telling her all the things that work for me, which didn't work for her. Like, well just stop thinking about it. We'll just, you know, go read a book or, you know, like trying to get her to like stop focusing on it. And she was like, I can't stop focusing on it. And that's that's when we realized what was really going on.

And you mentioned, an OCD [00:16:00] diagnosis and I didn't realize how connected those that can be. But just last week I talked to, I had a, a podcast interview with someone who is an OCD specialist, and so she was talking about those connections and it was fascinating to me because I was like, oh my gosh.

And I had a client that is in college. And she was having some just really intense, intrusive thoughts. Mm-hmm. And she, it got to the point where she was like crying on the Zoom call to me and saying, I. I don't know what to do like this. These are starting to scare me. Like I don't wanna do the things that they're saying, but they're just like, I can't stop thinking about it.

And I said, I think you need to see your campus. Go to your campus clinic and talk to somebody. And she was diagnosed with I think it was like stress induced. Or something like that. Stress-induced OCD or, I mean, it was like [00:17:00] an interesting diagnosis I hadn't heard of before, but it totally explained what was happening and like, she is so much better.

I'm like, oh, thank goodness that you, you know, got that extra help for that. So you know, there, there's always hope no matter if. You know, your kid's already moved on and you're like, oh, wait a minute. I think something's going on. You can, you can be diagnosed at any time and you can get help. So if you do have kids that have already moved on and you're still kind of worried about what's going on there, there's always a chance that you can find out what the answer is and start, you know, making steps towards it.

And I also tell parents that if, you know, if therapy or, mental health is kind of a scary you know, issue. I, I don't want it to be scary for people anymore, but if it is feeling like that towards you or your child is like, I'm not talking to them. I don't, you know, I'm not crazy or whatever the things that they think, you can always go to your [00:18:00] pediatrician or family doctor and just do a physical 'cause sometimes there are physical reasons why people.

Are being triggered physically with different things. And so I, I mean, it doesn't hurt to try that out. And it's also sometimes easier for the child to, to be like, oh, the doctor, you know, like, of course I go to the doctor. Or sometimes it's easier for a parent to feel like, well, I'll, you know, I'll try the doctor first.

And they also know who to refer you to if they have a different idea of what's going on. So. 

Sara Stockwell: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I always say too, you know, don't be afraid to ask for help because it isn't a sign of weakness. It is really is a sign of strength. Yeah. You know, people go to all kinds, I mean, they might talk to their coach first.

They might talk to a pastor first. It might be a neighbor. But there's people all around you, right. Because it, it can be scary and, you know, especially if you, someone has intrusive thoughts around OCD and those types of things, or their anxiety is so intense that they feel [00:19:00] like. I'm not gonna make it.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anybody that are your people, like who are the reliable people in, in your circle, in your community that you can turn to? Maybe it's a sibling, maybe it's a cousin, a friend, but mm-hmm. Someone to then help you, right. Then take that next step. Mm-hmm. So. 

Cynthia: And for parents to not feel bad if you're not the first person they talk to.

Yeah, because I think, well, just like me finding out, she had a panic attack when she was eight and she's 34 now, and I just found out about it, you know? Like 

Sara Stockwell: what? Yeah. And Sharon will probably find out about my first panic attack from this, this podcast. Do not know that that happened at eight years old.

Cynthia: Yeah. Well, because there's so much with your parents when you're little. And I was. As open and you know, there was, I was a safe space. I was all the things, but she said, mom, I thought I was crazy and I wasn't even ready to say that out loud. Yeah. You know, for even myself to think about that I am, you know, something's wrong with me.

And she said, [00:20:00] I just didn't wanna. You know, that's, that's too scary to even talk about. So if your kids, they could be experiencing some things that you don't even really realize. But I feel like mother's intuition, you kind of have like, something's not quite right here and I don't know for sure what it is.

And I remember having all of those thoughts, but like always finding. Something, some excuse about it. Like, oh, well this happened, or, oh, she, I think she's allergic to red dye. Or I think, you know, like, I, I had all these and we even went to the doctor 'cause she was doing she threw up every day for one year.

Mm-hmm. And so we had done let, like checking her stomach and checking her esophagus and making sure that everything was working okay. And they were like, oh, everything's fine. I'm like, okay. And I made her go to school. I remember we'd drive to school sometimes she'd throw up out the door and then we'd just keep on going and still go to school.

'cause she wasn't sick, like physically ill. [00:21:00] She was just experiencing her body's reaction to whatever was going on. So, 

Sara Stockwell: yeah. 

Cynthia: Well, what else would you like her families to know about? 

