This article is under construction. Please check back for updates.
Anxiety is information. It is a form of feedback from our bodies and minds that something is amiss. It ranges from mild to overwhelming. When it milder it is often referred to as “stress.” Stress was not applied to human beings until the early 20th century. Before that it was used in physics and engineering. It referred to physical pressure, pull or other force exerted on one thing by another[1]. In the context of our experience we think of “stress” as psychological pressure. This pressure evokes a counter reaction in us we refer to as the fight-or-flight response.
Anxiety is a normal part of life. It becomes a problem when it becomes chronic, too strong or exerts control over how we live. Most of the time, it is just part of our lives. We hardly notice until it is gone somehow. Then we are pleasantly surprised.
Anxiety is a reaction to a demand. Demands such as how to behave, school pressure, work, relationships, news, finances, as well as good things. All these things apply some “pressure or force.” One way to think about anxiety is that the demand exceeds the ability to handle it. Whether this is biological or psychological the result is distress.
Learning to manage life’s pressures or anxiety is one of the most basic and essential aspects of life. We envy people who appear to have less stress and anxiety. Fortunately for all us "enviers" there is no such thing as an anxiety free life. We tend to compare our "inside" to other people's "outside" and think they have some secret that we don't have. That being said there are ways of thinking and living that will reduce overall stress and anxiety.
The experience of anxiety is not the same for everyone. Research suggests that many people are more likely to experience anxiety for reasons such as heredity and temperament[2]. For some people it is much easier to be calm, relaxed and easy-going and for others it is much harder.
Sometime a distinction is made between anxiety and fear. Fear has a specific target, it more concrete, it is a reaction to a danger that is present. Anxiety is more about the possibility of something, a "what if." It is a response to a setting where something could go wrong; more preparing for danger than reacting to it. If you are anxious you might know what you are worried about but sometimes you don't. It can be harder to "put your finger on it".
A section of the brain referred to as the Amygdala is involved in governing anxiety. Another section called the prefrontal cortex is involving in mitigating anxiety. One theory is that these two parts of the brain are not communicating effectively in some people. Here is a brief summary of this by neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux.
If anxiety reaches a “critical mass” the result is an anxiety disorder. If, as I mentioned, anxiety is on a continuum then an anxiety disorder is a point along this continuum where the symptoms are too intense, last too long, interfere with normal function significantly and resist attempts to stop it.
[2] Rapee, R.M., Schnierring, C. A., Hudson, J. L. (2009) Anxiety Disorders During Childhood and Adolescence: Origins and Treatment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology Vol. 5: 311-341. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.032408.153628
Anxiety vs. Shyness in Kids
What is the difference between social anxiety and shyness in kids?
This question was the subject of some revealing research. According to the authors, they believe that shyness and social phobia are on a continuum. Shyness and social phobia share some characteristics but the symptoms are worse with social anxiety or phobia. (I will be using social phobia and social anxiety interchangeably.)
First, the similarities: Both shy and anxious people “think” of social situations as being difficult to extremely difficult. Both imagine those situations with negative thoughts. Both “feel” some degree of anxiety or distress thinking about and leading up to social situations (anticipation). Both report anxiety during conversation and some problems with voice quality.
Some differences: There are some shy people who are not anxious about social situations; they are reserved and just prefer to be alone. When there is anxiety, socially anxious individuals may have higher levels of anxiety. There is evidence that the socially anxious may over-report their anxiety. Individuals that are shy tend to be more accurate appraising their anxiety. For the socially anxious, this may be because there is much more self-focus and monitoring of distress. This may increase the concern that the anxiety will lead to embarrassment. In the study, 100% of socially anxious individuals reported symptoms such as racing heart, sweating, stomach upset, blushing and trembling compared to 65% of the shy group.
One of the primary differences is that individuals with social phobia or anxiety avoid social situations because of the anxiety. Those struggling with social anxiety also have significant problems with social gaze, conversation flow and length of responses compared to shy and non-shy groups. Socially anxious individuals also reported the most negative cognitions.
This research suggests that treatment for social phobia or anxiety would benefit from focus on the following:
· Decreased physical arousal by employing relaxation techniques, lifestyle changes and/or medical intervention.
· Practice with specific social skills such as eye contact, joining the flow of conversation, voice quality and increasing the amount of words.
· Reducing negative thinking such as mind-reading and predicting embarrassment.
· Gradual exposure to difficult social situations.
For the complete article about shyness in kids follow this link:
Differentiating Social Phobia from Shyness. Nancy A. Heiser, Samuel M. Turner, Deborah C. Beidel, and Roxann Roberson-Nay. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 April 1.
Normal Anxiety in Young Children
Is My Child's Anxiety Normal?
Everyone goes through a series of developmental stages throughout their entire lifespan. Characteristic of childhood development are certain kinds of fears that any child is likely to experience and are part of a developmental process that includes normal anxiety in young children and adolescents. Typically children grow out of these fears as they mature. Yet, sometimes this doesn't happen and then treatment is needed. Generally speaking the most common fears for these stages are as follows.
Age 1 - 3
fear of strangers-evokes withdrawal, crying, clinging
being neglected
loud unexpected noise
Age 3 - 5
new and unfamiliar environment
threat to safety and security
dogs
bugs (such as spiders and roaches)
the dark
imaginary characters such as monsters
Age 6 - 10
school
dangers outside of home
realization that not always protected
stranger danger
illnesses
tragic events in the media
lightning and thunder
personal safety
Age 10 - 13
academic and athletic performance
personal and social success
making and keeping friends
social criticism
environmental danger like thunderstorms, earthquakes and floods
parents and loved ones getting hurt or dying
Generally, younger children are afraid of physical events and imaginary creatures, while older children are more fearful of social issues. There are some fears that cross all developmental stages. Fears related to illnesses, pain, medical and dental procedures, doctor visits, natural disasters, war and any kind of traumatic event are likely to evoke anxiety regardless of the developmental stage. These stages should not be considered as absolute. Instead they provide a general guideline. Developmentally some kids may be ahead or behind a couple years and that's unlikely to be an issue given the normal anxiety of young children.
The following references provided the research data used for part of this article:
Beidel, D. C., & Turner, M. (2005). Childhood anxiety disorders: a guide to research and treatment. New York: Routledge.
Wagner, A. P. (2005). Worried no more: help and hope for anxious children. Rochester: Lighthouse Press.
Anxiety Treatment for Children
Anxiety Children
Getting the Best Help for Child Anxiety
Anxiety disorders for children are more widespread than you might imagine. In fact, they are the most common psychiatric problem for kids, as much as 1 in 5 children by some reports. Anxiety treatment for children can help prevent issues like low achievement, damaged friendships, and lack of emotional maturity. It can lead to developing other kinds of anxiety, depression, behavior problems and substance use. Unfortunately, these disorders are frequently not discovered or treated.
Effective treatment for anxiety children is available but sometimes it is hard for parents to find, afford or even know where to turn for help. Briefly we want to describe what the research has shown to be the best practice for getting your child help.
There are lot of theories and approaches to psychotherapy and treatment. Not all of them lend themselves to research and some helpful approaches may be overlooked in the literature. That being said, the research is pretty overwhelming in favor of a few options. Option one is medication. For obvious reasons, many parents may be reluctant to try this first, if at all. We have written a few posts about it and will address it further in additions to our site. In the meantime, here is a useful link. Second, the type of therapy that has consistently shown results is called Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT). We will explain this in some detail below. The third option is self-help. Usually this is based upon CBT and has been rapidly growing to include books, online programs and at-home treatment options. The Turnaround program is a recent innovation in this type of treatment.
So what is CBT? We have described it generally here. Our purpose here is to describe the treatment aspects of this approach. On this page in our site we describe the 3 core elements of anxiety. Briefly they are: 1) Physical: hyper-arousal called the fight or flight response, 2) Mind: the thinking errors that activate or increase the physical arousal and 3) Actions: how a person tries to solve the problem presented by anxiety. (In the Turnaround Program we call these 1) Yucky Feelings, 2) Whacky Thoughts and 3) Zany Responses.) We will describe the treatment using these same 3 features.
1. Physical: Calming down the hyper-arousal. Effective treatment requires education. These intense emotions are scary. It is important that a child understands that these are normal and exactly what should be happening when the body prepares for danger. The problem is that in anxiety disorders there is a false alarm: a normal response but the wrong time. Next, treatment consists of skills training in things like diaphragmatic breathing, relaxation, and learning to tolerate distress. Exercise, healthy diet and enough sleep are also important factors. All of these skills must be practiced and taught. Therapy involves helping a child do these things correctly, consistently and for a long enough time.
2. Mind: Changing how one thinks about problems. Thinking problems are identified while more accurate and successful ways to approach issues are discussed and implemented. This is sometimes difficult with children because their ability to think abstractly is still developing. This takes place in some sort of interaction with either the therapist or self-help program. Various techniques are applied such as story telling, drawing, making lists of pros and cons, etc. in order to help a child understand when they are thinking in ways that interfere with adaptive coping.
3. Actions: Changing how one responds to anxious thoughts and feelings. A natural reaction to fear is avoidance. Kids are educated about how they are avoiding and how it actually makes the problem worse. The next step is developing a step-by-step plan to gradually face their fears. This is one of the hardest steps because it requires a child to ignore how they are feeling and face the fear. Because this results in a temporary increase in anxiety it is important that concerns, expectations and resistance are carefully addressed. This is called exposure and involves extended periods of experiencing anxiety without the usual attempts to fix or escape it. We have several posts about it you can read here. Anxiety treatment for children is not for the faint of heart!
These are very brief descriptions and we will continue to blog and provide resources to help parents better understand treatment options in anxiety for children.
Types of Anxiety in Kids
Anxiety | Symptoms | in | Kids
Anxiety Symptoms in Kids - On the Rise
Anxiety symptoms in kids have been steadily on the rise for the last 50 years. In any given year, anxiety in kids is at least 15%. Some studies have this number as high as 20% or more. Anxiety as often as not has its start in childhood. Addressing it during childhood can prevent it from lingering into adolescence and adulthood.
Common Characteristics of Anxiety Disorders
On the right are links for you to explore specific types of anxiety and the symptoms associated with them. Anxiety disorders share a set of common characteristics. If each of these circles represent a type of anxiety, you can see that for the most part they overlap. The part that overlaps is common to anxiety disorders and the part that doesn't distinguishes one type from the other. The common components are 1) Physical: the fight or flight response, 2) Mind: the thinking errors that activates or increases the physical reaction and 3) Actions: how a person tries to solve the problem presented by anxiety. In the Turnaround Program we call these 1) Yucky Feelings, 2) Whacky Thoughts and 3) Zany Responses.
1. Physical: Fight or Flight (Yucky Feelings)
This is when the body goes postal for anxiety kids. Your nervous system has launched an amazing chemical and neurological network designed to temporarily make you a “super-you”. It keeps us out of trouble. We need something to compensate for all the dumb stuff we might do. Seriously, thank God for this or none of us would have made it to age five. This arousal is often referred to as a "fight or flight" response. It is an action of the sympathetic nervous system. In our program we personified this part of the body with a character named Krank. With anxiety disorders, Krank has fired up in response to false alarms. There is nothing wrong with it, believe it or not. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do -- just at the wrong time!
