This week Ms. Taigel and I were lucky enough to attend the Positive Education New Zealand Conference in Christchurch.

Positive Education combines the science of ‘Wellbeing’ with the best educational practices from teaching. Dr Emma Woodward, from The Child Psychology Service presented an interesting workshop titled “Teaching in the Age of Anxiety”. She pointed out the differences between feeling stressed and under pressure, feeling anxious and having a professionally diagnosed anxiety disorder. Dr Woodward emphasised that feeling anxious is a normal emotion experienced by all of us at different times and in different situations. When that anxious feeling comes and goes based on being in different situations, we call that “transient anxiety”. It disappears again after the race or the speech or the test.

Dr Woodward also suggested that sometimes we can mislabel what it is happening and we use the word anxiety, instead of using the words feeling stressed or under pressure. So what can we do to effectively support someone who is experiencing anxiety in a particular situation? The main goal is to try to calm the person down.

Dr Woodward suggested directing the person’s attention towards the physical environment, for example asking the person to name five things they can see or four things they can hear. This can create a mental distraction and activate a different pathway in the brain. She also suggested that we encourage individuals to focus on slowing down their breathing and inhale for four counts and breathe out for four counts. When someone is feeling overwhelmed by anxious feelings, the emotional part of their brain hijacks the thinking part of their brain. Verbal reasoning and having long discussions may be ineffective at this time. Disassociating from the space or the people around them is another strategy. Some people just need to be left alone in a calm and safe space, away from stimulation, to allow the emotional part of their brain to calm down and let their thinking brain come back ‘on-line’. Practising these techniques may help us to reduce our own stress or anxiety levels and that of those around us.