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Hi there!

Welcome to Oli’s world! Whether driven by curiosity or by need, we’re excited that you have joined our growing community of parents and carers who value a more inclusive future for their children. We know that parenting is the world’s most rewarding job, but, let’s face it, also the most challenging one at times. That’s where we come in.

We are here to help the many parents and caregivers who struggle to cope with a child’s diverse behavioural traits. Many children struggle socially and emotionally, limiting them in life, simply because they think in a different way to their neurotypical peers. However, their diverse thinking can in fact become a superpower as they grow up. Oli help understands these children, so we are able to significantly improve family time by facilitating more harmonious interactions between parents and their children.

We are building the tools to empower parents to create a transformative impact on their children’s lives, helping them to thrive with diverse minds. In the meantime, with our newsletters, our aim is to provide you with access to expert information and knowledge to help make sense of young diverse minds, as well as practical advice to do things differently, helping you evolve your own behavioural patterns.

Our fourth newsletter is about anxiety and how a ‘false alarm’ reaction in the brain can feel very real and scary

Anxiety is sort of a misunderstood emotion.  Misunderstood yet actually very common.  In fact, so common that an American task force has recently recommended that all children ages 8-18 be screened for anxiety disorders.  Anxiety disorders are increasingly prevalent among children, and even more likely to be diagnosed among neurodiverse children.  Professionals have various theories on the reasons for this, but the fact remains that this category of mental health difficulties is one of the most frequently identified. In this fourth newsletter we want you to take away a few important points:

Anxiety is a natural response that has helped humans survive. It triggers a fight-or-flight reaction to potential dangers. 

Similar to a smoke detector in a house, our brain has an alarm system called the amygdala, which alerts us to both internal and external threats.

However, some people experience exaggerated or false alarm reactions to perceived threats, leading to irrational fears. 

In these cases, the brain perceives all anxiety as life-threatening and releases chemicals that cause physical symptoms like shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating and muscle tension.

These feelings are real and can make individuals feel overwhelmed or as if they are losing control, particularly if they are unaware of what is happening. 

These physiological changes also send panic signals to the brain, further intensifying anxiety.

The next newsletter will offer a tool to break this cycle and promote a more positive mindset.

Anxiety is critical to our safety and survival but it may be triggered by a ‘false alarm’ reaction in the brain.

We *all* experience anxiety at times, and actually we would not want to nor could we completely eradicate anxiety in someone.  So, when someone says, “I have anxiety,” what they really mean to say is, “I have anxiety that gets in my way,” or “My anxiety feels too strong, too often.”  It’s safe to say that without anxiety, our species wouldn’t exist anymore.  Millenia ago, when we humans were hunter-gatherers, the women would hang out in the caves, and the men would wander out in their loin clothes with their spears and go hunt for food.  Let’s say that Man A and Man B were out on the daily hunt, and some dangerous sabre-toothed tiger snuck up behind them.  Man A smells and hears the tiger but has no anxiety response and continues about his business as usual, yet Man B smells and hears the tiger, has an immediate anxiety response, which allows him to run away at an exceptional speed or to turn and fight the tiger with unusual force. Which man is more likely to survive and therefore pass on his genes to the next generation?  Well, Man B, of course.  So, in this way, anxiety has been crucial to the survival of our species and in some ways, it still is.  

Just like you have a smoke detector in your house to let you know when there is an actual, dangerous fire and therefore you need to react and get to safety, we have a part of our brain called the amygdala that alerts us to danger inside or outside of the body. The problem is that in some people there is a sort of ‘false alarm’ reaction to real or perceived dangers in life.  I’m sure you’ve been in a building having a chat or a meeting, and for no apparent reason, the fire alarm goes off, clanging loudly and confusing and annoying everyone in the building.  There is no actual danger, no smoke, no fire, but the alarm is acting in the exact same way as if there were an actual fire.  This happens to some people’s brains as well.  For example, some people (for various reasons) are incredibly scared of things like pigeons or vomit.  While these things aren’t necessarily pleasant, they’re not actually dangerous.  Yet the person’s brain responds in a way that causes them to behave and think in ways that tell them that they are life threatening.  So, in this way, the brain is acting like the smoke detector blaring on without any actual danger.  

When the brain experiences a ‘false alarm’ reaction to anxiety, it triggers a physiological response that can feel very real and scary.

The brain can also react in a “burnt toast” sort of way.  In these cases, there may be a tiny bit of danger, but the brain reacts as if it’s an all-out three alarm fire.  Have you ever been cooking and maybe the food gets a tad overcooked or too close to the cooking element, so a little smoke is released but it’s nothing serious, no actual flames are produced, and it’s all sorted out quickly and safely?  And yet the smoke detector goes off anyway, and you’ve got to use the kitchen towel to fan the air to silence the alarm!  In this circumstance, there was a small amount of smoke or “danger,” but the alarm went off just the same as if there were raging flames all over the kitchen.  This can happen to people’s brains when there is indeed some sort of anxiety provoking situation, like say a job interview or an exam, yet the person’s internal alarm bells react way too intensely to the reality of the situation, and therefore they can’t function properly or even go through with the task at hand.  

In this way, the brain perceives all anxiety (real or imagined) as literally life threatening, whether it fits the facts or not.  And as a result, the amygdala releases chemicals, including cortisol and adrenaline, which change our bodies’ functioning in a millisecond.  The brain is responding to this perceived threat in order to keep us alive because it thinks we are in danger of dying.  Immediately our heart and lungs change functioning.  The heart starts to pump blood faster and harder to the arms and legs and away from smaller, non-essential parts of the body.  Because the heart is pumping faster, the breath changes, becoming short, sharp, and shallow.  Your bodyis preparing to fight or flee or freeze in the face of your enemy, but in reality, you’re just sitting in a chair waiting for your job interview to start!  This results in the delicate balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your body becoming imbalanced, which can make you feel dizzy or light-headed or tingly and can make you sweat, or feel hot, or cold, or clammy.  Because the blood has instantly shifted away from non-essential functioning like digesting your lunch, you may experience bowel or bladder urgency.  Some people also experience vision changes such as decreased peripheral vision (no need to notice those beautiful flowers in the distance when you’re running for your life!).  And many people also experience muscle tension, especially in body parts such as hands, neck and glutes. 

Being aware of what’s going on in your body is the first step to breaking this vicious cycle - the next newsletter will tell you what to do next.

You can see how the process of anxiety is extremely physical and can feel to some like they’re going “crazy” or even dying, especially if they’re not aware of what’s happening to them.  Indeed, all of these physiological changes in the body send panic signals to the brain, which in turn causes the brain to release even more anxiety chemicals!  In this way, the body gets into a feedback loop of ratcheting up the stakes and triggering all sorts of thoughts related to the perceived threat, such as “This interview is going to go so poorly,” or “They’re going to hate me,” which in turn causes the heart to race even more, and … you get the picture.  So, you can see that anxiety is useful and even life-saving in the correct contexts, but when we have “false alarm” responses, it can feel – and indeed it is! – very real.  In the next instalment of our newsletter, we will take it a step further and give you a super simple yet incredibly effective tool for short circuiting this vicious cycle and instead creating a more virtuous cycle in its place.

If you enjoyed our newsletter, let us know and invite a friend to subscribe.

Have a question? Have some feedback? Want to share what’s on your mind? Contact us directly on info@olihelp.com as we’d love to hear from you.
 

Love,

The Oli help team

Our newsletters are written with the contribution of the clinicians in our team and backed by evidence-based research. We are not a substitute for clinical or medical advice, we’re here to help you make sense of kids’ diverse minds and help you evolve your own behavioural patterns.