SC14 – Anxious Children and Teens: Solution-based Strategies to Promote Self-Regulation, a Growth Mindset, and Psychological Resilience
Location: Sand Pebble D-E
Children and teens experiencing clinical anxiety show a pattern of difficulties in discrimination (appraisal) and self-regulation. Many exhibit a cycle of intolerance of uncertainty, chronic fear of failure, and underestimation of their abilities, talents and intelligence (i.e. a fixed mindset). Changing to a more adaptive pattern of accurate appraisal (discrimination) of threat and risk, hardier self-regulation skills to control worry, fear, anxiety and avoidance, and a growth mindset can produce new patterns in thinking, feeling, and acting that foster psychological resilience.
Drawing from a combination of empirically-based, brief, solution-oriented interventions, this session emphasizes the use of practical strategies that actively involve motivated students to learn and apply skills which create new possibilities in their confidence and competence to change the pattern of anxiety, worry and fears.
Utilizing patient video vignettes and fun, pragmatic exercises, clinicians will gain familiarity in how to target specific, therapeutic goals and in how to consider deliberate, experiential, integrative strategies (utilization, clinical hypnosis, biofeedback, mindfulness, exposure therapy, relaxation techniques [i.e. breath retraining], and other techniques) when designing an interactive plan that maximize students’ engagement and readiness for durable change to strengthen self-regulation, a growth mindset and psychological resilience.
Educational Objectives:
- Identify the primary underlying patterns of anxious youth’s difficulties in discrimination (appraisal), self- regulation, and fixed mindset.
- List two possible specific, therapeutic goals for interventions with anxious youth
- Explain the value of four integrative, interactive, and experiential strategies to consider when designing an intervention plan for anxious youth