Kinesiology is an incredible tool to help you navigate anxiety in children
Types of childhood anxiety
Childhood Anxiety comes in many shapes and sizes and can affect your child in many ways.
1. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
📌 What It Is:
Children with GAD experience excessive, uncontrollable worry about a variety of things—school, health, family, friendships, the future, or even world events.
🔹 Signs & Symptoms:
- Constant “what if” thinking
- Trouble sleeping due to racing thoughts
- Perfectionism and fear of making mistakes
- Frequent stomachaches or headaches
- Seeking excessive reassurance
🔹 How It Affects Them:
- Leads to chronic stress and exhaustion
- Can make school and social interactions overwhelming
2. Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD)
📌 What It Is:
A strong fear of being away from parents or caregivers, beyond what is typical for a child’s age.
🔹 Signs & Symptoms:
- Extreme distress when separated from a caregiver
- Nightmares about separation
- Refusing to sleep alone
- Physical symptoms (nausea, stomach pain) before school or events
- Clinging behavior
🔹 How It Affects Them:
- Can interfere with school attendance and social activities
- May develop into avoidance behaviors (e.g., refusing to go to school)
3. Social Anxiety Disorder
📌 What It Is:
A deep fear of social situations, especially those involving performance or judgment by others.
🔹 Signs & Symptoms:
- Fear of speaking, eating, or reading in front of others
- Avoidance of social interactions or group activities
- Blushing, sweating, or trembling in social situations
- Excessive worry before an event
- Feeling self-conscious or embarrassed easily
🔹 How It Affects Them:
- Can limit friendships and participation in activities
- May result in isolation or loneliness
4. Specific Phobias
📌 What It Is:
An intense, irrational fear of a specific object, situation, or activity (e.g., dogs, needles, heights, darkness).
🔹 Signs & Symptoms:
- Extreme distress when faced with the feared object/situation
- Avoidance behaviors that interfere with daily life
- Crying, panic attacks, or freezing in fear
- Unreasonable need for reassurance
🔹 How It Affects Them:
- Can make everyday experiences challenging
- May limit participation in school or social activities
5. Selective Mutism
📌 What It Is:
A condition where a child who is comfortable speaking at home is unable to speak in specific social settings, like school.
🔹 Signs & Symptoms:
- Completely silent in certain settings but talkative in others
- Using gestures or nodding instead of speaking
- Extreme shyness in new environments
- Avoiding eye contact
🔹 How It Affects Them:
- Can impact academic performance and social development
- Often misunderstood as defiance when it’s really anxiety
6. Panic Disorder
📌 What It Is:
Recurrent panic attacks—sudden episodes of intense fear and physical symptoms like a racing heart, dizziness, or shortness of breath.
🔹 Signs & Symptoms:
- Sudden and overwhelming fear without an obvious trigger
- Racing heart, shaking, dizziness, sweating
- Fear of losing control or dying
- Avoiding situations that might trigger panic
🔹 How It Affects Them:
- Can make children afraid to leave home or try new experiences
- May develop into agoraphobia (fear of certain places)
7. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
📌 What It Is:
Recurring, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) that cause anxiety, often followed by repetitive behaviors (compulsions) to reduce the fear.
🔹 Signs & Symptoms:
- Fear of germs → Excessive handwashing
- Fear of harm coming to a loved one → Repeated checking behaviors
- Needing things to be “just right” → Fixing, counting, or arranging objects
- Distress if routines are interrupted
🔹 How It Affects Them:
- Can consume a child’s time and energy
- May interfere with schoolwork, friendships, and family life.
Effects of childhood anxiety
Childhood anxiety can have significant short- and long-term effects on a child’s emotional, cognitive, social, and physical well-being. Here are some of the main impacts:
Emotional & Psychological Effects:
- Increased stress response: Persistent anxiety keeps the nervous system in a heightened state, leading to chronic stress.
- Low self-esteem: Children with anxiety may doubt their abilities or feel like something is “wrong” with them.
- Depression risk: Anxiety in childhood can increase the risk of developing depression later in life.
- Perfectionism & self-criticism: Many anxious children fear failure and become overly self-critical.
