BAA

1. Being Anxiety Aware
Seminar – Warm –up
Activity
• During the last week what made you
start to worry. Or what events started
your son or daughter worrying.
• What was the core problem?
• Why couldn’t you find an answer?

2. Problem How did you worry? How was it resolved? (If it was)

3. "Anxiety keeps you safe
from the false threats of
today by making all your
tomorrows much less
safe. It keeps you from
growing and building the
natural resilience
humans have as a birth-
right.
We are much stronger
than we can ever
imagine. Our future self
and our planet needs the
best version of oursevles
turning up everyday."
Connect with Action Your Potential’s at Web;
Parent Support Service
Twitter: @ActionPotential
FB: Facebook.com/ActionYourPotential
E: actionyourpotential@gmail.com
T: 07590 698701

4. Seminar 2 - Being Anxiety
Aware

5. Don’t forget – St Richard’s Parent Support Service website

6. “Once the mind is
stretched to a new
idea, it never
returns to its
original shape.”
Oliver
Wendell Holmes This seminar will change
your life if you let it

7. What kind of
clam are you?

8. Who am I?
Deputy head with 25 years experience
Acting headteacher
SENDCO
MA in education
Studying neuroscience & psychology for 20
years
Parent of 20 and 18 yo, 20 yo has ASD
21st century parent
Used these strategies 1:1 as a SENDCO with
families
Biology teacher

9. One small company.
One extraordinary
mission.
To help parents and
schools to transform
children’s life chances
through strategies
that work with the
grain of the brain.

10. Reality Check

11. Prologoue – Key
Concepts To Help
Steps on a journey
to having a
different
relationship with
our emotions, in
particular, fear.

12. What happens next…

13. We all unique & different…and yet…

14. …the processes, systems, rules & responses wired into our brains by natural selection means
we’re much more similar than we imagine.

15. Notice how you’re
resonating to this
material, no offence
intended but that doesn’t
mean your low brain
won’t take offence…

16. Authenticity

17. Common Humanity –
We’re All In This
Together, We All
Experience Life This
Way.

18. A 4 Step Process

19. Step 1 – Learning
Look at the neuroscience &
psychology of anxiety

20. Step 2 – Exploring
Taking the theory &
applying to our own & our
sons or daughters
experience

21. Step 3 – Practicing
Building resilience,
awareness & attitudes in
readiness to try some
changes

22. Step 4 – Experimenting
Using DLEs, tweaks and nudges to change &
challenge the fear that keeps us trapped.

23. Our thoughts and feelings are
electric impulses moving across
connected neurones in our heads

24. We All Have Choice
Between stimulus & response
lies choice

25. Neuroplasticity means we can grow & change our brains

26. But…it also means previous
neural architecture can trap
us in repeat patterns of
unhelpful behaviour…

27. Behaviour Changes As Neural
Architecture Does
At the speed of a plant

28. Behaviour Change Is Slow, It Begins With Awareness

29. Change begins with some
failures…and we mustn’t use guilt,
shame or re-crimination on
ourselves or our children.

30. What Is Anxiety Like In Your Body & Your House

31. Empathy is the secret sauce that helps us
understand anxiety, delve beneath it & help
people out the other side.

32. How Does Their (or Your)
Anxiety Impact On You?

33. We are the average
of the 5 people we
spend the most
time with. Carer-
givers are our
models for how to
manage life’s
complexities.

34. LEARNING
Chapter 1 – The Neuroscience Of Anxiety
What’s anxiety for?
Why so negative?
The kit in our heads that causes anxiety.

35. Our brain wasn’t built by the modern
world or for it. It was designed for a
different purpose & lots of complexities
flow from that simple fact.

36. A Quick Tour

37. The Amygdala: Threat Assessment Central

38. The Pre-Frontal Cortex

39. The Hippocampus

40. Meet Ugh
Ugh
McGrowl
Ugh – Chief
Of The
Cavemen

41. 600 million people
worldwide suffer
depression &
anxiety…
YOU ARE NOT
ALONE!

42. Survival Brain can be triggered by hundreds of false positives in the 21st century…one example
distance

43. What are emotions for?

44. Avoid…

45. Approach…

47. Activity: The Ups and Downs
Of The Week…
How’s it been?

48. High Brain &
Low Brain
(Upstairs
Downstairs)

49. High or Upstairs Brain In A Nutshell
High
brain
goals and
attitudes:
Likes new ideas and challenges.
Is curious.
Enjoys travel and engaging problems that make it work hard.
Sees others as collaborators or healthy competition.
Sees mistakes as chances to learn.
Thinks you have skills which you can develop and deficits you can change.
Has a balanced view and sees many shades of grey, not just black and white.

