Building Coping Skills for Your Anxious Child with Compassionate Counseling St. Louis Senior Therapist Molly Shaffer, LPC
You are noticing that your child could benefit from seeing a St. Louis counselor. Your child has big emotions and doesn’t always know how to express them. You try to reassure your child and teach them coping skills, but they need their own space to build their coping skills toolkit.
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, this is exactly what our St. Louis therapist team is specialized in. The anxiety therapists at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis are highly experienced in treating anxiety and anxiety-driven anger in kids as young as 3 years old, teens and college students. They also offer St. Louis parent coaching!
Today we tapped Senior Therapist and parent coach Molly Shaffer, LPC to share a little bit with you about what she brings into her counseling space at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis.
Molly Shaffer, LPC
Molly Shaffer, LPC
Child & Teen Therapist, Parent Coach
1. Psychoeducation and Reframing
I first provide some psychoeducation and help create better understandings of negative thinking patterns and thoughts spirals. Then, I create thought characters with clients (villain/superhero thoughts) - the clients create characteristics to each thought character (villain: bad, unhelpful, mean, negative; superhero: good, helpful, strong, positive, etc.). Once we have created our thought characters, I relate our thoughts to these characters (identifying specific negative thoughts that increase anxious reactions) and practice thought reframing through the characters battling.
2. Grounding Exercises
Grounding exercises can take attention away from anxious thought and bring attention back to the present. Sensory grounding like the 5,4,3,2,1 exercise and mental grounding like the categories or a-z exercise.
3. Validation
This can be teaching self-validation for the client and helping caregivers understand how to provide validation in a highly anxious moment. Helping clients recognize and accept their feelings can really help to de-escalate that internal conflict and allow for the use of other skills for better emotional regulation.
Interested in learning more about our team at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis?
You’ve found yourself looking for the right St. Louis therapist for your child. How do you find the right one? You might be using search phrases like “Counseling St. Louis”, “trauma therapy st louis”, or “anxiety therapist st. louis”. You might be crowdsourcing your friends and co-workers, or reading through a lot of St. Louis counseling websites. You found Compassionate Counseling St. Louis during your search, and it seems like we could be a great fit for your family.
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, we would love to connect you with our team of St. Louis therapists. Let’s set up a free consultation call to talk about what is going on, how we offer support at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, and get you scheduled with one of the expert St. Louis therapists at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis.
You can hear more from our team in these blogs:
Why Boundaries Matter for Anxious Kids: Advice from St. Louis Anxiety Therapist Kelsey Torgerson Dunn
CBT Activities for Kids with Compassionate Counseling St. Louis Therapists
Curious to learn more about parent coaching and therapy for child anxiety and anxiety-driven anger? Reach out to us at hello@compassionatecounselingstl.com. As child anxiety experts, we love working with kids, teens, college students and parents to help manage their anxiety, stress, and anger. Compassionate Counseling St. Louis is located in Clayton, MO and works with families by offering both in-person counseling and online therapy throughout St. Louis, Creve Couer, Ballwin, Town and Country, Brentwood, and Ladue. We also provide online therapy Missouri -wide to teens and college students. You can set up your free consult, on our consultation page.