I'm Dr. Becky and this is good inside.

So we have a preschool age kiddo and she is very bright she's very verbally precocious and

physically she's a risk-taker and I wouldn't describe her as being generally anxious in most of her day-to-day life,

but we have these moments of really intense anxiety that fall into a few different

categories of anxiety, I'd say, where the kind of standard offering empathy and then trying to offer some support doesn't seem to get us to a place of helping her

calm down when she gets into a spiral.

You're like I'm doing the thing but then it's not doing the thing it's supposed to.

Yes exactly. We not doing the thing it's supposed to. Yes, exactly.

We're trying the thing, but she just gets locked into these spirals.

And we don't know what the right thing to say is.

So I would love to know, you know, I understand that we might not get a perfect outcome from saying the right thing immediately.

But we might. But yeah, but you're going to have a direction and some clarity.

All right, I want to come out and say this. I have some pretty controversial ideas about anxiety.

I actually think so often we're told to do things when we're

anxious or kids are anxious that might like very short term feel okay but

then very immediately after and long term make us more anxious.

So often when we have kids who are anxious, we are told to reassure them, to remind them that everything's going to be okay

or we're told to I don't know kind of avoid certain situations that kind of

of quote flare their anxiety well in today's episode I'm talking

with a mom Elizabeth who shares about her daughter who is very deeply thinking

and thinks big thoughts and scary thoughts and has a lot of fears and anxiety.

And together we talk about a really different approach that really resonates with her and I think it's going to

...