Tired of Anxiety - A Kid's Guide with Dr Sarah Cassidy

PART 3

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[00:00:22] Sarah: And they looked at the language they told us, if any of the language in the book didn't work for them, if they didn't understand it, if the words were too big or too small or too Irish or too American or whatever they told us, we changed it accordingly. so everything that you see in the Tired of Anxiety book, the one for kids.

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[00:00:46] Ross: Peasoopers, this is it. The last part of my chat with Dr. Sarah Cassidy. It's the dramatic climax. Sarah is an educational child and adolescent psychologist.

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[00:01:10] Ross: So in this episode you'll hear about how the book came to be, the collaboration with Dr Lisa Coyne, the other books in the series, and how Sarah helps kids to reflect on their choices, notice the difficult stuff, and move forward, building skills for their whole lives.

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[00:02:07] Ross: Let's just scoot over to the news desk, for I am delighted to announce that I'll be running an Act in the Workplace Train the Trainer course in April and May next year, over four sessions and in partnership with Joe Oliver at Contextual Consulting. I'm super excited about this and you'll find all the links in the show notes.

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[00:02:47] Ross: And again on Facebook, Meg Buckley said, Great stuff! Love this take on labelling. Thanks to everyone who listened, shared and rated Part 2 with Sarah. Your support is what makes the PeopleSoup community so special. So please do keep listening and sharing and letting me know what you think.

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[00:03:10] Ross: For now, get a brew on and have a listen to part 3 of my chat with Sarah Cassidy. Now we're, we're gonna talk about your book, Sarah, that Tired of Anxiety, A Kid's Guide to Befriending Scary Thoughts and Living Your Life.

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[00:03:36] Sarah: Brilliant. Thank you

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[00:03:38] Ross: p super's, Sarah hasn't heard this review, so this is, this is a fresh, a fresh experience for her. So here's my review. Shantay you stay Bravo and thank you to Sarah and Lisa. This is an extraordinary book written by world leading experts in the field, and it makes the concepts from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy absolutely [00:04:00] accessible, useful, and fun for kids.

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[00:04:25] Ross: It says, this book was written for children with anxiety. The children that have already used the techniques in this book are real children with real anxiety from real families. They met in groups together, they practiced the skills together and they even created some of the art in this book based upon their experiences.

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[00:05:24] Sarah: thanks Ross and those audio recordings are actually me speaking directly to the kids I was working with at that time, and I'm glad you felt them.

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[00:05:37] Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

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[00:05:39] Sarah: And I can, I know, I know your audience member can't see you right now, but I can see you. So I, I appreciate that very much. um, and sometimes my, um, middle child will have me play those recordings to him, which I think is really sweet because, There's probably not a lot of kids that, that want their mom to [00:06:00] do that, but hopefully he won't listen to this, or hopefully his friends won't hear this. But, um, it's a difficult thing. I think anxiety and, like I was saying earlier it's like you need to step inside it, and I think for each kid it can be a little bit different. And I think a lot of the messaging that we give kids around anxiety, like, you should feel something different or you should do something different, or, you know, just do the thing.

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[00:06:54] Sarah: And I, I thought, God, it, I mean, I'm good with kids. I love kids. I have kids. What am I getting wrong? there was some bit of it that I just wasn't quite kind of wrapping my fingers around. And when I, when I heard Lisa speaking one time, I thought, oh, there was something fundamentally different that she was doing.

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[00:07:29] Sarah: What you'd get if you came to me in a clinic hour and we sat and we, we trolled through what your experience would be like. We would explore what is it like for you where I wouldn't tell you what you should be feeling. I would ask you, and we would explore it together. And I would invite you, write it down on this page or think about it or listen to this mindfulness piece and, and take your time, you know, in your own [00:08:00] time.

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[00:08:00] Sarah: Explore this and, and play with it and draw on the page or go away and, and have a walk or have a listen and take your time, not in a clinic hour, not when there's 30 other people on the waiting list. But please take your time. This is for you. This is not for me or your mother, or your teacher or your auntie.