2. Mind: Thinking Errors (Whacky Thoughts)
This is the mental stuff connected to fear. It can be beliefs, assumptions, expectations, images, words, sounds, etc. We are interpreting our lives as we go. (What is important, what is not, what is beautiful, what I need to do, what does that gesture mean, etc.) Our "thinking world" can be everything from elaborate multi-layered epics to transient flashes easily forgotten (this is why sometimes you do not know why you are feeling scared). Our minds are capable of stunning creativity. If you think in a certain way, your nervous system will feel it like its real. That is why certain thoughts cause anxiety. Your child may be terrified but from your vantage point there is no danger. It is because their thoughts have activated the fight or flight response and that “trumps” everything. It feels real to them.
3. Action/Reaction: Attempts to Solve the Problem (Zany Responses)
Fear demands a response. Surprisingly, some responses that seem so normal, reasonable, legitimate make the anxiety much worse. Paradox! Fear can really make a compelling case. Shouldn't we avoid things that are dangerous? Unfortunately, the "problem" fear is based on pure imagination. That kind of fear, “what-if” fear, needs faced because it is not real. By “what-if” we mean things like “what if I panic in the store", "what if I touch the doorknob and get sick” and so forth; things that are just scary possibilities. When you do not face the fear, the strength of the imagined danger actually grows. It gets scarier. So in an attempt to protect ourselves, we avoid these fears by obsessing, avoiding or creating rituals. But this kind of avoidance or control works just enough but it backfires and makes things worse. Anxiety in kids and adults works the same way.
These three components mix to form the perfect storm of a disorder in anxiety kids. No one chooses to have an anxiety disorder. Actually the strange symptoms are part on an effort to SOLVE the problem! What happens is that instead of solving the problem the symptoms become part of the problem. They work just enough to keep your child stuck. Panic works. If you listen to it, they won't have panic at school because they won't go to school. So if your child is displaying strange and intense anxiety symptoms they are not trying to BE a problem, they are trying to SOLVE a problem, just not in the right way. This forms the basic components of anxiety symptoms in kids.
The Science behind Turnaround
Driven to Achieve Two Goals
When we started working on the Turnaround Project, we kept two goals in mind with everything we did:
It had to speak directly to anxious children
It had to work
We knew that certain treatment protocols worked very successfully with anxiety no matter the age of the client. From the research and our experience we knew that Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was clearly thebest practice for treating anxiety. Turnaround is based on this foundation. Our contribution was making it relevant and clear to anxious children. What follows is a brief description of CBT and how it works.
What is CBT?
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) states that there are both thinking (cognitive) and behavioral processes that can cause and maintain anxiety. Life is full of obstacles and how you think and act in response to these difficulties can cause and maintain anxiety. For example, if a child is criticized at school and he thinks to himself, "I'm just plain stupid!", he will then feel terrible and behave in ways that support this belief. For example, he may avoid any situation that could cause criticism. CBT works to correct these errors in thinking and behavior through various techniques.
How the Cognitive Part Works
During cognitive therapy, an anxious child works together with a therapist (or training program like Turnaround) to identify thoughts that cause anxiety. For example, a child struggling with separation anxiety might imagine something terrible happening to their mom. This thought can immediately cause anxious feelings and behavior. These kinds of thoughts are addressed and changed to more accurate and adaptive thoughts as a result of the treatment. For more detailed explanations of how one's thinking (cognitive distortions) can cause anxiety, click on these links- one and two.
How the Behavioral Part Works
The behavioral aspect of CBT focuses on changing the behaviors associated with child anxiety. An anxious child believes that their behavioral strategies help them, and the two biggest strategies used with anxiety are control and avoidance. Rather than helping, these actions reinforce the problem making the child anxiety even stronger. Treating the behavioral side of the problem therefore involves what is known as the "rule of opposites" or doing the opposite of what the anxiety demands. For example, rather than avoiding something the anxious child is encouraged to voluntarily face it. Another example is rather than breathing rapidly the patient is taught to regulate her breathing to prevent hyperventilation. Treatments include relaxation training, exposure and response prevention to name a few. (click links for more info)
Bringing them together
In Cognitive-Behavioral treatment these treatment protocols are brought together in a directed process that can be customized depending on the disorder. For example with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) the focus may be on cognitive restructuring. With obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) the focus is on exposure and response prevention. CBT is psycho-educational, structured and measurable.
Core components of CBT
Here is a summary from the Effective Child Therapy website of what is included in a comprehensive CBT treatment program for child anxiety.
Emotions Education and Relaxation. Parents and anxious children are taught about the interrelated physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components of anxiety. Activities help demonstrate different emotions, body postures, and cognitive and physiological correlates. Progressive relaxation training helps anxious children develop awareness and control over their own physiological and muscular responses to anxiety.
Cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring helps anxious children identify and replace distorted cognitions with more adaptive beliefs. Basic cognitive strategies include identifying and reducing negative self-talk, generating positive self-statements, thought challenging (weighing evidence for and against), testing both dysfunctional and adaptive beliefs, and creating a coping plan for feared situations.
Imaginal and in-vivo exposure. The goals of exposures are to encourage approach behavior by positioning the anxious child in a previously feared or challenging situation. The anxious child attempts to complete tasks in a graded "fear hierarchy" such that the child experiences early success before attempting greater challenges. During individual exposures, anxious children is encouraged to use any number of coping skills, including relaxation exercises, coping thoughts (challenging anxious thoughts with more positive, realistic thoughts), concrete problem-solving, or rehearsal of desirable skills.
Parent Interventions. Parents may have their own preconceptions about the threatening nature of child anxiety and they may not know how best to encourage a child to cope with anxiety. CBT provides parents education about the risks of continued avoidance and guidance in managing their own anxiety. CBT may also impart basic parenting strategies (e.g., positive/negative reinforcement, planned ignoring, modeling, reward planning) to facilitate the practice of therapy skills in the home.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. ERP is a variant of traditional exposures wherein exposures target specific obsessions and repetitive compulsions. The child is exposed to a stimulus that triggers anxiety and intrusive thoughts and is helped to resist performing the compulsions meant to relieve the anxiety. Exposures often proceed in a progressive hierarchical gradient but a range of exposure durations and intensities can be successful.
Turnaround includes all of these core components. We based it upon the solidly researched protocols of CBT.
Combining our Two Goals
Achieving the first goal, speaking directly to anxious children, proved to be the harder goal to achieve. Dr. Chris and Dr. David spent extensive time creating content that was based on CBT and easy for kids to understand. They decided to use a familiar format that kids love; an adventure story. Each type of childhood anxiety covered by Turnaround (6 in all) were personified in the 6 main child characters. So for example, Ashley plays out what a child with Generalized Anxiety Disorder looks like, and Matthew embodies OCD, and so on. They have help from other imaginary characters, vignettes from other children, and a workbook designed just for kids. There's plenty of laughter, silly jokes, funny illustrations, and exercises that include puzzles, scavenger hunts, and games.
So, Does it Work?
When we first released Turnaround to the public in April of 2010, we held our breath. We had evidence from the kids we saw in our practice that it was working but we didn't know how it was going to work when there was no direct guidance from a therapist. We have been overwhelmed by the response! Parents and anxious children from all over the world write us and tell us how Turnaround has changed their lives. We love all the testimonies but one showed us clearly that Turnaround was accomplishing both goals we set out to achieve. A mom took her anxious son who struggled with OCD to the Duke University anxiety clinic in Raleigh, North Carolina. Duke is a prestigious school and the clinic is staffed with top-notch professionals. She said the treatment helped but did not completely eradicate her son's fears. She heard about Turnaround and purchased it. Since she also lived within driving distance of Charlotte, she made an appointment several weeks out to see one of the Docs. When she arrived at that appointment she stated that she was going to cancel the appointment because her son no longer needed to come. But they came anyway just to meet one of the co-creators of the program. She said, "When we listened to Turnaround, I recognized many of the things that they taught us at the Duke clinic. The thing that made all the difference for my anxious child was how that information was delivered. Turnaround was so fun for him to listen to and so easy for him to understand, that he got it. It finally made sense to him and he was able to implement the techniques and overcome his fears." Read the testimonies for yourself to see how Turnaround is helping children all over the world- Reviews.
Research on Turnaround
We are practicing therapists, not researchers. We both see 30+ clients a week. We developed Turnaround at night and weekends. However, we want Turnaround to be part of an experimental research study and that typically takes place in an academic setting. It is one of the frustrations of private psychological practice. Therapists are too busy, research is costly and too complicated to perform in a private practice. So we searched for researchers who were studying alternative ways (other than in a clinic) of providing CBT to children. We found that much of that research is taking place in Australia. We contacted a professor there and sent the program for review. We are very pleased that the first study using Turnaround is now in development in an Australian university. (We do not think it would be appropriate to disclose details until the study is complete.) We get amazing feedback from parents and children of how much Turnaround helps. Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to continue to compile evidence of its effectiveness and acquire feedback to help us improve it.
Child with Anxiety? Talk to a Doc.
Coaching from the Docs
You can consult directly with the co-creators of Turnaround about your child with anxiety!
Drs. McCarthy and Russ have room in their schedules to offer coaching for valued Turnaround customers. With over 30-years of experience between them, they have a wealth of knowledge and experience to offer you and your child.
Dr. McCarthy and Dr. Russ are available for coaching/consulting appointments by phone, Skype, etc. to help you with your child. Limited appointment times are available. Click to email, or contact us at admin@myanxiouschild.com.
Some things to keep in mind:
This service is only available to families and professionals who have purchased the Turnaround program or the Professional Support Pack.
The initial appointments with families are usually for consultation with the parents. The Doc will need to have some background information in order to effectively coach you and your child. Some additional paperwork may be required.
Fee for an appointment is $150/hour session. A 1-hour minimum is required for each appointment. Additional time is billed by 15 minute increments.
A maximum of 3 sessions can be scheduled, though they may consider additional sessions under special circumstances.
All appointments are made based upon EDT (summer) or EST (winter). UTC - 4 hours. We are located in Charlotte, NC, USA. International customers can visit this site to calculate the time difference.
Once scheduled, you will be sent an invoice for payment through PayPal (having a PayPal account is not required to complete payment). Payment is required 24 hours before the appointment. Exchange rates will be calculated by PayPal.
Coaching is not covered as a medical expense by insurance companies (at least in the US).
Special requests to consult with either Dr. Russ or Dr. McCarthy will be honored if possible. Follow-up appointments will be with same therapist.
Now's your chance to talk to the doctors who created this award-winning program about your child with anxiety! Contact them to schedule appointment while space is available.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
PTSD
Surviving the Storm
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that is a result of trauma either to self or others. The trauma could be a single event or multiple events that accumulate stress.
(We don’t recommend Turnaround for this disorder when it is a result of abuse unless under the oversight of a clinician. However, if the trauma is a naturally occurring event such as a storm, Turnaround could be helpful.)
If someone is showing symptoms of this disorder they have experienced or are experiencing:
Exposure to actual or possible death or loss of physical integrity to self or others. Recent possible revisions extend this to learning about a trauma that happened to a loved one.
Following the event(s) the person begins to experience intrusive memories, dreams, and/or flashbacks. This causes an intense physiological reaction (almost like it was happening again).
There is an intense desire to avoid anything related to the trauma.
There are strongly negative changes to thinking and mood after the event(s) such as guilt, global negativity or detachment from others.
There is strongly heightened arousal and reactivity afterward. For example, the person is hypervigilant.
Designed For Children AND Anxiety
Complex psychological treatment translated for kids!