50. Low or Downstairs Brain In A Nutshell
Low Brain goals and attitudes:
• Wants to be safe.
• Loves drama, but hates bad feelings & feeling uncomfortable.
• Sees others as threats to self-esteem or status.
• Doesn’t like challenges or making mistakes.
• Thinks you’re basically great so why would you need to get better. Or thinks
you’re absolutely irredeemably horrible.
• Sees everything in black and white.
• Reacts first, regrets later.
• Fight or Flight or Freeze or Flock

51. Become aware of which bit
of the brain is responding,
the survival brain is a day-
trader and doesn’t give
good answers…

52. Which Bit Of Our Brain Are We Using Moment to Moment?

53. Low Brain & Getting In Your Own Way (GIYOW)

54. Mutant Freeze Response
Avoid homework, study, school or any conversations about them.

55. Freeze - Procrastination

56. Mutant Fight Response
Respond aggressively to parents, teachers, other children in school

57. Fight -Perfectionism or Workaholism

58. Mutant Flock Response
Get together with other disaffected students, respond anti-socially as a group

59. Mutant Flight Response
Leave school, leave conversations about school, leave classrooms

60. Learning feeds
the upstairs
brain but can get
stamped as a
threat by the
downstairs brain

61. Your Upstairs & Downstairs Brains Do Different Jobs

62. Parasympathetic Nervous System

63. Recap
Amygdala
High & Low Brain
Low Brain’s – 4F’s
(adrenaline, cortisol)
Emotions approach & avoid
Emotions weighted towards
the negative
Sympathetic &
Parasympathetic nervous
system
Our survival brain in a
nutshell

64. Automatic
Negative
Thoughts

65. Exploring
Chapter 2 – Anxiety
Equation (How Anxiety
Impacts On Thoughts &
Feelings)
Fear + Avoidance = Anxiety

66. The Many
Tentacled
Beast Of
Anxiety

67. Emotional Rigidity

68. Cognitive Rigidity

69. Emotional
Agility

70. Cognitive Agility

71. Vaccinations prepare our
physiological immune system

72. Our
psychological
immunity
grows
through
building
coping skills in
response to
complexity

73. Life is
uncomfortable
sometimes, in
experiencing
uncomfortablenes
s & coming out the
other side we see
we can do it &
literally build these
skills through
structures in our
heads…

74. Managing
uncomfortable
emotions
prepare our
psychological
immune
system

75. Niche Construction
– A process where
an organism alter
it’s own
environment which
can changes it’s
biological trajectory.

76. Anxiety Can
Make Us
Snowplough
Parents,
Clearing A
Path Ahead
Of Our Child

77. Which
means our
children
don’t get the
opportunity
to grow the
coping
skills…

78. How anxiety grows (it literally does grow) through some basic
mental habits (genetic, environment or both)

79. PTSD: Post
Traumatic
Stress
Disorder

80. PTSD & Sleep

81. We’re
halfway…

82. Habit definition:
Automatic routine
which happens
below conscious
thought

83. The 13 Habits of Anxious Minds
How Many Do You Score?

84. Habit 1:
Negative
emotions are
difficult to
bear and
should be
avoided or
pushed away

85. Emotional
Suppression
doesn’t work

86. Buried or suppressed emotions amplify

87. Solution: Building our emotional palette
1. Emotion tracking, morning, afternoon & evening – what,
why and where?
2. Use music to put handles on emotions through creation
of playlists
3. Tag avoid and approach emotions, work out their source
and how you noticed them
4. Build the neural architecture of mindfulness

88. Habit 2: Note
Noticing Sensory
Overload &
Cognitive Load

89. Raise awareness of sensory & cognitive load issues by rating days in
advance

90. Habit 3: Niche Construction
Anxiety extends beyond the person
& starts to control people in the
environment.
This niche construction stops
natural development of coping skills

91. Solution: Build opportunities
for emotional self-regulation
1. Use grounding exercises to calm down
2. Practice mindfulness daily to calm down
3. Turn on parasympathetic nervous system
4. Go to quiet, calm place and chill down
5. Create space when feeling overwhelmed
6. Self-soothing is a skill & as the secure base
we model that best for our child.

92. Habit 4:
Unhelpful
Expectations

93. Fight -Perfectionism or Workaholism

94. Perfectionism is about
avoiding shame or
judgement,
perfectionist usually
have a loud negative
voice

95. Realistic
expectations -
how to set
them.

96. Habit 5: Hypervigilance leading to catastrophizing

97. Solution to Catastrophizing Is Gratitude- make Gratitude a Habit

98. Solutions To Hypervigilance – Problem-Catch
1. Note
2. Analyze
3. Release
4. Repeat

99. Problem How did you worry? How was it resolved? (If it was)

100. Habit 6:
Rumination

101. Solutions to Rumination:
Emotional Hygiene
1. Practice emotional
hygiene, notice, accept &
share emotions.
2. Be mindful of where you
are in your head
3. Manage mind wandering
through music & emotion
playlists
4. Be on the look out for
self-pity
5. Distract

102. Habit 7:
Cognitive
Rigidity, Carry
out same
thoughts,
expecting
different results

103. Solutions to Cognitive
Rigidity
Turning on parasympathetic
nervous system
Self-soothing and self-
regulatory activities
Stimulus – PAUSE - Response

104. Habits 8: Advice
Refusal

105. Solution to Advice Refusal, Reduce Choice, Carrot & Stick – Incentivize Advice Taking

106. Habits 9: V Poor Problem-Solving

107. Solution to Exponential Growth Of Problems
Make sure you’re thinking with the right bit of your brain

108. Become aware of which bit
of the brain is responding,
the survival brain is a day-
trader and doesn’t give
good answers…

109. Habits 9: Day-
Trading

110. Reminders of Consequences of Avoidance
What will happen if I don’t do face this now?
Stick over their desk.
Stick it on the Fridge.

