Temper tantrums, conduct disorder, school behaviors, over control, fighting with siblings - all of these anger management problems can actually be signs of anxiety.

Many parents are surprised to hear that their child with disruptive behaviors could have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety and anger operate on very similar physiological responses in the body, meaning that increased heart rate, breathing, and muscle tension can lead to an anxious reaction or an angry one. It’s very important for parents to ask themselves:

Is my child angry, or just anxious?

Therapy should always have an end point.

We never want therapy to be just a constantly ongoing process, with no end in sight. That’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to the clients we have on our waitlist who are ready to get in.

We need to be clear about our therapy goals.

We need to reach them. There will always be ups and downs, but we want to know, as your therapists, that we’ve made significant progress, that we’ve built up your resiliency, and that you feel ready to take on the challenges that might be headed your way.

Every person has their own needs - and we want to meet them before you wrap up therapy.

How differently does anxiety manifest itself in girls versus boys? What accounts for such differences?

This May, I hosted a #HealthAMA ("ask me anything") allowing people to ask me any questions on temper tantrums and anger management for kids. You can find all the questions right here, and this summer I've pulled a few to expand on.

Gender differences in anger.

Based on my experience, I often see more boys with anxiety brought in for "anger management" than girls

Here we are, a month into the new school year, and you're going through the homework struggle. