🌈 When You Feel Worried: A Guide for Kids

Sometimes you get a funny feeling in your tummy. Maybe your heart goes fast. Maybe you can't stop thinking about one thing, even when you want to.

That feeling is called worry. Everybody gets it. You are not broken, and you are not the only one.

What worry actually is

Worry is your brain trying to keep you safe.

A long, long time ago, humans had to watch out for actual dangerous things — like an animal that might eat you. Your brain got very good at spotting danger and getting your body ready to run. Fast heart. Quick breathing. Tight tummy.

That system is still in there. The problem is that it can't always tell the difference between a real danger and a worry-thought. So it turns on for a spelling test, or a sleepover, or a thing you said to someone at school three days ago.

Your body is doing its job. It's just doing it at a slightly silly time.

Worry is a feeling, not a fact

This is the important bit, so here it is on its own:

Just because you feel worried does not mean something bad is going to happen.

Feelings feel very true. That's what makes them hard. But a feeling is weather, not a fact. It moves through and it changes, even when it doesn't feel like it will.

Four things you can try

1. Name it

Say it out loud, or in your head: "I am feeling worried right now."

This sounds too easy to work. It does work. When you put a name on a feeling, it gets a bit smaller — like turning a light on in a dark room and seeing that the shape was just your dressing gown.

You can even say what kind: worried, nervous, scared, jumpy, fizzy.

2. Find five things

Look around wherever you are and find:

• 5 things you can see
• 4 things you can touch
• 3 things you can hear
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

This pulls your brain out of the worry and back into the room you're actually in. You can do it anywhere, and nobody can tell you're doing it.

3. Breathe out for longer than you breathe in

Breathe in while you count to 4. Breathe out while you count to 6.

The long breath out is the part that matters — it's the signal that tells your body the danger is over.

Try tracing your finger around your hand while you do it. In up the finger, out down the finger.

4. Hold something

Something soft, or squishy, or smooth. A toy, a jumper sleeve, a stone in your pocket, your own hands squeezed together.

Holding something gives your body something real to do instead of getting ready to run. Lots of grown-ups do this too — they just do it with their car keys and pretend they aren't.

When to tell a grown-up

Try the four things. They help a lot of the time.

But some worries are too big to carry on your own, and that is not because you're doing it wrong. Some things are just meant to be shared.

Tell a grown-up you trust if:

• The worry keeps coming back and won't go away
• You can't sleep because of it
• You don't want to go to school
• You feel worried nearly all the time
• Something happened that you don't want to think about
• You feel unsafe

A grown-up you trust could be a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a school counsellor, an aunt or uncle, or a friend's mum.

You don't have to say it well. You don't need the right words. You can just say:

"Can I talk to you about something? I'm not sure how to say it."

That's enough. That's a whole complete way to start.

One more thing

Feeling worried does not mean you're weak, or a baby, or too sensitive. Brave people feel worried all the time. Being brave isn't not being scared — it's doing the thing while you're scared, or asking for help while you're scared.

You're doing better than you think.