Anxiety: Facing up to fears a healthier solution than avoiding them

Chloe* was always a bit of an anxious child and it seemed to be getting worse each year.

Chloe also reported anxieties at her new high school.

Chloe* was always a bit of an anxious child and it seemed to be getting worse each year.

Because of her nerves about her race in the primary school swimming carnival, her parents allowed her to miss it, and for her and her mother to see the new Disney movie instead.

Her parents hoped this would make her feel special and more confident. But it stopped Chloe from going and realising that it wasn’t as bad as she imagined.

Worse, this meant Chloe expected to avoid the athletics carnival too, and that morning she cried and screamed until her parents agreed.

Chloe also reported anxieties at her new high school. Many of her primary school friends went to different schools and she had to make new friends, which felt tricky for her. Her parents checked in daily to see what had happened, but their discussion focused more on her challenges than the good things – making her feel her school experience was much worse than it was.

When giving a speech in English, one of her cards was out of order, and she told her parents how mortifying it was. Her father – keen to help her – emailed the English teacher about her performance anxiety. The teacher offered to assess her next speech without the class present.

This felt better for everyone, but Chloe didn’t get a further chance to learn that she could get through making a minor mistake.

In fact, the adjustment made Chloe think she could only do difficult tasks if she had special accommodations.

Sometimes, when Chloe is very emotional, her parents allow her to stay home for a “mental health day” (the occasional day is not a problem, right?).

But Chloe is then allowed to be on her tablet or play video games, making her want to retreat into her devices, rather than deal with the ups and downs of typical school days and friendships.

Her family observe that she spends more time scrolling a screen and less time with them, and blame it on her sensitivity when with other people.

Chloe starts following certain people online who primarily discuss their emotional challenges, and sees her similarity to these people. Chloe believes her anxiety is permanent and that considerate adults should not make her face challenges that make her feel nervous.

When Chloe came to the psychologist, she believed therapy would simply be listening to her issues to support her.

While this was a small part of it, the psychologist knew effective treatment was going to involve ironing out all the factors that kept Chloe’s anxiety going.

Special accommodations, long discussions about nerves, and inadvertent rewards of avoiding challenge might have made Chloe feel better, but were cementing her anxiety.

Importantly, Chloe needed to slowly learn to face difficult things, and those around her needed to encourage this.

It was hard work for all, but the only way for her to improve was to push through it all and truly realise her potential. Treatment only took a few months. She is now doing well in year 9 – on the B netball team, in the chorus for the musical, and thinking about becoming a teacher.

* Chloe is an anonymised composite of a number of cases.