111. Habits 10:
Blame

112. The solution to
blame is
vulnerability &
accountability…

113. Habit 11: Toxic Self-Blame &
Shame

114. Solution to Toxic Self-Blame: Empathy & Vulnerability

115. Habits 12:
Exceptionalisation,
It’s Only Me Who Is
Like This

116. 600 million people
worldwide suffer
depression &
anxiety…

117. Habits 13: Change Is Bad Bad Bad!!! (Cognitive rigidity in disguise)

118. Chapter 3 (Practicing) –
Growing Change In An
Anxious Brain

119. Deliberate Practice
10,000 hours of deliberate
practice to become
exceptional at something

120. Deliberate Rest
Deep play
Latent processing Mind wandering
Reading
Helping others
Mindfulness
12,500 hours of deliberate rest

121. Sleep
30,000 hours of
good sleep

122. The 12 Rocks of Well-Being
Sleep (8-9 hours for teenagers)
Exercise – 20 minutes a day.
Eat healthily (complex carbs, low
refined sugar, keep hydrated.
Mindfulness (practice being in
the present moment everyday)
Mind wandering (20 mins)
Emotions (Notice them
particular the difficult ones.
Accept them, share your
thoughts and feelings with
someone you trust.).

123. The 12 Rocks of Well-Being
Walk outside in nature (15 – 20 mins)
Listen to music
Gratitude & kindness. Express both
each day.
Connect meaningfully with friends
and family.
Engage in activities that are important
to your life purpose.
Learn something new.

124. Daily Life Experiments (DLEs)
How to work with the grain of the brain to;
1. Develop awareness
2.Gain insight
3.Develop a tweak hypothesis
4. Look for piggy-backing opportunities
5. Write a clear goal

125. Daily Life Experiments (DLEs)
How to work with the grain of the
brain to;
4. Run a daily life experiment,
testing the tweak hypothesis
5. Reflect, review, tweak & repeat

126. Because…
Any ideas of what you’d
like to tweak for you or
your son or daughter?
Write out a clear goal.

127. Developing The
Emotional Palette
Through DLEs &
Using Music

128. Practices To
Build Your
Challenge
Resilience
How Many Do
You Practice?

129. Practice 1: Do Your Rocks
Everyday

130. Practice 2: Use music to develop your emotional palette

131. Practice 3: Use noting to
track emotional ups and
downs and trigger spot

132. Practice 4: Go Low Brain Response Spotting

133. Practice 5: Map Your Zones - Comfort

134. Mapping Your Zones -Underwhelmed!

135. Mapping Your Zones - Overwhelmed!

136. Mapping Your Zones - Frazzled and Burnt Out!

137. Mapping Your Zones - Whelmed!

138. Where is your son or
daughter a lot of the
day?
Flow = Whelmed!

139. Mapping Your Zones – Growth (A Little Bit Uncomfortable)

140. Practice 6: Measure Daily Emotional and Cognitive Load

141. Practice 7 –
Develop Calm
Down
Routines
(A Home & A
School & An
Out & About
One)

142. Calm-Down Routines
These contain 4 or 5 elements that
calm and run for between 5 – 10 mins.
Breathing
Calm sitting space
Calm playlist
Drawing – Doodling
Mentally rehearsed routines e.g.
grounding exercises

143. Experimenting
Chapter 4 – Building Anxiety Challenges

144. Introducing
Challenge
Sweet-Spots
or The
Learning
Zone

145. Step One - Identify A Challenge

146. Step Two – Write A SMART GOAL for your
Challenge Sweet-Spot
Be specific about what you’re going to do
and what success looks like

147. Examples of Smart Goals
I am going to build in a 30 minute study slot every evening for 4
days a week and one day at the weekend
I am going to research a new meal and I am going to cook it and
eat it this week
I am going to walk through the lunch hall noticing my emotional
and cognitive load and then use my calm-down routine to see
how I did

148. Upstairs & Downstairs Brain – Give them characters and develop
awareness of which bit of your brain is responding, if it one of the F’s it’s
the low brain.

149. If my Inner Poppy’s antsy I’m not going to be thinking with the right bit of my brain…

150. He gives me cognitive flex

151. Feed Your High Brain With A Kind,
Caring Affirming Reason To Make All Of
These Efforts
“My brain’s anxiety system is made to
keep me safe. In the 21st century it goes
off with lots of false positives. With
kindness towards myself and curiosity I
can introduce it to new challenges. This
will trigger some emotions of
uncomfortableness. But by accepting
them & using my calm-down routines &
building my resilience through
deliberate rest and practice I can tackle
anything life will throw at me because
my brain in neutrally plastic.”

152. Experimental Kit

153. Keep a
Challenge
Sweet-Spot
Journal –
Model It
With Them

154. You are stronger than
you can possibly
imagine…go on, walk
through

155. Any Questions