The innovation of Turnaround is to take complex psychological treatment procedures for anxiety and translate them into kid-friendly language. It works for both Children and Anxiety! Clinical research has shown Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to be the most effective treatment for anxiety (non-medical). But if your child can't understand the treatment material, it simply won't help. Turnaround fills this gap by making the material easy for children to understand. Here is testimony from a parent that captures this quality:
"As a mother of two kids and as an anxiety-sufferer myself, I highly recommend the program Turnaround: Turning Fear into Freedom. In my experience, top notch doctors and specialists may have first rate information, but it is more often than not lost in the delivery to children, especially children who are flooded with fear. Its creators, Dr. Russ and Chris McCarthy, have managed to get inside the heads of little kids. The tools and concepts are couched in a child’s vocabulary, yet represent cures for anxiety that have led to freedom in my own life from panic attacks and phobia. There is undoubtedly sound science behind this program." Tabitha, mother of two, Charlotte, NC
Down to the smallest detail, Turnaround is made for kids!
From the first day of development, the co-creators of Turnaround prioritized making Turnaround child-friendly. They wanted it to be enjoyable for anxious children to listen to, easy to understand, and an adventure that would grab them. Down to the smallest detail, Turnaround is carefully constructed to work for anxious kids. The vocabulary, artwork, dialog, timing, music - everything designed for kids. Unlike many materials that were first created for adults and then modified for children, Turnaround started and finished with anxious children in mind. Turnaround is not an attempt to teach parents to be therapists, it is designed to communicate directly to your child.
Turnaround fills the gap!
It was through the disappointment in the lack of non-clinic (or office) help for children that Turnaround was born. There was great information for adults, some good children's books and some web-based options just coming online. We never found anything that delivered a comprehensive treatment program in a truly child appealing way. There were a few audio options that were marketed for kids but they were really for parents and one was quite unscientific. We took two-years to research and create this high-quality program. Thousands of hours and dollars were poured into the program for studio time, professional artists and illustrators. If compared side-by-side with any other product, you'll SEE and HEAR the difference.
Turnaround provides children "a recipe" to follow.
Turnaround is a step-by-step guide for children to overcome their fears. Patricia Pearson, author of A Brief History of Anxiety: Yours and Mine writes, “One thing anxious children lack in this culture is what psychologists call 'a recipe' for dealing with their dread... an action that can be undertaken to offset the almost unendurable feeling of helplessness that characterizes anxiety” (p.27). Turnaround is the recipe anxious children need! It works in the comfort of home or in tandem with a professional. It educates your anxious child in an entertaining manner and provides clear action steps to overcome anxiety.
Turnaround provides a narrative experience.
Your anxious child joins six other anxious kids in the Turnaround adventure and hears how they work toward and overcome their anxiety. As they hear their stories, your child can make sense of his or her story, which provides a great deal of comfort and encouragement. Anxious children listen in to dialog, suspense and fun rather than be lectured to by an adult. The treatment is woven into a quest plot as the children go on a 10-day camping adventure. They meet fun characters, overcome obstacles and learn how to become free from anxiety.
Turnaround offers parents and anxious children a shared vocabulary.
As you listen to Turnaround with your child, you both learn a vocabulary in which to express the thoughts and feelings of anxiety. Many parents say that this benefit has been tremendously helpful. Communication is restored and shared! Additionally, many parents find help for their own worries and stress. The same treatment (CBT) works at any age. Parents just translate it right back into the language of adults.
Turnaround provides a community for your anxious child.
Your anxious child will vicariously join the band of young campers and become part of their community. Kids tell us things like, "I picture myself sitting next to Emily by the campfire. She's so nice." This benefit really helps your child feel less alone. Like any community of which we are part, we want to be with that group and miss them when we are not. A family listened to Turnaround in the car as they drove to Disney World. The father reported to us, “You know you have a good program when you can compete with Mickey! Here my kids are in the middle of Disney World and they keep asking us when they get to listen to the next day of Turnaround!” Children and Anxiety = Turnaround!
Turnaround: Turning Fear Into Freedom is a multi award-winning, evidence-based audio treatment program that teaches your child how to identify and stop anxious thoughts, calm distressing feelings, and courageously face their fears by using proven strategies (CBT) to overcome anxiety. Your anxious child will listen to an adventure story designed to capture their attention while learning about anxiety and going step-by-step through the process to overcome it. After each lesson, ten in all, your child will complete exercises in the Turnaround Journal that reinforce the material. Turnaround is unique because it addresses anxiety with kids in a way that is both clinical and entertaining.
The Turnaround Audio Program includes:
The Turnaround Program - 10 child-focused lessons contained within the adventure story perfect for anxiety and children, plus
The Turnaround Journal - a 74-page creative workbook for your child to use with the program (see more), plus
The Chill Kit CD - a relaxation guide to help your child learn how to relax and release stress. Explore 5 different relaxation exercises and listen to exclusive music from Chad Lawson, an award-winning composer, and,
The Parent Guide - 90-minutes of helpful information to equip you to assist your child.
Free Bonus Gift - The Med FAQs - Child (included in the Standard & Premium Programs) - A 90-minute interview with Neuropsychiatrist, Dr. James Lee. Dr. Lee is a former professor of Child Psychiatry at Duke University. Drs. David Russ and Christopher McCarthy interview Dr. Lee and cover issues related to anxiety disorders in children, including the use of medications, factors leading to anxiety, types of childhood anxiety, and how to seek the right kind of help.
Turnaround comes with a 30, 60 or 90-day money back guarantee.
Turnaround is designed to work best for children ages 6-12 years old
What Makes Turnaround Unique?
Turnaround speaks directly to anxious children.Anxiety Kids are Turnaround's target audience. Other programs speak to parents and then expect the parent to translate the material to their child. That is too much pressure and impractical. In the Turnaround audio adventure, your child joins our cast of six anxious children, two "docs", a mentor teen, a cast of animated characters, and other kids - all designed to capture your child's attention and imagination. Just imagine how much your child will learn by being personally invested in the story! It's a format that's unlike anything else out there and highly effective!
Uses proven evidence-based treatment. Turnaround uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as the core framework. CBT is the most effective psychological treatment for anxiety. Turnaround is based on scientific research and years of clinical practice. It is not a gimmick or a miracle cure. But what makes Turnaround truly unique is how the scientific material is delivered; in a child-friendly manner that makes sense to kids. As one mom told us, "I heard the same CBT concepts in Turnaround that were taught my son at the Duke University Anxiety Disorders Clinic, but what made all the difference was how that material was presented. The clinic helped, but Turnaround worked."
Utilizes Social Learning Theory.
Pioneer researcher, Dr. Albert Bandura demonstrated that children learn by observing and imitating behaviors in others who are similar to them. In Turnaround, your anxious child walks side-by-side with other anxious kids hearing their stories of struggle and success. Your child will psychologically bond with the group, which is tremendously effective in addressing their anxiety. There's also fun animated characters that assist in teaching the material, like Kerplop the talking Beaver, Krank the Samurai warrior, and Watson the British detective. We tapped into the talents of 14 child actors and 6 adult actors. This program is FOR KIDS AND BY KIDS! Listen to the audio samples here.
Children all over the world have been SET FREE using Turnaround including Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and every State in the USA!
MyAnxiousChild.com was recently ranked as a top ten organization and website by GoodTherapy.org based on factors of usefulness, ease of access, esthetics, up-to-date information/content, alignment with GoodTherapy mission and values, availability of resources, the importance of the work and community presence. Thank you GoodTherapy!
(These testimonies are presented as we received them with only very minor changes to protect privacy and remove any personal communication to the Turnaround authors.)
Terms of Purchase and Returns
(Read Below for Returns)
Basic Program
Purchaser supplies payment information for the one-time payment of $139.00. Sales tax applies to residents of North Carolina and Georgia. Purchaser has 30 days from date of purchase to request a refund of purchase price ($139.00). Send a refund request to Billing@myanxiouschild.com and place "Basic Program Refund Request" in subject line. Purchaser must state in email that they agree to remove ALL digital copies of Turnaround, and it's related products, from any and all electronic devices. No content shall be stored and retained in any format. All downloaded content must be purged and eliminated for eternity and unable to be viewed again.
Standard Program
Purchaser supplies information for the one time payment of $169.00 + Shipping and Handling (S&H), or for 3 payments of $56.33 + S&H. Sales tax applies to residents of Georgia and North Carolina. Regarding the Periodic Payment Plan, the first payment of $56.33 + S&H is due at time of sale. Two more equal payments of $59.66 will be charged to the purchaser's credit card 30 and 60 days after initial sale. Purchaser has 60 days from date of purchase to return all the contents of the Turnaround program for a complete refund of the purchase price (S&H is non-refundable). Purchaser is responsible for the 3 equal payments under all circumstances. Refund is only for amount paid at the time of return, up to the total product price minus S & H. Purchaser shall supply new payment information if the original payment method is declined or expired upon future transaction dates. By agreeing to this statement and checking the box, you are signing-off on this agreement as if you physically signed a reciept paper with your signature. You forfeit the right to claim later that you never signed for the purchase.Please make sure the credit card you use does not expire for at least 6 months from the purchase date.
Premium Program
Purchaser supplies information for the one-time payment of $189.00 + S&H, or for the 4 payments of $47.25 + S&H. Sales tax applies to residents of Georgia and North Carolina. Regarding the Periodic Payment Plan, the first payment of $47.25 + S&H is due at the time of sale. Three additional payments or $47.25 will be charged to purchaser's credit card 30, 60, and 90 days after initial sale. Purchaser is responsible for the 4 equal payments under all circumstances. Refund is for amount paid at the time of return, minus S&H. Purchaser shall supply new payment information if the original payment method is declined or expired and payments are unable to be processed. By agreeing to this statement and checking the box, you are signing-off on this agreement as if you physically signed a reciept with your signature. You forfeit the right to claim later that you never signed for the purchase. Please sure the credit card you use does not expire for at least 6 months from the purchase date. Purchaser has 90-days from date purchase to return all contents of the Turnaround kit, and purge all digital content from electronic devices, for a complete refund of purchase price minus S&H. Purchaser must also send an email to billing@myanxiouschild with "Premium Package Refund Request" stating that they agree to remove ALL digital copies from the Turnaround program, and it's related products, from any and all electronic devices. No content shall be stored or retained in any format. All downloaded content must be purged and eliminated for eternity and not viewed once more.
Med FAQs CD
(Child, Teen, & Adult) purchases have a 30-day money back guarantee, minus S & H.
Turnaround Journals- When purchased separately (not part of the Turnaround kit), are non-refundable.
Professional Support Packs
Option One: Purchases have a 90-day money back guarantee, minus S & H.
Option Two: Purchases have a 90-day money back guarantee, minus S & H.
Damaged contents from production or shipping, or missing contents can be replaced free of charge for the first 30 days after purchase. This includes all products sold through myanxiouschild.com, and only through this website and Amazon.com
Additional Turnaround Journals can be purchased for $12.95 + S&H with proof of purchase of Turnaround program. Turnaround Journals are not sold separately to individuals who have not purchased the Turnaround program. Extra journals are non-refundable.
Terms of Use:
Turnaround: Turning Fear Into Freedom is copyrighted material. Copying is limited to the authorized owner's personal use only, e.g.., downloading the program onto the authorized owner's iPod, iTouch, iPad, etc. Copy or distribution to others without written consent is prohibited by Federal Law. By reading this, you agree not to sell, give away, distribute, or share this product with anyone else.
