Anxiety Workshops for Teens
A while back there was a plea on Facebook for a group for some sort to help kids with anxiety. Many parents are struggling to find help and support their children who are with anxiety. As worked with many adults and teens with anxiety I thought I could help, and consequently set up a set of workshops for these kids.
I will admit to being equally anxious. I have not run workshops like this before and for me it, it was out of my comfort zone. However, I quickly found an 8-week course coming together in my head. I found a nice size hall and I put the word out. I only put the word out, I can't say I advertised heavily, just within the realms of Facebook.
Three have come. We are just at the beginning of our work together but these three lovely girls are already teaching me and thing or two and humbling me with their trust and eagerness to embrace my thinking and teaching.
Despite these workshops being a cognitive process for me, something new is emerging. Creativity. I recognised today that my workshops are very heavily art based. Part of my thinking initially was how this taps into another part of the brain, the part of the psyche untouched and uncontaminated by the rules of the logical, thinking world. I am not an artist in the classical sense - I cannot draw to save myself - but what I am experiencing is an organic process whereby I can bring the theory to the table and then the art, the creativity takes hold, producing imaginative, powerful, touching images about what these kids are experiencing.
Today, after session 3, I am still impacted by the power of what they intuitively brought today. I am still amazed to been allowed to share their complex, scary, frustrating, isolating inner worlds put down on paper, and touched by their trust in me to allow themselves to be vulnerable and embrace the process in order to learn and grow.
