Hello my little friends,
I'm so glad that you came so that we can have a chat.
This is a bit of a pep talk.
Maybe for whatever reason you need to hear it today.
There might be something happening at school where you need to be really brave.
There may be something happening at home with your family,
Something with your friends.
It doesn't matter what it is,
But it is important to know that right now in this moment,
You might be feeling something that lots of other people have felt.
And that means you're not alone in it.
You're not alone in your worry.
You're not alone in your nervous feeling.
You're not alone in your anxiety or your stress.
You're not alone in any of it.
And you're especially not alone because you're here listening,
And me and you are talking together about your feelings.
I might not have listed how you're feeling,
And that's okay.
Know that I've probably felt that too.
I'm a lot older and I've felt a lot of things,
But there's one thing that was really cool that I found out a long time ago that helped me in situations where I need to be brave or I need to chill out because I'm stressing too much,
Or I need to stop being so upset about something that's not such a big deal.
We all do that,
Right?
Anyway,
This is the one thing that I learned.
Anxiety is normally connected to something to do with what we're scared of.
So let's call it fear.
Worrying,
Stressing,
Panic attacks,
Anxiety,
Feeling nauseous,
Feeling unwell,
Feeling like the world just is awful,
All come from fear.
We're scared of something,
And it's totally okay to be scared of things,
Especially when those things might be new,
And we don't know anything about the situation yet,
Or we've never done something before and it's super scary,
Or there's a lot of pressure about what we're supposed to do,
And we feel stressed and scared.
Fear feels exactly the same in your body as excitement.
Did you know that?
When you're excited and you're happy and you're super,
Super giddy about something,
You get the exact same feelings in your body.
The only thing that's different is your mind,
Your thoughts.
Your thoughts are telling your brain,
This is good,
This is great,
This is happy,
I'm so excited,
And therefore it feels like all of those feelings inside of your body go along with the good thing,
So we don't worry about them,
Do we?
We just think that horrible feeling in our stomach,
The butterflies,
The tight tummy,
Maybe our body gets hot and our cheeks get flushed,
But in a good situation,
We can handle it,
We can totally handle it.
But when our brain and our thoughts tell us that we're scared,
This is not good,
I need to be brave,
Or I feel alone,
Or I feel like no one likes me,
We label all of those feelings as bad.
So all of the physical feelings that go along with that are classed as bad too.
But the truth is,
Fear and excitement make the body respond exactly the same.
It's only our brain that says,
This is good,
Or this is bad.
So if that's the case,
I want you to try this.
If you're worried about tests at school,
Or you're going to do a performance and you're nervous,
Or you have to go to the doctors and get an injection,
Or you have to go to the dentist and you're super scared and stressed,
If you have to do something that you're worried about and you don't necessarily want to do it,
Know that that feeling in your tummy,
That feeling in your heart,
Your throat,
Your body,
You can tell your brain,
This is exciting,
Rather than this is scary.
The performance I'm going to do at school,
It's exciting.
It might totally be extremely terrifying,
But we're going to tell our brain and our body that we're excited.
This is exciting.
It's almost like you're going to fool your brain and fool your body into feeling the opposite.
This is so cool.
I've got to go to the dentist.
I'm so excited about it.
Whatever reason you could follow it with,
I'm going to get a new toothbrush and a sticker and I'm going to feel really brave after.
I'm so excited.
Or if you have to talk to a new person at school,
Maybe your friends have made friends with someone that you're not sure whether you like or not,
And you have to deal with them at school.
I'm so excited.
We're going to be the best of friends.
Can you see what I'm doing?
I'm using that uncomfortable,
Anxious,
Nervous feeling in my body and I'm changing the sensation into it being something happy and good and exciting.
I'm faking it.
And then,
What happens?
Your brain actually believes that this is good,
So you start to relax a little bit.
Those bad feelings in your tummy start to subside and go away because exciting is good.
Cool is good.
Can you see that?
So if you needed to come and have a chat with me today about something that you're anxious about,
This is your solution.
Try it.
Try it more than once.
Try it lots of times.
And then let me know what happens.
Namaste,
My little friend.
I'm so excited for you.
Have a wonderful day.
