Is my child anxious or just plain angry?

Anxiety and anger often go hand in hand. Children who display anger as a common behaviour can often feel anxious underneath. Here’s how it works…
When a child feels anxious, they often feel intense fear and worry towards possible threats and dangers. Often in today’s world these are ‘perceived’ threats not actual ones (the threat of being ghosted on social media not the threat of being eaten by a lion!) As we discuss in our workshops these perceived threats and thoughts can kick off the body’s stress response- fight, flight or freeze.
Anxious thoughts which kick off the stress response cause kids to experience physical symptoms such as an increased heartbeat, shortness of breath and even nausea- how often does your child complain of a tummy ache? This is because just thinking about possible dangers activates their fight or flight instinct.
While some kids ‘take flight’ when they feel anxious and stay away from possible dangers, others find that their fight response is activated. This can result in them becoming angry,  often times very quickly as they try to regulate their now dysregulated bodies.
In these situations, we can assist children by helping them to calm their fight or flight response. We are looking to reduce their levels of circulating cortisol and adrenaline. Our work with schools focuses on this aspect and we devise quick and simple ways to do it. One of my favourites is to go to the science of co-regulation. If my body is regulated and I am near my child, they can hijack my calm. If that feels challenging then you can start by viewing a child’s anger through the lens of anxiety and the fight, flight response to see if you can start to view it differently.