How do you navigate helping a child address emotional struggles that are presenting as physical ailments?
Hmm. This child is dealing with headaches, dizziness, stomach aches. What advice do you have for this family?
So, I want to go back to the concept of the body feeling threatened, right? Sometimes it comes across as anxiety, but in this situation, the body, what we're hearing is headaches. So we're seeing the physical sensation—the body is responding to this stress.
Going back to the concept of how do we help the body relax. I want to educate my child, and I want my child to be aware of physiological sensations. I want them to notice how they're breathing. I want them to notice tightness or tension in their body. Maybe it's in the shoulders. And so they're getting headaches because their shoulders are tight and tense.
So one of the first tools that we use with children in this situation is learning to listen to the body. And that's a skill that we all could benefit. This is not just for children and adolescents, man. I'll tell you, if every one of us would learn to pay more attention to our physiological sensations, tightness, tension, headaches come from, usually it's tension and tightness inside of us.
So, learning how to relax, learning how to, uh, if our emotions were a thermostat, am I running too hot or am I just so shut down 'cause I'm exhausted? Where's the ideal temperature for me? And how do I find that space?
The other element there is a child with those types of physical manifestations might have other life experiences, potential traumas that are triggering that type of internal tension inside of their body.
Now, as a parent, you're already aware that there's a relationship, because I think you brought it up, right? There's something going on that is triggering the physiological manifestation here. So I think that's a great awareness on your part. Now let's shift that into educating our child about what's happening inside of them.
In some ways, it actually normalizes it. I'm normalizing what they're experiencing and helping them understand that. Okay, let's see if we can get some strategies that would help you relax your body. And then let's notice what's happening to the headaches.
So I might go back to the basic exercise. I might use other strategies to help access what's referred to as the vagus nerve. We talked about that. I might use other strategies to help see if we can calm their body and their mind.
One example of that is called the Safe and Sound Protocol. This is something that we've been trained on at our agency. It is a sound device where you use non-canceling headphones, non-sound, right? So it's not blocking out sound. And it literally, when you use the app, the Safe and Sound Protocol, it has been found to help access that vagus nerve. And remember that that is a calming element.
So these are strategies that have been found to be effective in the research on how to regulate and calm the body down. Again, we need more tools and more strategies, and these are just some of them that we have found to be effective over time. And researchers are now seeing more and more of that positive outcome associated with it.