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[00:08:40] Sarah: And I don't care if you're seven or you're 50, this is for you. your time is precious. And, and I don't care if you're, if you're, if your mother's busy, you know, I, I don't give a flying. Can I say F U C K? You know, I, I, I,

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[00:09:01] Sarah: And, and let's take the time, as much time as you need, and let's, let's sit with it. And if you need the whole hour to sit with it and, you know, draw on one piece of paper, or if it's one hour, if it's 50 hours, let's take that time, whatever you need. Because what we're doing here is we are playing the long game.

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[00:09:24] Autonomy - the long game

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[00:09:45] Sarah: And believe me, I get it. You know, I, I absolutely get it. That. We want that, of course we want to get them back to school. I completely understand. But if everything becomes about [00:10:00] forcing a child or shoving them back in, like, how much do you want to do that thing? if you have absolutely no control over anything, you know, that's just horrendous.

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[00:10:49] Sarah: That book's already is already finished actually, so that'll be out in September.

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[00:10:52] Sarah: But at what point does it shift from me as a parent, with my hands on a child's back, corralling a child in the school gates and, and a teacher firmly holding a child and sort of pulling them in and grabbing them in the classroom.

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[00:11:32] Sarah: So it's, it's not about just one day, if a parent thinks or a school or a teacher think that it's only about getting the child into school that's fundamentally wrong. It's not about just getting them in the school gates. It's about the child choosing and we need to get that piece right And, and if we don't get that piece right, like I would rather spend, I'd rather spend six weeks understanding how to get the child to [00:12:00] choose how to get them in the gates than any other thing.

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[00:12:07] Ross: mm.

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[00:12:51] Sarah: this way of speaking to kids, I knew that it worked when kids attended me in clinic. I knew that, because I could see them, I could see their faces when they were talking to me in clinic, but I didn't know if when they brought the book away and read it, would it work for them then?

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[00:13:51] Sarah: And they really kindly said, yes, we could abide by all the, all the covid procedures.

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[00:13:57] Sarah: So we met once a week. Now some of these kids had actually not [00:14:00] attended a school building in, two years, but they came to art club every single week. And they read the book, they did all the artwork that you see in the tired of Anxiety book.

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[00:14:28] Sarah: has been vetted by kids and all the artwork in it was done by the kids that, that attend the clinic.

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[00:14:53] Sarah: yeah,

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[00:15:04] Sarah: yeah, yeah. and I mean, we, we said that each week, like, we just want you to show up and, and we know that this is hard. And we really appreciate you, you giving your time to us and you helping us with this book, and you helping us with this project. And, even them taking part in Art Club was a natural exposure for them.

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[00:15:55] Sarah: um,

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[00:16:07] Sarah: yeah,

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[00:16:08] Process

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[00:16:32] Sarah: And they were turning up every week, and then we put their work on display with other school kids. there was not a more natural exposure for anxious kids in the entire world, and they did it, you know, it was just, it's incredible.

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[00:16:54] Sarah: yeah. the the process was good. I suppose I had this book written in my head a long, long time, and actually I had, initially, I had a different publisher for this book and, Lisa has written a lot of books. This was my first one, but I kind of felt like, so I, I had the book kinda written.

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[00:17:33] Sarah: And I suppose, you know, there, there are other publishers that maybe have kind of a, a stricter format in how the book should be, but it was really important to me that this book would be a book that could be accessible to children. And I think, you know, from your work with adults, most of the psycho, there's not, there's not a huge amount of, of psychotherapeutic materials that are age appropriate for kids.

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[00:18:14] Sarah: I edit, for journals and, I've, I've written a ton of scientific materials, so I understand what the standard needs to look like, but I also understand that things need to be accessible to a child or a child's just gonna shut down and walk away.

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[00:18:35] Ross: Yeah. Crikey. So, so the next one is teenagers, but there's there's three more. Is that

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[00:18:53] Sarah: Yeah. So the, the process, the process is basically kind of go through and Lisa and I are kind of turn taking, so I took lead on the kids one, and Lisa took lead on the teen one and I'll take lead on the young adult one and then, you know, so we're just sort of turn taking, but, working closely together.

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[00:19:32] Ross: Fabulous.

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[00:19:40] Sarah: Hmm. Yeah,

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[00:19:48] Sarah: yeah,

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[00:20:02] Ross: that stuff and everyone just cheer

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[00:20:23] Sarah: And I would ask people, stop thinking about this and I'll show a big picture of a chocolate cake or a big picture of, the pink elephant and say, now I want you to stop thinking about this while it's right front and center of the room. And, this is what it is like for your child when they're worrying about being bullied at school.