Disclaimer:
Turnaround: Turning Fear Into Freedom(TM) program provides parents and children with tools and techniques designed to help the child overcome anxiety It is not designed to deal with children who have severe psychological disorders or medical conditions, and the strategies it suggests will not work for all types of children at all stages of development. Though Turnaround has been designed to help many children with proven theory and techniques, various factors may affect whether the program is effective with a particular child, including the child's age and developmental level, the child's setting/environment, the severity of the child's psychological condition, and the parent's ability in assisting with the program.
Children who exhibit signs of dangerous behavior to either themselves or others, should be placed under the care of a qualified professional.Turnaround: Turning Fear Into Freedom is not intended to take the place of professional therapy, counseling or medical treatment. Children currently under the supervision of a professional should not discontinue such care without the consent of this professional. This program is not intended as a substitute for medication, and you should never discontinue a child's medication without consulting a qualified professional. If a parent has any concerns, questions, or doubts regarding their child's wellbeing, they should seek medical and/or psychological treatment from a qualified individual and should not solely rely upon the opinions expressed in Turnaround: Turning Fear Into Freedom.
Use of Informed Therapy Resources, LLC (ITR) products and/or services and all associated content(s) is at your own risk. In no event shall Informed Therapy Resources, LLC., its licensors, suppliers, affiliates and or associates mentioned in product literature or myanxiouschild.com be liable for any damages, including but not limited to, incidental and consequential damages, personal injury, wrongful death, lost profits, damages resulting from lost data caused by use or misuse of this site, content or public areas.
Returns
Our return process is easy and there is no sneaky fine print.
Simply return the complete kit - case, disks and journal to us. You don't need any authorization numbers or permission from us. Don't worry if it is used or marked. If there is something private written in the journal you can tear it out and send what is left. You have 30, 60, or 90-days from the date of purchase to return the Turnaround program (based upon the program you purchased), 30 days for the MedFaqs CD's. If you used a credit card we will refund it to that card. If you used PayPal, we will refund it to your PayPal account. If you send a check, we will send you a check. If you purchased the Basic Program, please read the paragraph above under "Basic Program" for further return instructions.
Make sure you include identifying information and date purchased so we get the refund to the right person. We would love any feedback you could offer, positive or negative to help us improve the product. We are glad you gave Turnaround a try. We wish you the best as you help your anxious child. To return kits, please return it to: ITR, 9935-D Rea Road, Suite 102, Charlotte, NC. 28277.
By selecting "Continue to next step", you are agreeing to the terms stated above, and acting as if you signed off on them with your signature.
Thank you for purchasing products from ITR.
The Turnaround Journal
Turnaround Journal
Below are sample pages from the Turnaround Journal. The Journal is a 74-page workbook filled with fun and educational activities for anxious children. After each day's audio lesson, your child will open up their personal Journal and complete the exercises that reinforce the lesson taught for that day. The journal is designed as a companion workbook to strengthen and personalize the information presented with each CD.
Click on the Journal sample below to flip through several pages to see what is inside. (click "open publication" link on iphone and ipad)
Phobias in children are probably more common than reported. It appears that about 4 or 5% of people have a specific phobia. Phobias are intense and persistent fears about something specific like an object or situation. Some kinds of anxiety disorders tend to morph and change but phobias tend to be pretty specific although a person can have more than one. They might accompany other forms of anxiety. Sometimes children can’t verbalize or explain what exactly they are scared about but the anxiety might be expressed by crying, tantrums, freezing or clinging. The anxiety is kicked off by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation. The fear can be as intense as a panic attack. Whatever it is that is scary causes a fierce attempt to avoid or escape if possible. The fear has to be way out of line with the actual danger for it to be a phobia. And the fear has to persist for at least 6 months.
Most phobias seem to fall into 5 categories.
Critters like spiders, bugs, dogs, cats, snakes, etc.
Nature like storms, water, heights, etc.
Medical/physical like blood, needles, things associated w/ procedures, vomiting, etc.
Situations like airplanes, elevators, enclosed places, etc
Unusual/Surprising like louds sounds, costumed characters (what is the deal with clowns?), etc.
Some phobias in children can be “worked around” and treatment is often ignored. For example, a person could avoid any situation for the most part that would involve elevators. However, as with all anxiety, a person’s life is limited and choices are avoided. On any given day it might not seem like much but over the course of a lifetime the cost can be high. Turnaround is designed to help children overcome their fears. It just might be the very thing your child needs.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Children with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Worry, worry and more worry
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is like worry on steroids. Everyone worries but if your child seems to just not let go of some worries and complains frequently of body aches and pains like stomach aches or headaches then he or she might have GAD. GAD is characterized by excessive anxiety and worry (often about expectations) about at least two domains of activities or events (e.g., family, health, friendships, and school difficulties). This can look like extreme perfectionism as well.
Signs your child may have GAD
1. The excessive anxiety and worry occurs on more days than not, for 3 months or more
2. The anxiety and worry are associated with one or more of the following symptoms:
restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge
muscle tension (aches and pains)
Being easily fatigued
Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
Irritability
Sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless unsatisfying sleep)
3. The anxiety and worry are associated with one (or more) of the following behaviors:
strong avoidance of activities or events with possible negative outcomes
extreme time and effort preparing for activities or events with possible negative outcomes
strong procrastination in behavior or decision-making due to worries
repeatedly seeking reassurance due to worries
Many anxious moments come and go after a few hours or days. When anxiety gets to a critical mass it tends to create an ongoing cycle. GAD is not as intense as other problems such as panic or as demanding as OCD. But it is stubbornly persistent and throws a cloud of worry and stress over a child. Often in children chronic stomach problems are due to anxiety. However, you should always check out physical symptoms with your pediatrician.
Two of the kids in our program, Ashley and Madison, have GAD and your child can follow their story and treatment in the Turnaround program. Ashley has more typical GAD and Madison is a perfectionist. Teaching children to relax and dispute negative thinking are effective in treating GAD. Turnaround may be just the program you are looking for!
Social Anxiety and Children
Shyness and Social Anxiety
"I might be embarrassed!"
Social Anxiety and Children
Some kids are social butterflies and some kids are just shy. Nothing wrong with being shy. On the other hand, if it is Social Anxiety Disorder it can be a major problem if not treated. Social Anxiety Disorder can make social experiences miserable. It is a painful catch-22 to want relationships but be overwhelmed with anxiety about them. Each day facing the public can be agonizing. Social Anxiety Disorder is characterized by the following:
A strong and persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which a child is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others (critique). Examples include having a conversation, being watched (ex. eating or drinking) or performing in front of others. When the anxiety is related to peers that is more characteristic of the disorder as opposed to adults.
The child fears that he or she may act in way or show anxiety symptoms (ex. blushing, sweating, trembling, tongue-tied) that will be negatively judged causing humiliation, embarrassment, offensiveness or rejection. They are more sensitive to this and more likely to interpret a situation negatively revealing the cognitive bias characteristic of this disorder.
Exposure to or even thinking about the feared social situation usually provokes anxiety, which may take the form of a panic attack related to the situation. It can be expressed by crying, tantrums, freezing, or shrinking from social situations with unfamiliar people. Unfortunately, this anticipation tends to lead to poor social performance strengthening the negative bias. Speech may be impacted due to quiet responses, poor articulation, limited expression, avoiding eye contact and selective periods of not speaking at all (called mutism).
Sometimes a child may realize this is excessive but not always, especially in younger children.
The feared social or performance situations are avoided or else are endured with intense anxiety or distress.
It is not always easy to tell the difference between shyness and social anxiety. Some things to keep in mind: Shy kids are not typically anxious before a situation. Kids with Social anxiety anticipate events and feel anxious beforehand. The anxiety feels more intense and can lead to panic for socially anxious kids. Kids with social anxiety want to intensely escape the situation. If you are uncertain if your child is just shy or has social anxiety disorder you may want to take your child to be evaluated.
One the the kids in the Turnaround program, Cedric, suffers from social anxiety disorder. Your child can follow along in the program as Cedric understands and works to overcome his anxiety. Turnaround is designed to help social anxiety and children. If your child is anxious the sooner he or she gets treatment the better. Whether you use Turnaround or some other help give your child the advantage of some help while they are young.
Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Panic Disorder in Children
Sheer Terror
Anxiety and Panic attacks seem to come out of nowhere. It is common to use Panic Attack and Anxiety Attack interchangeably. However, it might be helpful to point out the difference. Panic is a period of intense fear or discomfort that rises to peak intensity very quickly. The first time it happens can be overwhelming and it is not usual to think something terrible is going on physically like a heart attack. It seems to come out of the blue. Part of the problem is how shocking it can be so surprised. An Anxiety Attack feels very similar. However, the term anxiety attack is not the "official" diagnostic description. If someone has an anxiety attack they usually know why they are anxious and are not quite as surprised. The following symptoms are part of a panic attack (and probably an anxiety attack). A child doesn’t have to have all of these (or be aware of them) but at least 4 need to be present.
Palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate
Sweating
Trembling or shaking
Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering
Feeling of choking
Chest pain or discomfort
Nausea or abdominal distress (very common in kids with all kinds of anxiety)
Feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint
Derealization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)
Fear of losing control or going crazy
Fear of dying
Paresthesias (numbness or tingling sensations)
Chills or hot flushes
Jordan, one of the kids in the Turnaround program, suffers from panic disorder. Your child can identify with and follow along as Jordan understands and works through his panic attacks. It is nearly unbearable to watch your child be crushed under the power of panic. Turnaround is effective in helping your child overcome anxiety and panic attacks.
What causes Anxiety and Panic Attacks?
That is difficult to answer specifically because it can vary child to child. But for everyone there are some common denominators. There can be several things that contribute such as, genetics, circumstances, mistaken interpretations, worried family members, chronic stress, illness, and major changes to name a few. Typically, several things line up to create a “perfect storm” that gets things going. Yet with ALL anxiety there are three fundamental factors that are part of the start up and/or keep it going.
Physiological Arousal/Activation
Okay, that is way too clinical sounding. Essentially, this is where your body goes postal. Your nervous system has launched an amazing chemical and structural network designed to temporarily make you a “super-you”. It keeps us out of trouble. We need something to compensate for all the dumb stuff we might do. Seriously, thank God for this or none of us would have made it to age five. This arousal is often referred to as a "fight or flight" response. It is an action of the sympathetic nervous system. In our program we personified this part of the body with a character named Krank. With anxiety disorders, Krank has fired up in response to false alarms. There is nothing wrong with it, believe it or not. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do --just at the wrong time!
Thinking Errors
This is the mental stuff connected to fear. It can be beliefs, assumptions, expectations, images, words, sounds, etc. We are interpreting our lives as we go. (What is important, what is not, what is beautiful, what I need to do, what does that gesture mean, etc.) Our "thinking world" can be everything from elaborate multi-layered epics to transient flashes easily forgotten (this is why sometimes you do not know why you are feeling scared). Our minds are capable of stunning creativity. If you think in a certain way, your nervous system will feel it like its real. That is why certain thoughts cause anxiety. Your child may be terrified but from your vantage point there is no danger. It is because their thoughts have activated the fight or flight response and that “trumps” everything. It feels real to them.
Avoiding/Controlling Response
Fear demands a response. Surprisingly, some responses that seem so normal, reasonable, legitimate make the anxiety much worse. Paradox! Fear can really make a compelling case. Shouldn't we avoid things that are dangerous? Unfortunately, the problem fear is based on pure imagination. That kind of fear, “what-if” fear, needs faced because it is not real. By “what-if” we mean things like “what if I panic in the store", "what if I touch the doorknob and get sick” and so forth; things that are just scary possibilities. When you do not face the fear, the strength of the imagined danger actually grows. It gets scarier. So in an attempt to protect ourselves, we avoid these fears by obsessing, avoiding or creating rituals. But this kind of avoidance or control works just enough to make things worse.