Cognitive & Academic Effects:
- Difficulty concentrating: Anxiety can make it hard for children to focus in school, affecting their learning and memory.
- Avoidance behaviors: Fear of failure or embarrassment may lead to avoiding school, homework, or new challenges.
- Overthinking & indecisiveness: Anxious children may struggle with making decisions or second-guess themselves constantly.
Social Effects:
- Social withdrawal: Anxiety can make social interactions overwhelming, leading to isolation.
- Difficulty forming friendships: Fear of judgment or rejection can lead to avoidance of social situations.
- People-pleasing tendencies: Some anxious children overcompensate by trying to please others, sometimes at their own expense.
Physical Effects:
- Sleep disturbances: Anxiety can cause trouble falling or staying asleep, leading to exhaustion.
- Headaches & stomachaches: Physical symptoms like nausea, tension headaches, and digestive issues are common.
- Weakened immune system: Chronic stress from anxiety can make a child more susceptible to illness.
Long-Term Effects:
- Increased risk of adult anxiety disorders: Unmanaged childhood anxiety can carry into adulthood.
- Chronic stress-related illnesses: Long-term anxiety can contribute to issues like high blood pressure and digestive disorders.
- Difficulty with relationships & career: Fear of failure, avoidance tendencies, or social anxiety may impact personal and professional life.
How to Support an Anxious Child:
- Encourage open conversations about their feelings.
- Teach relaxation techniques like deep breathing or mindfulness.
- Foster a supportive, structured environment.
- Seek professional support if anxiety is interfering with daily life.
How Kinesiology Sessions with Me Can Help a Child with Anxiety
As a kinesiologist, I create a safe, nurturing space where children can regulate their nervous systems, release emotional stress, and build resilience. Anxiety can feel overwhelming for a child, but through kinesiology, I help them reconnect with their inner calm and confidence.
How Kinesiology Can Help Your Child with Anxiety
🌿 1. Calming the Nervous System
Anxious children often have an overactive fight-or-flight response. Through gentle muscle testing, I identify areas of stress in the nervous system and apply balancing techniques to help shift them into a state of calm.
🔹 Techniques I Use:
✔️ Acupressure points to release emotional tension
✔️ Energy balancing to soothe the nervous system
✔️ Brain integration techniques to improve focus and emotional regulation
🧘♀️ 2. Releasing Stored Emotional Stress
Children with anxiety often hold unprocessed emotions in their bodies, which can show up as stomach aches, headaches, tight muscles, or even skin conditions. Kinesiology helps release these stored tensions so they feel lighter and more at ease.
🔹 How I Support This Release:
✔️ Emotional stress diffusion techniques
✔️ Identifying and clearing subconscious fears
✔️ Using color, sound, or movement to shift energy blocks
💡 3. Identifying & Rewiring Negative Beliefs
Many anxious children have deep-seated limiting beliefs like:
❌ “I’m not good enough.”
❌ “I have to be perfect.”
❌ “Bad things are going to happen.”
Through kinesiology, I tap into the subconscious mind to identify these hidden thought patterns and help your child rewire them into positive, empowering beliefs using affirmations, energy corrections, and neuroplasticity techniques.
🔹 How I Help:
✔️ Replacing fear-based thoughts with confidence-building affirmations
✔️ Strengthening their ability to self-soothe
✔️ Supporting a shift from worry to trust
🌍 4. Balancing the Body’s Energy Systems
Anxiety disrupts the natural flow of meridians, chakras, and biofield energy. By using kinesiology to restore balance, children feel more grounded, centered, and emotionally stable.
🔹 Techniques I Use:
✔️ Chakra balancing for emotional stability
✔️ Meridian tracing to release blocked energy
✔️ EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) tapping to reduce fear
🔄 5. Encouraging Mind-Body Awareness & Emotional Expression
Children with anxiety often struggle to identify and express their emotions in a healthy way. In my sessions, I provide a safe space to explore feelings and teach them tools to self-regulate when emotions feel overwhelming.
