Bonus Talking To Worry: A Strategy That Actually Helps

 In this episode, we’re diving into why worry is normal — and how you can help your teen manage it in a healthy, empowering way. If you’ve ever told your child “Don’t worry” and it didn’t seem to help, this episode is for you.

You’ll learn:
✅ Why worry is a natural part of the brain’s alarm system
✅ The real reasons kids (and adults!) feel anxious
✅ How to talk to worry — not just about it
✅ A powerful mindset shift every parent needs
✅ A quick strategy you can use today to support your teen

This is Part 1 of a special series previewing my upcoming live workshop on August 18th at 6PM Central — where I’ll teach you how to manage anxiety using my proven Triangle Formula: Perception, Process, and Plan.

🎁 Want to join the workshop? 

Grab your seat here

👇 Subscribe for weekly tools, support, and conversations about helping anxious teens grow into confident young adults.

#TeenAnxiety #ParentingTips #MentalHealth #AnxietyHelp #WorryLess #AnxietySupport #BackToSchoolAnxiety #NormalizeWorry 

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Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi. I wanted to tell you about the new workshop that I have coming up on August 18th. This one's gonna be in the evening, 6:00 PM Central time. I'm gonna try different times to see if I can hit people who are maybe, you know, working and they want to attend live. Because attending a workshop live is really important because you can talk to me and you can ask me specific questions about your particular situation, and that is so helpful instead of just watching a replay where you might hear other people's questions or you might.

Get some of the information. You might have questions and you don't have anyone to ask, even though you could email me, but I think live is just so much more fun and there's an energy about live that's just better than, um, watching a replay. So, but I wanted to give you kind of a little, um, I'm gonna give you three.

I'm gonna do three different episodes with like some of the themes [00:01:00] because this workshop actually has seven components to it, and so. I wanted to make it digestible for you, so that, and, and to kind of give you a preview of what you would be learning in the workshop. So that can help you to decide, uh, whether you wanna do it or not.

But it, and it totally fits for what I do in my program because I have my triangle formula, which is perception, process, and plan. For anxiety, and when you put those three things together, your anxiety is managed. So that perception part is gonna be this first theme for this week, and this is about understanding worry.

So when we want to understand. Anxiety, worry, panic. We just need some education about what it is, and most of my clients, whether they're teens or their parents, they just want anxiety to go away [00:02:00] and to understand it. We need to know that worrying and anxiety is normal. And it can be useful. That is part of our alarm system in our body and in our brain that lets us know if we should be worried about something like this could be dangerous.

This might be life or death. And sometimes our brains get confused about what is life or death, and it thinks that going to school is life or death, or it thinks that getting in an elevator is life or death, or driving a car or asking someone on a date or trying a new. Class. All of those things become like things that our brain is really telling us is bad, when really we're just feeling a little bit uncomfortable and our brain is just getting confused about what that means.

There's different reasons why we worry. I mean, some of it is, uh, biological, like our genetics, the [00:03:00] chemicals in our brain. Um. Some of it's environmental, like if we've had trauma or abuse or sometimes just modeling, like if we have anxious parents and they modeled like anxious ways of dealing with things and then we internalize that.

I mean there's just like so many different things that can be the determiner of, you know, why we have so much anxiety or what kind of anxiety and all that. Um. When I'm working with a client, we can really pick apart all of that and try to see, you know, what's going on though. Mostly what I do is just help people, like take them, where's your anxiety right now?

And let's get to that forward facing, you know, where do you wanna go? What do you wanna do and how do we get, get there? And a lot of times as parents and teachers, we tell kids worry about it because some of the things like. That, you know, like maybe doing a [00:04:00] test. Oh, don't worry about it. Um, it seems not worry producing to us.

Or maybe we just want them to stop worrying so they do the task that we want them to do, but saying, don't worry, makes it sound like their feelings are not relevant or. They shouldn't be feeling certain things, and we really wanna teach kids that all emotions and all feelings in our body are normal.

There's nothing wrong with us if we feel a certain way, you know, sometimes we need to manage it. You know, we can't just have all these feelings and then we're just chaos all the time. We do have to manage them. But we want them to know that it's normal. So saying, don't worry is letting them, it's like saying to them, this isn't normal, that you feel this way.

And you know, we don't always know what is causing someone to feel worried about something and we need to just say, this is normal for you to feel this way, but [00:05:00] what would you like the next steps to be like? Kind of helping them work through that and um. Then talking to our worry. That's another way to normalize it, is that it's just this, like this other, our inner roommate, I talked about that a few weeks ago.

Um, it's this, it's the thoughts inside of our head and we need to be able to distance them from us. You know, our thoughts are not us. So if we see it, if we personify it as a character, a person, and we name it. Um, and not make it, uh, like an enemy or a bad guy or a monster. Just this other idea is in our mind and we can talk back to it.

It's okay. Worry. You know, I don't need you today. I can totally handle school today, or I can totally handle test or where you could even say to your worry, okay, come along to school with me today. Especially those first day, uh, things that will be coming [00:06:00] up here shortly. You know, of course anxiety, you're gonna come with me to school today.

It makes sense that you're here today, but I'm gonna handle it. And, you know, you can come along with me, but you're not gonna stop me from doing things or you're not gonna get me to work up. You, you can be here, um, you know, I'll give you a few little love hugs inside, but am gonna go to classes. I'm gonna meet new people and it's gonna be totally fine.

Um. We might need to be a little more assertive with our an with our anxiety sometimes, but we don't wanna be fighting it. We don't wanna be angry towards it. We don't wanna be putting a lot of energy about trying to get it to go away because that actually makes it worse. And so for parents. Just when your child is saying an anxious things, especially as we get this back to school stuff, just saying, of course you feel anxious about the first day of school, everyone does.

Even the kids that are running around laughing and having a good time, they have some anxiety [00:07:00] too. They just manage it better or hide it better. So no one is going into the first day of school not feeling some anxiety and probably. Half of your teachers are feeling anxious or your principal's feeling anxious, or a bus driver's feeling anxious.

Like everybody, whenever there's uncertainty and we don't know what the new day is gonna be, there's, you know, some low grade uncomfortableness and that is part of being a human and we have to learn to deal with it. And so that's first theme, understanding, worry, or perception, perceiving worry. So sign up for my workshop.

Come and find out more of these things, and I'll talk to you soon.