These three components mix to form the perfect storm of anxiety disorders. No one chooses to have an anxiety disorder. Actually the strange symptoms are part on an effort to SOLVE the problem! What happens is that instead of solving the problem the symptoms become part of the problem. They work just enough to keep your child stuck. Panic works. If you listen to it, they won't have panic at school because they won't go to school. So if your child is displaying strange and intense anxiety symptoms they are not trying to BE a problem, they are trying to SOLVE a problem, just not in the right way.
Anxiety is more complicated that this. I am amazed at the variations. But there are always the same fundamental elements. Address those and you have a treatment that is life-changing. Turnaround is designed to help your child address these feelings and thoughts in creative way that can lead to freedom!
Sample Library
Samples
Extended Sample Library
Turnaround, Turning Fear Into Freedom, is specifically designed to hold your anxious child's attention so they can learn the valuable information needed to conquer their fears. It is visually appealing, highly entertaining, and truly effective in treating child anxiety. It is based upon solid clinical research on anxiety. (Visit the Science behind Turnaround to read more.) On this page you can listen to samples to hear the quality of the production and the depth of material covered. This is not therapy "lite". It is a solid treatment program designed for anxious children.
As a professional psychologist, I am highly suspicious of "pop psychology" products. This is not "pop psychology". It is engaging and honest, yet entertaining, and useful for both kids and adults. -Dr. John Colletti
Turnaround is an imaginary audio adventure story about six anxious kids who take a ten-day hiking trip with Dr. David, Dr. Chris, and Emily, a teen mentor who completed the same trip the year prior. The anxious kids meet imaginary characters on their journey and hear stories from other anxious kids.
Because Turnaround is a completely new innovation, we want to provide you with various audio clips to give you an overview of the program. Below are brief summaries of what is contained on each disk of the program for kids (not including info. for parents).
Overview of the Turnaround Program:
Day 1: We start with a "preview" of the program, an audio introduction very much like a movie trailer to help your anxious child gets a sense of what the program is, who the main characters are, and what to expect. Then we begin Day One of the hiking trip. All the anxious kids come together and begin to talk about their fears, sharing their stories and why they are on this trip. Your anxious child will be asked to think about which child character's anxiety is most similar to their own. We use children and color codes to identify different types of anxiety rather than diagnostic labels.
Day 2: We break down anxiety into three parts, and use kid-friendly language to describe what they are and how they work. We have created a unique vocabulary that children can easily identify with. Many parents report that this language is extremely helpful for the child, as well as useful to foster parent-child communication about anxiety.
Day 3: We explain to your child what anxiety feels like in their bodies. We take the fear out of the feeling of anxiety. Your anxious child will meet Krank and Chill, two imaginary characters they soon won't forget! They personify what is happening in your child's body. Krank is a wild yet silly Samurai warrior personifying the biology of anxiety. Chill is a laid back California surfer dude personifying the biology and goal of being calm. Your child will love these characters, guaranteed! We wrap up the day by introducing the Chill Kit CD, a relaxation CD that your child will begin after this lesson.
Days 4, 5, 6: During these days, we explain the various ways that thinking can cause anxiety and teach your child how to effectively counteract them with more accurate and adaptive beliefs. In technical terms this is called cognitive restructuring. This is crucial to overcoming anxiety. We give them "talk backs", effective strategies on how to overcome their anxious thoughts. We use characters, vignettes, dialog and clever instruction to map this out.
Day 7: In this CD we explore the process of change and provide an encouraging framework for this process. It is so important to see the whole picture and not get discouraged about the ups and downs of healing anxiety. This helps your anxious child maintain appropriate expectations regarding their progress.
Days 8 & 9: On these CDs we introduce and explain exposure therapy and response prevention. This section is crucial for most types of child anxiety but especially for OCD and Panic disorders. It is also the hardest to do so we save it until they are well into the program. We explain the process and give anxious kids all kinds of creative ways to begin to "face their fears." These CDs provide many memorable stories to keep with them as they try it themselves.
Day 10: During this day we cover some final thoughts, have a brief discussion with one the kids about medication, and wrap it up a ceremony to acknowledge the progress they have made thus far. Some kids are free from their anxiety at this point, while others will need to listen to the program again and keep working at it. We celebrate whatever progress your child has made and encourage them to stay at it until they are completely free from fear.
We encourage you to read through the testimonial page to see how Turnaround has impacted children, parents, and families. Don't just take our word for it, read what those who have used the program are saying. Turnaround has literally helped thousands of kids around the world, and it can help your child too. If for some reason it doesn't, simply return it for a full refund. There's nothing to lose, and so much to be gained!
Anxiety in Children FAQs
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
Anxiety in Children and Turnaround - Frequently Asked Questions
My child is under 6 years of age. Would Turnaround be appropriate for this age?
We recommend the program for 6 to 12 year-olds. Four and five year-olds are usually going to struggle with fully grasping the concepts. That said, if you have a mature 5 year-old, the program may work. We have had a few very young children try it with mixed outcomes, a few of them positive.
If you would like to try it with a young child, a parent will need to listen along and help explain the content. The program is made up of 10 lessons each about 20 to 25 minutes long. There are many breaks in the material you can utilize to take a break or explain things.
We also have extended samples on the website that you can play for your child. Play some for them and see how they respond. If you decide to give it try, remember there's a money back guarantee if it does not work out.
My child over 12 years old. Is that too old for the program?
The type of treatment we use in the program is effective for all ages. What is unique about Turnaround is its delivery, an adventure story told by children and for children. Therefore some parts may seem childish to your teenager. Some teens are able to accept this and really benefit from the program. We even have had college students listening to it, and parents report being greatly helped by it. But, for young teens who are trying to separate themselves from childish things, it not work.
We have some extended samples that you can play for your teen (Sample Library). If the delivery feels childish or insulting to them, then the program won’t help. However, if they are able to overlook that and grasp the underlying principles, then the entire program will be fine. Remember, if it doesn’t work for your teen, you may always return it within 90 days.
The Turnaround adventure story takes place over 10 days. Will it work if I break it up and listen to it less frequently?
We recommend that you listen to the program 3-5 times per week, with no more than one lesson covered per day. It's not practical to cram the program into 10 straight days. It will stress out both parent and child. Find a pace that works best for you and your child. Try to stay consistent without experiencing long gaps in-between each session. It should be an enjoyable beneficial experience for all as much as possible.
How critical is the journal in this treatment program? If my child resists doing it, should I push?
The journal supports and reinforces the audio content. It was designed to be fun and "sneak" in therapy. Assist and encourage your child to complete it as much as possible; however, don't make it a negative thing. The substance is in the audio content, so focus on that. You may need to preview it and exclude certain exercises you think your child will dislike. Use your best judgment.
What about siblings? Should they listen along with the anxious child, or not?
Usually, it works wonderfully for siblings to participate, but not for every child. If your anxious child is very self-conscious or likes their privacy, then let them do it separately from their siblings. In the best cases, the program increases everyone’s understanding so it can be beneficial for all. We address family issues directly in the parent CDs and occasionally in the child program. However, the focus of Turnaround is on an individual child with anxiety.
What types of anxiety are addressed in Turnaround? Is there any type of anxiety that Turnaround does not treat?
We designed Turnaround to work with generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, social anxiety, separation anxiety, phobias, and OCD. We cover the fundamentals of all types of anxiety. The only specific anxiety that we do not recommend with Turnaround is PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) when it is a result of abuse. You need the oversight of a therapist before using Turnaround with that kind of PTSD. We also recommend that your pediatrician be informed and involved with the treatment of any anxiety disorder.
Should we wait for low-stress time to start the program?
Think of life's stress like filling a bucket. At some point, if there is enough stress it overflows. Most children enjoy listening to the program, while others need some encouragement. You know your child best. If listening to the program could be a way to take a break from the stress, or help reduce their stress, than start the program as soon as possible. However, if listening would add another task to their plate and cause their stress to overflow, than wait for the weekend or a school break to listen. Generally speaking, trying it until you get some resistance, then evaluate and choose an alternative plan.
My child is resisting listening to the program? What should I do?
The catch-22 with anxiety is that anything (hearing about it, talking about it, seeing an image, etc.) might cause an increase in anxiety. First off, determine exactly why they don't want to listen. Day One can be a little slow for some kids. They may think the whole thing is a little slow. Tell them they have to listen to at least the first 3 Days. Once kids hear Krank and Chill, they're hooked! . Your child may be stressed because they have homework to do. Choose a different time and day to listen. If possible, give your child some sense of control. For example, suggest that he doesn't have to do a single thing about his/her anxiety at first, just listen. Play it while in the car to ease any stress. Listen to only half a day at a time. Tell them that it's normal to experience some anxiety at first. If they stick with it, it will get better. Work with them to best figure that out and don't be too quick to give into their "no".
Could my child's anxiety get worse by hearing other kids talk about their fears?
This is a fairly consistent concern with parents. Here's the catch; anxiety is overcome by exposing your child to things they fear and helping them build confidence that they can handle it. Yes, your child's fears may initially rise up as they begin treatment. This is very normal and expected, and we address it in the program. Successful treatment is based on something called "the rule of opposites." It means you must do the opposite of what the anxiety seems to demand. So how you handle this can be the critical piece. If you instill confidence that they'll be able to handle things, that their experience of having a little fear rise up is normal, and that it can actually be a good thing to see how other kids struggle and overcome their anxieties, then chances are your child will be able to continue on with minimal impact. If you become anxious yourself and too easily give in, then your child will follow suit. Most kids settle down once they get into the story (after listening to Day 3). Encourage your child that they can handle it and that you'll be right by there side to give them extra strength. You're child will need to face their fears at some point. It's MUCH better to address them when their young then when they worsen in the teen years and as an adult. Both you and your child need to face the fear of hearing others talk about their fears and push through it. If your child is unable to, then it really probably is time for them to get personal, professional help and possibly medication. Their anxiety is at a point where they need additional help.
Can the program work without medication?
Yes. Most parents try Turnaround before seeing a doctor for medication and many them achieve success without having to try medication. What medication does is settle things down relatively quickly and sometimes that is crucial. Counseling and/or our program takes a bit more time usually but the change is more likely to last. Even with medication, you still have to solve the problem. Medication just makes it a bit easier (assuming it is the right medication, relatively free of side effects, and works like one hopes).
Does your program work for hoarding?
Hoarding is a unique form of OCD. In our program, Matt and Mario struggle with OCD. There are a lot of variations of OCD so we could only feature a limited selection of symptoms. Though we don't feature hoarding, we cover the underlying features and treatment steps that apply no matter what the specific symptoms. Your child should be able to relate to Matt and Mario, and see how the technique could also help him or her. We have had really good response with OCD. The specific treatment that is very effective for OCD is called response or ritual prevention. It is a type of exposure. We call it postponing and that is usually part of the treatment with hoarding. We explain and lay that out in detail. OCD and anxiety can be really tricky and seemingly stubborn so I don’t want it to sound like I’m suggesting it will be easy or that Turnaround always works. Nothing always works. However, starting to help early makes treatment easier and more likely to be effective.
