ADHD and Anxiety Therapy for Kids and Teens in St. Louis
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, we work with angry, anxious, and easily overwhelmed kids, teens and college students. We also work with parents through our parent coaching program.
One question that we've noticed coming up often is about the connection between anxiety and ADHD. Whether it is a parent interested in anxiety therapy for their kid who also has ADHD, or someone wondering if they're experiencing anxiety or ADHD symptoms, there is a lot of interest in the link between ADHD and anxiety, and how we treat that at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis.
Image Credit: Unsplash, Leo Rivas @leorivas
Can Anxiety Be a Symptom of ADHD?
ADHD and anxiety can both be present at the same time and often are.
Anxiety is not a symptom of ADHD, but it can accompany ADHD.
You might have an ADHD diagnosis along with a diagnosable anxiety disorder, or you could experience symptoms of anxiety due to issues coming from your ADHD symptoms. For example, if you have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and you often get into trouble at school, forget assignments or do not complete your work, you can experience stress that might lead to anxiety symptoms.
Alternatively, you could have ADHD along with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This would look like general anxiety throughout your day and difficulty focusing in class or following multi-step directions. These difficulties could all impact the anxiety that is already present and make it more severe.
Managing Anxiety with ADHD
Whether you have an anxiety disorder and ADHD, or just ADHD with some symptoms of anxiety, the management strategy is similar. Using our three-step approach, we start by identifying the emotion you are experiencing. For example, are you feeling anxious, angry, overwhelmed, distractible, or hyperactive? Identifying and being mindful of these emotions is really important because anger in someone with ADHD might mask underlying anxiety or stress.
Step two is practicing calming down strategies. Regardless of the emotion, whatever you're feeling, it's okay. You need to find coping skills to lower overwhelming emotions, such as breathing exercises, muscle activities, or meditation and mindfulness activities. For kids with ADHD, muscle activities are particularly effective as they help them get grounded and back into the present moment instead of feeling overwhelmingly hyperactive or distracted.
After identifying and calming the emotion, the third step is game planning. This involves developing strategies for solving problems going forward. How do you deal with issues that come up at school? How do you talk to your parents afterward? Many people want to jump to game planning first, but it’s essential to identify and calm down the emotion first.
ADHD Myths
There is still a misconception that ADHD only looks like hyperactivity. However, ADHD can also be an attention issue, afterall, the first part of ADHD stands for attention deficit.
People with primarily attention-related ADHD might appear more distracted in the classroom, seem to space out, or not even show noticeable symptoms because they don’t get into trouble often, yet they are unable to focus. They also might experience task blindness which means getting hyper-focused on one particular thing and forgetting about other tasks that need to get done.
Often the kids and teens who get in trouble for running around or having too much energy may primarily be impacted by hyperactivity. Parents can feel frustrated, constantly reminding their kids to focus and not be so wild. Sometimes it might even seem like the child is being hyperactive on purpose, which adds to parental frustration. Strategies for managing hyperactivity include building in calming down practices, although the hyperactivity is likely to remain to some degree.
Parents Need Support Too
When you have a child who is struggling, you can often feel at a loss. Child therapy makes a big impact on kids - and parents need support, too, which is why we offer Therapeutic Parent Coaching at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis
While many people may experience more hyperactivity or more attention-related difficulties, some people do experience a combination of both. At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, our therapists are able to help your child find the right combination of calming down and coping tools.
Medication and ADHD
Another myth is that ADHD has to be medicated. While medication can be very helpful for many kids, teens, and adults with ADHD, there are other ways to manage ADHD symptoms depending on the severity and the availability of additional support outside of medication management.
How We Can Help
At Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, we focus on anxiety symptoms and build in coping skills through psychoeducation, relaxation, affective expression, and cognitive coping strategies. While our primary focus is anxiety, these approaches often help with ADHD management as well.
The biggest thing we want parents to know is that you are not the only one with questions about ADHD and anxiety. Your kid is not the only one with both conditions. Your teen is not the only one who has trouble focusing in class or gets stressed.
It happens to many children and teenagers. There are many people with ADHD, including highly successful individuals who have learned to manage it well. We would love to work with you to help you, your child, or your teen learn how to manage it effectively too.
Curious to hear more, or are you a little reluctant about counseling? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anger management and anxiety therapy in St. Louis for kids, teens, and college students. We work in Clayton, MO and serve kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. You can set up your free phone screening to see if we’re a good fit for your needs right on our website.