Sara Stockwell: Well, I think what you just said, I think that's an important point in schools a lot of times. So as a school psychologist and you know, working with, with youth that had mental health needs we would often see kind of school refusal or, you know, they pull up and we'd have to help them out of the car.

And that was always so hard on parents. It's hard on the child. It's exhausting. Right. And it's hard on the parents. Mm-hmm. But we always try to encourage them. To kind of move through that anxiety and not avoid it. Because what we know, what the research tells us, what mental health tells us is that when we avoid it, we actually build the wrong muscle.

You know, for for children, I always say, you know, if you lift weights, you build your bicep muscles. Well, if you practice kind of going through that anxiety, even though it's hard, right? It's hard and it's scary and it's challenging, but you're building your brain muscle to be able to better manage that.

So eventually it gets easier and it gets [00:22:00] easier, and it's easier. Mm-hmm. That's really hard. I know personally, having gone through it as a child, and I know personally having gone through as a parent and as a school psychologist, that it's hard for everybody. Mm-hmm. But to really think about that and just find ways to calm yourself and help your child feel supported and loved through that even though it's going to be hard.

So thank you for, for bringing that up. I think another important point I wanted to make was and maybe this was more directed towards, towards teens, is that you have more control than that you think you do. Mm-hmm. And so anxiety, I think you'd mentioned your daughter said, oh, I felt crazy. Right.

Anxiety can make us feel. Weird. It can make us feel alone. It can make us feel judged because we're acting in ways that maybe don't align with what we want to, but that's how our, you know, that's how we're reacting. And so just knowing that, you know, you really do have the ability to, what we call master your mind at Batel for kids.

But it's really understanding your symptoms, your anxiety, and then [00:23:00] putting the strategies in place. There's so many different strategies out there, and I remember feeling overwhelmed because everyone would give me something new. Yep. Try this, try this, try this. And, and I felt really overwhelmed and I thought, well, none of these are working.

This is never gonna work. I'm gonna be stuck here forever. Mm-hmm. So I would just encourage, practice and build the biggest toolbox, and this is for parents too. Build the biggest toolbox that you possibly can because. What works one day isn't gonna work the next. I mean, that's that way with anything, right?

And so, mm-hmm. Just keep trying and practicing and practicing when you're not in a state of panic or when you're not in a very, very escalated state. 'cause it's much harder to access then. Mm-hmm. I always would say it's like never playing football and then expecting to go to the Super Bowl and throw the winning touchdown, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, if you don't practice in that moment, it's probably not gonna work for you. And so. Just come up with lots of different strategies and practice those, practice those. I do have to give a plug for mindfulness. I found mindfulness later in [00:24:00] life. But it has really been life changing for me personally and what I know when I practice five minutes a day, it helps me understand my thoughts.

It helps me understand the feelings in my body that I'm getting from my thoughts, and I do feel that. I have much more the ability to kind of break some of those thoughts and reframe them and get myself out of that place before it escalates to really, really significant anxiety. Mm-hmm. So I'm speaking very vulnerably.

I'm 46 years old and I still, right. Anxiety doesn't just go away. Typically, OCD doesn't go away. But you can I, and I hope this brings a little bit of hope, is that. You know, you can take action on it. You do have more control than you think. Mm-hmm. And it won't stay that way forever. So 

Cynthia: yes, I do know, I remember I had one client one time during our consult, Dino, are we gonna work together?

And she said, I just wanna get rid of it. And I said, well, there is the bad news that you learn to manage it, but it doesn't go [00:25:00] away. And you know, but again, I do, I feel like I do a lot of education on that. We. If you think about it, we don't want anxiety to go away, right? Because then we are not gonna have any boundaries or gauge of how we should be acting because we are not worried about anything and we're walking off a cliff or we're, you know, we're walking in front of a car or whatever.

We're doing all these things that really would hurt us. And so we just have to learn that we have to train our brain. With that agency that we have with the practicing of things and you know, going to school when we don't feel like it, because that's telling our brain, oh, school is not life or death school is, there's something about school and we can work on that.

But that going to school is not what our body is trying to make it out to be, and we just have to work through that. So. I love that you're doing that work too, that we need all the people doing this work because we need, so all, yeah. [00:26:00] Important. And I'll put all of your information in the show notes so people can send you a message or ask any questions about the things that you do, and also look up more about the  Battelle for Kids and like, what, how could they maybe get that to their school if they're wanting to do.

Some of those things or wanting their school to do that. I know I've had clients that have said, can you come to my child school and teach them this stuff? And so you're doing the same thing and that's really important for our schools to be doing that. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Sara Stockwell: Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. 

Cynthia: Oh yes, definitely.