There is a fabulous book for kids on OCD. It is “What to do when your brain gets stuck” by Dawn Heubner. It explains it really well.
If I'm not satisfied, will I be able to return the program for a full refund?
Absolutely. Simply return all the items (it is okay if they are used or damaged) and upon receipt we will issue a refund in a couple of business days. You may remove and destroy any of the journal pages for your privacy. You have 30, 60 or 90 days (depending on your program) from purchase to return the program. It only needs to be postmarked within the allotted time period. There is no "fine print." The only thing we don't refund is the postage either way. You don't need to contact us or get some sort of authorization number. (We would appreciate any feedback to help us improve our program.) Simply return it to:
Informed Therapy Resources, LLC
9935-D Rea Road
Suite 102
Charlotte, NC 28277
Note from a mom whose child has PANDAS
My daughter has a condition called PANDAS/PITAND, which is an autoimmune disorder which can be triggered by strep or other infections. Antibodies attack the basal ganglia of her brain and cause OCD/Tourettes- like symptoms along with rage, separation anxiety, fears... and other symptoms. This disorder is grossly under researched and is finally gaining some momentum albeit not fast enough for us families suffering from the devastation. It is very sudden, drastic, and hard to treat. it IS ACTUALLY a brain injury/ inflammation taking place. So all rationality goes out the window. Please, if you are not familiar with PANDAS (pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder after streptococcal infection) or PITAND (post infection triggered autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder) PLEASE take the time to learn more. thepandasnetwork.org has some good information. NIMH has acknowledged it just this past August (BIG STEP) and there are countless links if you Google the term. So thank you for your program, I do feel it is somewhat helpful, and if this was just OCD, we may have had an even greater benefit from it. Thank you so much.
Is it possible to order more workbooks at a later date now that I have ordered the product?
Yes, you can order additional journals on our order page as long as you own the full program.
I was wondering if you had this program in other languages?
At the present time we only offer the program in English.
Additional answers to questions about anxiety in children coming soon.
When To Seek Counseling
Office Visit or Turnaround?
Should You Seek Face-to-Face Counseling?
As therapists with over 30 years of experience between us, we obviously support in office treatment for anxieties in children. We also know there are some limitations to office visits. Turnaround was designed by us to work either before seeking treatment or in conjunction with treatment. Turnaround offers these unique benefits:
From the start, Turnaround was designed for children. Research proves that children learn best from other children. In Turnaround, children are both the teachers and the students, providing the ideal format for effective learning. In clinical settings an adult is relating to your child and this involves some degree of translation. Child therapists are experts at this but it is still difficult
Counseling is usually done on an individual basis between an adult and a child for one hour a week at the therapist's office. Not only must the therapist overcome the adult/child communication barrier and the limitations of only having one hour, they also must overcome the child's anxiety associated with coming to the office. Sometimes this is impossible to overcome. I (Dr. McCarthy) have on several occasions had children refuse to get out the car for an appointment! Thankfully I was able to offer Turnaround. For one boy after listening to just the first three CDs, he was able to come in the office. I reinforced the message of Turnaround and he continued the program at home. We have found that by using Turnaround in conjunction with therapy, the sessions are greatly reduced and a child is able to overcome their fears much more quickly.
Children with anxiety feel alone. Usually if someone is anxious they keep it to themselves. Children don't realize how common anxiety is with other kids (approx. 1 in 10 kids) and by hearing the kids stories shared in Turnaround they feel much better. Working to overcome their fears with other children is a significant benefit.
There is solid scientific evidence that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the treatment of choice for anxiety. A therapist may not know how to effectively implement the therapeutic techniques with children. Turnaround is a complete CBT program, developed by experienced therapists.
However, you need to do what you think is in the best interest of your child. Some compelling reasons to seek counseling or medical help are:
If you think there is a medical component or the possibility of that you should consult the pediatrician
If you think that a clear diagnosis is important you need to see someone who can take a complete history and spend time interacting with your child
If there are some symptoms that don't seem to be part of what you know about anxiety disorders
If you child is very depressed as well as anxious
If you feel that things are very out of control
If you think your child may be anxious as a result of an abusive trauma (we don't recommend using Turnaround for abusive trauma related issues except under the care of a clinician. Natural events likes storms are fine with Turnaround.)
If your child expresses the desire to talk about it with a counselor
If you are considering counseling for your anxious child, consider trying Turnaround beforehand or at the same time because many kids find freedom from their fears by using it alone. If your child's anxiety is more severe and in need of further help, Turnaround will aid in their treatment and should reduce the time in treatment. It is designed for most anxieties in children. There is a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the program.
School Phobia
"Hello, this is the school, your child is in our office right now feeling scared..."
Many children struggle with anxiety related to school. This can result in school refusal. Common school based anxieties are Separation Anxiety, Panic/Anxiety Attacks, Social Anxiety, Perfectionism, and other general school-based fears. These fears can surface when the child has to go to school, attend certain classes, eat in the cafeteria, be with feared teachers, or attending field trips to name a few. It can be described as, "severe difficulty in attending school, often resulting in prolonged school absence; sever emotional upset, including symptoms such as excessive fearfulness, temper tantrums, misery or somatic complaints without obvious organic cause when faced with the prospect of attending school. Child remains at home with the knowledge of the parents during school hours, unlike truants and with the absence of significant antisocial behaviors. It causes much stress to parents and school personnel and poises serious problems for the child's future psycho-social and educational development.**
Turnaround addresses many of these fears directly. Anywhere from 5 to 25% of kids may struggle with this problem. It is tempting to allow an anxious child to stay home but this may reinforce the problem and make it worse. Here is a good summary article from the Wall Street Journal about this all too common problem. Dr. Russ addresses aspects of this problem in his blog post here.
Three of the children on the imaginary Turnaround trip, Madison, Cedric, and Brianna, have school related anxiety. Madison is a perfectionist with school work. She's bound up in her fears of failure and getting grades less than A's. Cedric fears social situations and his shyness keeps him from experiencing the joys of friendships and, the fun of social gatherings. Brianna fears separation from her parents. She sometimes refuses school or attending athletic practices due to being separated from her mom. Through each day of the Turnaround journey, the children face their fears and learn ways to overcome them. Additionally, other child actors illustrate ways to overcome other school-based fears. Turnaround is an excellent resource to free your child from worries and anxieties related to school.
Dr. Christopher McCarthy discusses Back to School fears and Turnaround on Charlotte Today.
**Berg I, Nichols K, Pritchard C. School phobia: its classifications and relationship to dependency. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 1969; 10: 123-141.
Separation Anxiety with Kids
"Don't leave me!"
It is not uncommon for most kids to go through a period of difficulty when separating from parents like being dropped off at school, childcare or church. This is a normal developmental process. However, sometimes it becomes a significant problem and is considered an anxiety disorder if it persists for 4 weeks or longer. Separation anxiety with kids is characterized by extreme and unnecessary anxiety when faced with being separated from a parent or trusted caregiver. If your child has 3 or more of the following symptoms they might have separation anxiety disorder:
recurrent excessive distress when anticipating or experiencing separation from home or major attachment figures
persistent and excessive worry about losing major attachment figures or possible harm to them, such as illness, injury, disasters, or death.
persistent and excessive worry about events that could lead to separation from a major attachment figure (e.g., getting lost, being kidnapped, having an accident, dying)
persistent reluctance or refusal to go out, away from home, to school, work, or elsewhere because of fear of separation
persistent and excessive fear or reluctance about being alone or without major attachment figures at home or in other settings
persistent reluctance or refusal to sleep away from home or to go to sleep without being near a major attachment figure
repeated nightmares involving the theme of separation
repeated complaints of physical symptoms (e.g., headaches, stomachaches, nausea, or vomiting) when anticipating or experiencing separation from major attachment figures
Sometimes the anxiety is so strong it will result in panic. A child may act excessively clingy, plead to stay with the parent, attempt to bargain and negotiate, and may even erupt in rage. They will basically do anything to prevent the separation from taking place.
Turnaround addresses separation anxiety with kids directly, as well as other types of worry and fear. One of the main characters in Turnaround, Brianna, struggles with separation anxiety. Throughout the program, she shares her struggles with the other kids and how she overcomes them.
Sometimes kids grow out of separation anxiety on their own. Turnaround can significantly speed up that process, from months and maybe years to just days and weeks. For kids who meet the medical criteria for Separation Anxiety, treatment is essential and Turnaround was created to fill that need.
OCD in Children
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Over and over and over and over and over and.......
OCD in children (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is characterized by severe anxiety and the experience of your mind being "stuck." Thoughts and images repeat over and over and rituals and compulsions follow as the person tries to cope. Even though the symptoms can seem to an outsider unusual and purposeless they are not. The symptoms are an attempt to get rid of the danger. No one is crazy, broken or weird. It is just anxiety. Underneath the symptoms lies a good-intentioned person trying to do the right thing.
So what does OCD look like? Let’s start with the “O”, obsessive. All anxiety is obsessive. It just means you keep thinking about something over and over and over. It is an extreme mental preoccupation with something. It is a medieval term for laying siege to a city. In the disorder these thoughts are felt to be intrusive and unwanted. Usually they cause great distress. Because they are unwanted the person tries to ignore or suppress these thoughts, urges, or images, or to neutralize them with some other thought or action. Here is the dilemma: all those efforts to stop the thoughts don’t work and that causes more anxiety. This is how the cycle works. It tends to build steam. If someone said, "Why don't you just stop?" the answer is that they are trying to stop...desperately.
What about the “C” or compulsive part? This refers to actions the person might take to fix the problem. Here is the interesting thing. The compulsions work…but just a little. (Unfortunately they end up making it worse but that might be hard to see in the moment.) But because the distress is so intense a little help is very reinforcing and so the person does them over and over hoping to get some traction so they become repetitive. They can be behaviors like hand washing, putting things in order, going to check on things, avoiding things, certain motions, etc. They can be mental actions like praying, counting, repeating words, things like that. There is a powerful urge to do these things and they usually have to be “just right.” If they don’t feel right they have to be done again…and again. Unfortunately, they can take incredible amounts of time and interfere with the rest of life. Originally they probably made some sense but after a while they sometimes seem disconnected from any purpose. Someone without OCD can see that there is no realistic way they would help. Maybe the person with OCD can tell that but not always. Even so, the rule with anxiety is, “Better safe than sorry.”
One of the kids in our program, Matt, has OCD and your child can follow his story and treatment in the Turnaround program. The last few disks are focused on exposure and response (or ritual) prevention. These are the best practice for treating OCD in children.
There are some very similar kinds of problems that are very much like OCD but probably have some important differences that may need some specific treatment in addition to what works with OCD. These are excessive hair pulling, scratching or picking. Hoarding, preoccupation with aspects of the body, and stereotypically movements also may be in the category.
For more information you might visit the International OCD Foundation site. It is a not-for-profit organization made up of people with OCD as well as families, friends and professionals.
A brief summary can be found here from the National Institute of Health.
Dr. David’s Personal Story
I thought I knew about anxiety. I was about to be schooled.
She watched one child after another convulse with the flu as the virus spread through her 5th grade elementary school. My daughter was 10. She was afraid she was next. “He threw up on the bus, dad, it was everywhere.” (Frankly, her mom and I thought that reaction was reasonable.) Surprise is what we felt when she continued to be afraid once the mini-epidemic vanished into the “wherever” such things go. We did not see that coming. Her anxiety grew and absorbed other things; scents, stains, situations, speculation, “Can you feel my forehead mom?” She scanned her body for any changes that could hint at illness. She made it to summer but her fear was thundering downhill and we were all swept along no matter how hard we dug in our heels.
