From time to time, everyone feels fearful or worried and this is completely normal. For some young people, this develops into severe anxiety which can cause distress in everyday life.
Worrying can be useful, by providing us with protection from threatening situations and allow us to respond. Too much worry can be debilitating and make everyday a struggle to get through due to not being able to stop thinking about worries.
Anxiety and worry can cause both physical and emotional responses. Some physical responses include feeling sick, feeling breathless or feeling tense, whilst some emotional responses are feeling fearful or panicky, irritable or upset.
One of the ways to reduce feelings of anxiety that you are feeling is to understand it better. By understanding how anxiety works, you can then understand the reasons why you are feeling anxious and breaking that vicious cycle.
Challenging situations and other factors can cause worrying thoughts that we have to challenge in order to stop worrying.
How can we help you?
At Young Minds Matter we have different ways of helping you when you are feeling like this. Our first offer to you will be for an Anxiety Skills Course which runs for 8 sessions, where you can learn skills to help cope with worrying and challenging those worrying thoughts.
You will be given new information booklets every week, full of tips and tasks for you to try and help with you feeling worried or anxious. You will also meet people in your age group who have similar worries, but don’t worry, you don’t have to answer any personal questions or share anything about yourself if you don’t want to, this group is to help teach you skills and challenge those worrying thoughts.
If you still need support after the skills course, there is a possibility that you could have a few sessions with one of our Young Minds Matters practitioners, who are people trained to help you challenge those worrying thoughts when it feels too much to do alone.
There is always support available, it’s about finding the right support that fits you and your needs.
