*Well, almost everything!
Exisle Publishing
June 2024
ISBN: 9781922539991
RRP: $37.99
Just a week or so ago, we went to see Inside Out 2. We loved the first one and had been waiting on this one even more, especially The Kid because she was keen to see how Anxiety was handled. We are a family to whom anxiety is no stranger, and particularly K, who struggled with it even as a small person, before we lost her mum (possibly often due to her intellectual impairment and difficulty with interpreting situations etc) but, unsurprisingly, had even more issues with it as she got older.
Now at 19 she has begun to self-regulate it, but is always keen to find out more about it and strategies to knock it. And for her, and other young adults like her, this is just a perfect primer.
It’s written in a very easy-to-understand manner with relatable examples, simple and effective strategies and a touch of humour that makes it all both palatable and accessible. It deals with understanding anxiety, recognising it, the good, the bad and the ugly of it and how to control it – or perhaps, more accurately, how to harness it to make it work in your favour.
In my role as Head of Library, overseeing both secondary and primary students, I have seen the all too visible signs of anxiety and have, on several occassions, called upon our school psychologist to counsel various young people. Certainly, this is an obvious move, but educating young adults about their mental health is also paramount.
Thankfully, it is becoming more and more de rigeur in schools to address this (although our systems continue to impose so much on both students and staff that it’s little wonder the mental health stats are sky-rocketing *face palm*).
Sometimes even casual remarks such as: make sure you turn off your screens earlier rather than later, a good sleep routine is a good idea, incorporate some kind of exercise, all of which are strategies mentioned in this text, are useful and will be taken on board.
In my libraries and at various schools, we’ve also run meditation/yoga sessions, practised mindful breathing, and I still regularly use the Smiling Mind app for 5 min. refocusing/calming on relief – just bluetooth my mini-speaker to my phone and away we go. I also made sure we had a basket of helpful books in a discreet but strategic place, so that kiddos could go help themselves and, even skim in the lunchbreak, without feeling that everyone was watching them take one off a shelf. It’s SO important for our charges to feel safe and protected when they are feeling most vulnerable.
And, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere since seeing the movie, we have a saying now to ‘put Anxiety in the comfy armchair and make her a cup of tea’. Give your kiddos simple strategies and work with them, whenever you can.
Dr Toni Lindsay is a clinical and health psychologist who has been working with both adults and adolescents for over ten years. She works at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse and teaches at the University of Melbourne (Adolescent Medicine) and the University of Sydney Nursing School. This is such an important book for you to have in your collection, whether personal, classroom or library. Recommend it to your school counsellors and parents via newsletters and certainly promote it to your students. You could be the one who helps them to tame their own Anxiety character. Highly recommended for readers from about 12 upwards.
Just So Stories 
Leave a comment