🔹 How I Help:
✔️ Guiding them to name and understand their feelings
✔️ Teaching simple self-regulation exercises (like tapping or breathwork)
✔️ Encouraging body awareness so they recognize early signs of anxiety
🌟 6. Helping Parents Support Their Child’s Healing
Healing doesn’t stop when the session ends—it continues at home. If needed, I provide customized techniques that help your child maintain their progress and feel supported in their daily life.
🔹 How I Guide You as a Parent:
✔️ Teaching simple energy techniques you can use with your child
✔️ Helping you create strategies to better support your childs positive behaviours.
✔️ Providing emotional support strategies that match your child’s unique needs.
7. Addressing Nutritional & Environmental Factors Can Reduce Your Child’s Anxiety
Anxiety isn’t just emotional—it’s deeply connected to nutrition, gut health, and environmental influences. Many children experience heightened anxiety due to imbalances in their diet, exposure to toxins, or overstimulation from their surroundings. In my kinesiology sessions, I help identify hidden stressors affecting your child’s well-being and provide natural solutions to restore balance.
🍏 The Gut-Brain Connection & Nutritional Deficiencies
Did you know that 90% of serotonin (the “feel-good” neurotransmitter) is produced in the gut? If a child’s digestion is compromised, it can significantly impact their mood, sleep, and ability to cope with stress. Nutritional imbalances can also contribute to anxiety symptoms.
🔹 Common Nutritional Triggers for Childhood Anxiety:
❌ Blood sugar imbalances (leading to mood swings and irritability)
❌ Deficiencies in magnesium, zinc, omega-3s, and B vitamins (key for nervous system regulation)
❌ Artificial additives, preservatives, and food dyes (which can cause hyperactivity and anxiety)
❌ Gluten and dairy sensitivities (linked to inflammation and gut-brain disruptions)
🔹 How I Help:
✔️ Muscle testing to identify food intolerances or deficiencies
✔️ Supporting gut health with natural remedies
✔️ Recommending nutrient-dense foods to promote calmness and focus
🌿 Reducing Environmental Stressors
Children are highly sensitive to their surroundings, and exposure to certain toxins, electromagnetic fields (EMFs), and overstimulating environments can increase anxiety and disrupt sleep patterns.
🔹 Environmental Factors That Can Contribute to Childhood Anxiety:
❌ Exposure to chemicals in cleaning products, skincare, and plastics
❌ High EMF exposure from Wi-Fi, tablets, and mobile phones
❌ Overloaded schedules, too much screen time, and lack of outdoor play
🔹 How I Help:
✔️ Identifying environmental stressors using kinesiology
✔️ Recommending natural alternatives for home and personal care
✔️ Encouraging grounding practices (time in nature, barefoot walking, and mindfulness)
💤 Sleep & Anxiety: Creating a Restful Routine
Poor sleep is a major trigger for anxiety in children. If a child is struggling to fall asleep or waking frequently, their body isn’t getting the rest it needs to regulate emotions properly.
🔹 Common Sleep Disruptors:
❌ Blue light exposure before bed (disrupts melatonin production)
❌ High cortisol levels from stress, sugar, or overstimulation
❌ Nutrient deficiencies (like magnesium, which helps with relaxation)
🔹 How I Help:
✔️ Balancing the nervous system for better sleep patterns
✔️ Supporting natural melatonin production through diet & lifestyle
✔️ Teaching relaxation techniques to ease bedtime anxiety
What Makes My Kinesiology Sessions Different?
🌿 Holistic Approach: Addressing anxiety on physical, emotional, and energetic levels.
🧡 Safe & Nurturing Space: A gentle environment where your child feels truly seen and supported.
🔮 Empowerment-Focused: Giving your child the tools to navigate their emotions with confidence.
🎵 Personalized Sessions: Whether incorporating talk therapy, energy work, sound, movement, or creative expression, I tailor each session to your child’s needs.
The Outcome? A Happier, More Resilient Child!
✅ More confidence & self-trust
✅ Improved emotional regulation
✅ Fewer physical symptoms (headaches, stomachaches, etc.)
✅ Greater ease in school & social settings
✅ A deep sense of inner peace & empowerment