Panic stormed over her while waiting at the international terminal of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Our family was en route to a Caribbean resort stuck in a layover after leaving Charlotte, NC. (Have you noticed that anxiety seems to show up at the worst possible moments?) For the next four years my sweet girl strove with the panic that blew into her life. Me to. And her mom. Her family. All of us.
She did get on the plane by the way, to Jamaica, Mon.
I'm a psychologist, I knew about panic. But I knew about panic in the “patient-in-my-office-for-an-hour-once-a-week" way. Now I understood. I was humbled. I was scared. I really experienced the feeling of helplessness that panic causes and it wasn't even me. I vowed in the way that only a father protecting his daughter can promise: I would find a way to free her.
Lots of resources were available. I combed books, research, the internet. We purchased and tried anything that seemed a possible help. To my ongoing frustration they weren't helping (except medication but we never expected that to solve it entirely). The resources were full of great info but the delivery was for adults, not kids. She went to counseling but that wasn't enough. Here was my frustration, I knew what worked to cure panic. The science is available in any good book on anxiety. I thought I could guide her. Wrong. There was something catastrophically flawed with every treatment resource I could find, including "dad-the-psychologist-treatment". I kept trying to make her fit existing books and programs because not one single resource was truly designed for a child with anxiety. Not one. It doesn't matter if you have the absolute miracle cure. If it is not communicated in the language and framework of a child, it won't help.
Turnaround was born out of need
I am not some genius psychologist with the secret insider cure for anxiety. However, I had access to decades of research. I could stand on the shoulders of brilliant scientists. So my co-author, also a dad of an anxious child, and I did do something that as far as we know had never been done before. We took the science and got childish. (Probably was too easy). We spent two years working hard to get it right. We believe we've developed an unprecedented resource that speaks to directly to kids in their language and framework. We found incredibly gifted producers, artists, actors, editors and musicians. The result is an audio treatment program called Turnaround.
Every step of the process, I thought of my daughter. After all, I promised her.
Links about Child Anxiety
Links to Helpful Info and Resource Sites
For children anxiety can be a huge obstacle. It is an obstacle that can be overcome. The following sites offer excellent information and resources.
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America is a premier non-profit site with all kinds of resources including lists of therapists trained in the treatment of anxiety across the United States.
The international OCD Foundation is also a premier non-profit site dedicated to help people with OCD. It also contains excellent resources and lists of therapists.
Effective Child Therapy site sponsored by division 53 of the American Psychological Association. Excellent information about what to look for in treatment for you child.
Comprehensive and in-depth information about P.A.N.D.A.S here.
Anxiety.org is a comprehensive site developed through the UCLA Anxiety Disorders Research Center. Check to see if the self-help anxiety app is available. At the time of writing this it was not out but coming soon. Looks very interesting and useful.
List of inpatient and intensive outpatient treatment programs by State: Treatment sites.
Additional resources added regularly for Kids/Child/Children Anxiety.
Video Resources- featuring Dr. Chris
Helpful Video Resources
We want to provide you with informative resources that can help you better parent your children and teens, whether with issues regarding anxiety or other issues. We start with interviews Dr. Chris has done over the last few years.
TV Interviews with Dr. Christopher McCarthy on Charlotte Today:
Description of OCD in Children. Click here if video not available.
In "Glass People," filmmakers John Berardo and Brian Frager, USC School of Cinematic Arts, illustrate college-age anxiety and the great value of finding professional help. This short film premiered at the 2013 Anxiety and Depression Conference in La Jolla, California.
Anxiety, Children and Parenting
We Understand
Anxiety, Children and Parenting...We Understand.
You worry as your anxious child struggles with anxiety, doubt, and low self-confidence
We understand what you and your anxious child are going through. Our own children struggled with anxiety and we worried over them just like you do. It's very hard to watch your child pull back and lose that child-like joy due to their crippling anxiety. You want to see your anxious child free of this dark cloud that has overcome them. And YOU also want to feel better, more peaceful, and less worried about their well-being. The truth is that child anxiety not only affects your child but the whole family as well. We created Turnaround not only to set your child with anxiety free from fear but to help you feel more at peace knowing that you're doing all that you can for your child. Turnaround sets anxious children, parents, and whole family free from the effects of fear and anxiety!
Helpful Resources for Parents
In the Turnaround kit, we've included over 3-hours of information to educate and encourage you. The Parent Guide is a 2-disc set of helpful advice regarding how to better understand and guide your child towards freedom. Parenting anxious kids is different from parenting other kids. Many parents tell us that they have listened to those CDs again and again! And to help you better understand the medical aspects of childhood anxiety disorders, we've included Med FAQs (Child version), a 90-minute interview with Neuropsychiatrist, Dr. James Lee. Dr. Lee, Dr. Russ, and Dr. McCarthy give a thorough explanation of the medical aspects of anxiety and the medications used to treat it.
Additionally, we maintain an active Blog to help parents stay current on research and information concerning children with anxiety. And, to foster a community of parents who can connect with one another, we maintain an active Facebook page.
Kids and parents find Informed Therapy Resources and Turnaround a safe and helpful resource to turn to. One young man in New Zealand told his mom, "The docs who created Turnaround are the only ones who really understand what I'm going through." Parents also love Turnaround for the same reasons! They feel accepted, understood, and encouraged that they can help their child overcome their fears. Turnaround is the resource to help you and your child turn fear and worry into freedom! Anxiety, Children and Parenting: Help has arrived!
MyAnxiousChild.com was recently ranked as a top ten organization and website by GoodTherapy.org based on factors of usefulness, ease of access, esthetics, up-to-date information/content, alignment with GoodTherapy mission and values, availability of resources, the importance of the work and community presence. Thank you GoodTherapy!
Once you purchase Turnaround, you can receive even more help from Dr. Russ and Dr. McCarthy. You can talk to the Docs directly through a phone call or Skype session. This is your opportunity to ask questions regarding your child's anxiety, learn how to better implement the principles taught in Turnaround, and to discover Turnaround can be adapted to your child and family. For further information, click here. To schedule an appointment, email the docs at admin@myanxiouschild.com.
Still Not Sure? Consider these Unique Aspects of Turnaround
You can use Turnaround in the comfort of your own home. Many anxious children are fearful to talk about their fears with others and hesitant to see a therapist if there is one available. Turnaround can provide you the resources your anxious child needs in the security of their own home.
Turnaround is cost effective. Turnarounds costs less than one or two sessions with a psychologist. It costs less than many after school programs and will give your child life-long skills. The best selling adult audio program sells for over $500.
Anxiety tends to build steam if not treated. A high number of adults with anxiety started feeling anxious as kids. The sooner you address your child's anxiety, the easier it is to overcome and less likely it is to become a life-long struggle.
Turnaround is truly unique. There literally is nothing else like Turnaround. Down to the smallest details it is designed for anxious children. For example, with rare exception, no one speaks in the program for more than about a minute at a time. What is happening is always changing, just like cartoons. Other programs are e-books or adult style lectures. Kids with anxiety don't want to read academic explanations or listen to a boring lecture about something they don't want to think about. For kids, boring is the kiss of death.
Kids like adventure stories. They like to be captivated by a thrilling story that includes imaginary characters and a plot with twist and turns. Books are great but an audio adventure is even better!
You AND your anxious child will both like it! The feedback we receive is that parents enjoy listening to it just as much as kids do.
You don't have to be a therapist. Other programs expect you to become a child anxiety expert so that you can treat your child. We don't. They expect you to read long manuals and listen to long lectures. We don't. We've done the hard work for you- studying the research, reading the literature and working out how to treat this day-in-day-out. Of course parents are fully capable to help their anxious children with worry, fear and problem-solving. But when the anxiety reaches a clinical level then it is a different matter altogether. Both David and Chris have earned a Ph.D. As someone once said, "Work smarter, not harder." We did the work so that you don't have to. You may save a few dollars buying a cheaper program, but be prepared to study!
Turnaround was designed by professional therapists. At the risk of sounding arrogant, we know what we're doing. Just because someone overcame anxiety doesn’t mean they have earned a doctorate. It is really strange to see someone claiming to be an "internationally known expert on overcoming fear" when they have absolutely no credentials. We have been treating children with anxiety, as well as anxious adults, for over 30 years between us. On the Internet, people don't have to back up their claims. We do. We see people every day; we have licenses and credentials to back up what we say. We have studied evidenced-based theories and techniques that have been shown to be effective. We are accountable to state licensing boards. We take this seriously because we have to.
Turnaround provides life-skills training. Your anxious child will learn about team work, humility, caring for others, hard work, and many, many more important lessons to help them master life's challenges.
We offer an up to 90-day guarantee. If your anxious child does not find it helpful, send it back within 30, 60 or 90-days (depending on your plan) and we'll give you a complete refund. Everybody is telling us from a business point-of-view that a guarantee is too long but we believe in our program and are willing to stand behind it.
Provide your anxious child with effective treatment and free them from the burden of anxiety, Guaranteed.
Professionally Produced & Cast
Professionally Produced By Award-Winning Artists
Developed by licensed, credentialed therapists over a 2-year period. Unlike most authors of materials found on the Internet, we have over 35 years of clinical experience between us treating anxious children and adults. Combining our skills with the talents of a nationally recognized children's book illustrator (CB Canga), an award-winning music composer (Chad Lawson), a creative art director who's done work with Disney and Warner Bros (St. Dwayne Design), and a first-rate audio production studio (SoundPost), we created a program that is top-notch in every way. We hired a talented group of young actors and director. When comparing, check credentials and quality of production. You will quickly see that products produced by Informed Therapy Resources, LLC (ITR) are superior.
Authors
Created By Licensed Clinicians With Over 30 Years Of Combined Experience
Together, Psychologist Dr. David Russ and Licensed Professional Counselor Christopher McCarthy, spent two years creating Turnaround to treat children with anxiety. Being fathers of anxious kids, and therapists who treat anxious children, we discovered there were limited resources available for the effective treatment of child anxiety. Turnaround: Turning Fear Into Freedom™ is based upon the theory of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which research has shown to be the most effective treatment for depression and anxiety. What makes Turnaround truly unique and without rival is the priority of making the material professional AND child friendly. In Turnaround you will have the confidence of knowing the program was developed by experienced clinicians, using scientifically proven theory and techniques, and designed to not only educate your child, but keep them engaged in the process. Your child will want to listen to it again and again.
For articles by Dr. David Russ and Christopher McCarthy, see the Parental Resource page.
Contact
Informed Therapy Resources
Address and Phone Numbers
Informed Therapy Resources, LLC
9935-D Rea Road
Suite 102
Charlotte, NC 28277
(704) 208-4304 or toll free (877) 300-7436
Fax: (704) 544-1109
Drs McCarthy and Russ maintain their private practice at Carolinas Counseling Group:
7401 Carmel Executive Park Dr
Suite 210
Charlotte, NC 28226
(704) 752-8414
Explore the best techniques for parenting your anxious child, learn tips straight from Dr. David & Dr. Chris, and see the program at work.
Products
Award Winning Products
Turnaround Store:
Money Back Guarantee! Now available to download! Start helping your child today!
Click on the product name for more details. If you have any problems ordering, please contact us at 877-300-7436 or email us at billing@myanxiouschild.com. Distance coaching/consulting help is now available from the Docs. Click here for info.