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[00:21:03] Sarah: And so just telling them to cheer up, get over it, move on, think positive. it's not possible. It's not helpful.

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[00:21:31] Ross: Yeah. And, and in workplaces sometimes when using a metaphor like passengers on the

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[00:21:42] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

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[00:21:54] Ross: Sharing some of their own thoughts. It's kind of like you can see them, look at them going, nah.

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[00:22:01] Ross: And I think that's so powerful to, to sort of counter this just horrible narrative of cheer up, turn that frown upside down. It might never happen. All that really

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[00:22:40] Sarah: You know that you're safe and you're well. And I think actually my resting face is, is quite neutral. And, you know, people, you say to me, are you angry? And I'm like, no, I'm not angry. You know, I'm perfectly fine. That's my, I do have the resting bee faces. Turns out that's, that's actually my natural expression. Um, so like, there, there's a couple of different bodies of lit literature to draw on, but forcing yourself or trying to force yourself to act happy when you've got something difficult happening in your mind, in your body is really unhelpful. so I would always try to, to tell people that, like, as you call it, like toxic positivity.

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[00:23:39] Sarah: Yeah.

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[00:23:45] Sarah: Mm-hmm.

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[00:23:57] Sarah: Oh,

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[00:24:01] Ross: Thank you for being an asshole. Thank you for being Yeah.

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[00:24:07] Ross: I always have such respect for them because you never see the best of people on a

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[00:24:19] Ross: No. And it's that emotional labor that they go through to

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[00:24:25] Ross: hats off to them.

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[00:24:28] Ross: I, I digress yet again. But, but Sarah, I wanted to ask, is there, is there a takeaway you would offer our listeners, thinking about our listeners as adults and perhaps listeners who have children, anything, any top tip you might give them just to reflect on?

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[00:24:59] Ross: You can go to 17 if you like.

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[00:25:02] Sarah: um, I think young people, I think a lot of the messaging that we give children and young people is actually a little bit arrogant. You know, I, I think we assume that they're, because they're young, that their lived experiences are easy.

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[00:25:43] Sarah: With honesty and with gentleness and with compassion, to check it out for themselves. And I, I would like for us to do that, you know, slowly and compassionately with them. And I would like for us to model, exploration, [00:26:00] curiosity, softness, gentleness. And I would like for us, whether we're parents, adults, um, spirit guides, what, whatever, whatever's our role in their life.

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[00:26:35] Sarah: And, and to face those sometimes really, really difficult things that are happening for them. And what was happening for us in our young lives when we were young, might be very, very different. in comparison to what's happening for them in their young lives now. So, so let's not assume our experience maps onto theirs.

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[00:27:03] Ross: Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah. And you're reminding me, when I was reading the book, I was writing a few notes to myself and I really got this sense of respectful curiosity from you and Lisa as the authors, that you're not mapping your experience onto theirs. It's this real sensitive and and thoughtful curiosity, but so respectful to the world of the the child as well.

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[00:27:30] Sarah: Thank you.

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[00:27:43] Sarah: Thank you so much for having me, Ross. It's been absolutely brilliant to be on with you, and I really enjoy your podcast, so I'm, I'm thrilled to be a guest.

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[00:28:19] Ross: What an outstanding gift. So much better and thoughtful and useful than some tat that will end up at the back of a drawer for eternity. A big thanks to my producer Emma. It's great to have you on board. And Emma is continuing her final year research in psychology at Dublin City University.

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[00:29:09] Ross: If you like this episode of the podcast, please, could you do three things? Number one, share it with one other person. Number two, subscribe to the podcast and give us a five star review. Whatever platform you're on, and particularly if you're on Apple Podcasts, the Apple charts are really important in the podcast industry.

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[00:29:45] Ross: And on Facebook we are at People Soup Pod. thanks to Andy Klan for his Spoon Magic. And Alex Engelberg for his vocal. Most of all, dear listener, thanks to you. Look after yourselves. Peace supers and bye for now. [00:30:00] careers like flight attendants.

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[00:30:03] Ross: they just have to be welcome on board, welcome on board.

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[00:30:11] Sarah: Hilarious.