Mindfulness & Gifted Children: Coping with Anxiety

Spontaneous yoga in the park - one of the many benefits of the city as a classroom!

At Seabury, one of the things we know about gifted children is their propensity to FEEL. Our head of school, Sandi Wollum, often describes our kids as having "satellite dishes instead of cable connections." This is inherent in our school's definition of giftedness:

... a greater awareness, a greater sensitivity, and a greater ability to understand and transform perceptions into intellectual and emotional experiences."        – Annemarie Roeper

This ability to take in so much information can make for engaged and enthusiastic learners, but along with all that extra input comes a lot of worry and anxiety. We have learned over the years that many of our students have a hard time turning it all off sometimes. To help them build some coping skills, we teach intentional strategies to help with this, such as mindfulness. We use many different activities such as yoga, breathing, and different movement exercises to help these amazing youngsters stay in touch with and in control of their emotions.

I recently came across a great resource I'd like to share - it's a book called Press Pause - A Young Person's Guide to Managing Life's Challenges by Catherine Singer. My class has been working through a chapter a week, but there are a few that I think might be helpful to parents at home that I wanted to share here. In Chapter 3, Singer talks about "ser," the Armenian word for love. Singer describes using the acronym "SER" in the following way to help avoid spiraling into anxious patterns of thinking:

S – Shift
Stop what you are doing or shift your thoughts away from scary thoughts/news when they start to hurt your well-being (Note – this is not avoiding bad news or tragedy, just being aware of when fear/anxiety take over)

E- Envision  
Imagine/visualize a change (for example, imagine swiping left like on a phone to change the image in your mind) or envision/visualize a place you feel completely safe or at ease (i.e a beach, lake or your favorite chair or spot at home)

R - Recognize 
Realize that we are actually SAFE. Ask yourself how often your scary thoughts actually come true? What are the actual statistics behind the thing you are worrying about? 
Look for the good (at Seabury - we often look for the heroes) in the tragedy and be attentive to the good and resilience in the world and not just the bad and tragedy.

Singer says to remember that we can choose where we place our attention and we can empower ourselves to shift focus when our thoughts start to hurt our well-being.

I think this is a lesson a lot of students can benefit from!