Resources
Anxiety Symptoms and Treatment
Parenting Resources, Articles & Links
Parenting is difficult. Parenting children with anxiety is a whole other category. We want to assist you in your task as much as possible. On this page you will find resources to help you better parent your anxious child as well as further understand childhood anxiety symptoms and treatment.
Anxiety Disorders
Life is stressful and seems to be increasingly so for our children. Although Turnaround can benefit children who are experiencing stress and worry, it excels in helping with major anxiety symptoms in kids. In the world of professional diagnosis and treatment, the term "Anxiety Disorder" is an umbrella term for different specific types of anxieties. The following are the most common types of anxiety in children:
How to determine if your child is anxious and needing help
As a parent, it's hard to know when your child needs help or if they will "just grow out of their fears". This can even cause stress between the genders! Women (moms) tend to think there's an issue sooner than men (dads). Men often say, "They just need to get over it. Stop babying them!" Men, generally speaking, are slower to recognize when anxiety has exceeded normal fears.
Many fears are normal. For example, younger children are generally more afraid of physical events and imaginary creatures, while older children are more fearful of social issues and school pressures. Some topics are common fears regardless of age- sickness, pain, doctor visits, natural disasters, and any types of loss or trauma. What you want to assess is how and to what extent your child's fears are affecting them. Here are some things to consider, and we start them all with "S" to keep it simple:
Surplus: Does the anxiety seem exaggerated with what most people would think a "developmentally normal" reaction? Is there a significant surplus of fear and worry relative to the danger? Is your child frequently unable to stop or control the worry or fear? Does your child have a strongly exaggerated sense of danger or threat? Is it impossible to reason with your child during these episodes?
Storm: Does your child to get very distraught or easily upset, so much so that it seems like they are out-of-control? Is the fear such a burden that your child seems miserable because of it? Does the emotional reaction seem like an intense storm? Is your child inconsolable or gets worse when you try to help?
Spoiler: Does the fear and anxiety significantly interfere with his or her daily activities or that of the family? Does it significantly impact sleep, school, friendships or the ability to act independently? Is it spoiling your child's life to some extent? Is it becoming easier to just give in to get some peace?
Stuck: Does the fear last longer than you would expect? For example, has your child worried consistently for a couple months? Is the fear present most everyday? Is it persistent to the point where you're wondering if your child is stuck? Are you and your child starting to fear it won't get any better?
As a point of reference, consider what has been typical for your child over time. Are things worse than before, or getting worse? Second, consider what seems "typical" of other children of the same age. Are their reactions fairly typical or untypical? Are others commenting on your child behavior, such as teachers, coaches, etc.? If you are still uncertain, it is recommended that you get a professional assessment.
Here is a link to a site with various tests that will help you determine if anxiety is a problem. Click Here.
It can be difficult to realize that your child really does have a problem with anxiety. But don't let your child's struggle cause YOU to lose heart. Childhood anxiety is more common than you might think. Some studies show anxiety in children as high as 20%. There is help for your child out there, be it Turnaround, medication, or some other treatment. Children with anxiety can be helped! You're child's struggle can be something they grow from and become stronger as a result. Your child can, and mostly likely will, jump again with joy and freedom!
Watch this interview with Dr. Christopher McCarthy about child anxiety and Turnaround for more information.
If your child has the symptoms of an anxiety disorder it is probably just that, an anxiety disorder. However, most parents want to pay a visit to the pediatrician just to play it safe and I would recommend that as well. Let me qualify my comments by saying I am NOT a medical doctor. Nothing I write should be considered a medical opinion. That being said I do want to make a list of possible medical reasons for anxiety in children. Most of this list is from an article I cite at the end**.
Medication. Has you child started on a medication or changed the dose within the last few weeks?
Everyone has really dreadful thoughts. Thoughts like jumping out of a tall story window, an impulse to harm someone, images of loved ones in accidents, thinking of being attacked at night, etc. This has been confirmed in a number of studies. Most people notice, may think it was weird and then move on to other things. On the other hand, people with anxiety disorders, particularly OCD, assign a great deal of importance to some of these thoughts.
What the research indicates the specific thought is NOT important for anxiety. Example, it isn’t important that you just had a thought about harming a baby. What IS important is the meaning you give to the thought. In the case of our example, you may think having this thought means you are a terrible mother.
Posted by Chris McCarthy on May 28, 2013 in Interviews
In this TV interview, Dr. McCarthy suggests some healthy activities that kids enjoy but that also promotes healthy brain and physical development. Instead of your child playing x-box or being in overly structured programs, consider trying some of these activities. Follow this LINK to see the interview.
This was really hard for me. My daughter struggled with panic on and off for about 4 years. She wanted comfort and reassurance that everything would be okay. I gave her that reassurance. Was that the right thing to do? Maybe, maybe not. Let me explain.
President Obama is his new budget proposal calls for children to begin school at age 4 but is that the best thing? Recent brain development research shows that children are not ready for school until at least age six. Finland, which consistently scores in the top 3 for high-school math and language scores waits till age seven to start their children. In this interview, Dr. McCarthy discusses this research and other things to consider before starting your child is school. For this link: When To Start School
Anxiety has it’s own unique set of “operating rules.” These are not obvious and sometimes opposite of what one might think. That leads to all kinds of information that is mistaken. Well-meaning but wrong. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America is offering a free webinar on April 17th called Common Myths About Anxiety Disorders. This is a quick preview of some of the common “myths” about anxiety.*
Myth 1: If you have an anxiety problem you should avoid stress or anything that will cause anxiety.
Posted by Chris McCarthy on Mar 28, 2013 in Interviews
Do you struggle getting your child to get up in the morning and prepare themselves for school, do their chores, or get ready for bed? Dr. McCarthy talks on Charlotte Today about the importance of routines and how to establish them.
Anxiety treatment is stressful. From, “Where are my keys!” all the way to what my friend John would say, “I'm on a balcony 30 floors up with one foot on the rail and the other on a banana peel!” Your child’s anxiety WILL go up if you get them treatment. We often get the question regarding our anxiety program, “Will starting Turnaround cause my child to get more anxious?” and, “Will being exposed to the fears of other kids in the program give my child some new things to worry about?” Our answer: "Yes. It might." Anxiety treatment causes anxiety. If this is the point that you think, “Cause more anxiety? Why would I do that,” then you have just discovered the reason why anxiety is so hard to overcome.
Let me say right up front that what I am writing about is straight out of Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book on happiness. In her book she writes about 12 activities that are strongly supported by scientific evidence to boost happiness (although I suspect all our grandmothers knew it already). The first is the practice of gratitude. According to Dr. Lyubomirsky gratitude is “…wonder; it is appreciation; it is looking at the bright side of a setback; it is fathoming abundance; it is thanking someone in your life; it is thanking God; it is counting blessings. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is coping; it is present-oriented.” If that is not enough to persuade one to develop this practice she offers eight benefits of practicing gratitude:
I have been reading a very interesting book that summarizes research on happiness. As I go along I will try to blog about some of the really amazing information the author reports after devoting her life to the study of happiness. Here is just a brief excerpt about some of the behavior and thinking of the happiest people in the world:
They devote a great amount of time to...
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Physical: hyper-arousal called the fight or flight response, 2) Mind: the thinking errors that activate or increase the physical arousal and 3) Actions: how a person tries to solve the problem presented by anxiety. (In the Turnaround Program we call these 1) Yucky Feelings, 2) Whacky Thoughts and 3) Zany Responses.) We will describe the treatment using these same 3 features. 
anxiety, you can see that for the most part they overlap. The part that overlaps is common to anxiety disorders and the part that doesn't distinguishes one type from the other. The common components are 1) Physical: the fight or flight response, 2) Mind: the thinking errors that activates or increases the physical reaction and 3) Actions: how a person tries to solve the problem presented by anxiety. In the Turnaround Program we call these 1) Yucky Feelings, 2) Whacky Thoughts and 3) Zany Responses. 
understand, and an adventure that would grab them. Down to the smallest detail, Turnaround is carefully constructed to work for anxious kids. The vocabulary, artwork, dialog, timing, music - everything designed for kids. Unlike many materials that were first created for adults and then modified for children, Turnaround started and finished with anxious children in mind. Turnaround is not an attempt to teach parents to be therapists, it is designed to communicate directly to your child. 
listen to an adventure story designed to capture their attention while learning about anxiety and going step-by-step through the process to overcome it. After each lesson, ten in all, your child will complete exercises in the Turnaround Journal that reinforce the material. Turnaround is unique because it addresses anxiety with kids in a way that is both clinical and entertaining. 
factors leading to anxiety, types of childhood anxiety, and how to seek the right kind of help.
Anxiety Kids are Turnaround's target audience. Other programs speak to parents and then expect the parent to translate the material to their child. That is too much pressure and impractical. In the Turnaround audio adventure, your child joins our cast of six anxious children, two "docs", a mentor teen, a cast of animated characters, and other kids - all designed to capture your child's attention and imagination. Just imagine how much your child will learn by being personally invested in the story! It's a format that's unlike anything else out there and highly effective! 
Pioneer researcher, 
But it is stubbornly persistent and throws a cloud of worry and stress over a child. Often in children chronic stomach problems are due to anxiety. However, you should always check out physical symptoms with your 
pediatrician. 
alarms. There is nothing wrong with it, believe it or not. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do --just at the wrong time!
Day 1: We start with a "preview" of the program, an audio introduction very much like a movie trailer to help your anxious child gets a sense of what the program is, who the main characters are, and what to expect. Then we begin Day One of the hiking trip. All the anxious kids come together and begin to talk about their fears, sharing their stories and why they are on this trip. Your anxious child will be asked to think about which child character's anxiety is most similar to their own. We use children and color codes to identify different types of anxiety rather than diagnostic labels. 
Day 2: We break down anxiety into three parts, and use kid-friendly language to describe what they are and how they work. We have created a unique vocabulary that children can easily identify with. Many parents report that this language is extremely helpful for the child, as well as useful to foster parent-child communication about anxiety. 
Day 10: During this day we cover some final thoughts, have a brief discussion with one the kids about medication, and wrap it up a ceremony to acknowledge the progress they have made thus far. Some kids are free from their anxiety at this point, while others will need to listen to the program again and keep working at it. We celebrate whatever progress your child has made and encourage them to stay at it until they are completely free from fear. 
regarding your child's anxiety, learn how to better implement the principles taught in Turnaround, and to discover Turnaround can be adapted to your child and family. For further information, click 
If your child has the symptoms of an anxiety disorder it is probably just that, an anxiety disorder. However, most parents want to pay a visit to the pediatrician just to play it safe and I would recommend that as well. Let me qualify my comments by saying I am NOT a medical doctor. Nothing I write should be considered a medical opinion. That being said I do want to make a list of possible medical reasons for anxiety in children. Most of this list is from an article I cite at the end**. 
This was really hard for me. My daughter struggled with panic on and off for about 4 years. She wanted comfort and reassurance that everything would be okay. I gave her that reassurance. Was that the right thing to do? Maybe, maybe not. Let me explain.
Depression Association of America
and the other on a banana peel!” Your child’s anxiety WILL go up if you get them treatment. We often get the question regarding our anxiety program, “Will starting Turnaround cause my child to get more anxious?” and, “Will being exposed to the fears of other kids in the program give my child some new things to worry about?” Our answer: "Yes. It might." Anxiety treatment causes anxiety. If this is the point that you think, “Cause more anxiety? Why would I do that,” then you have just discovered the reason why anxiety is so hard to overcome.
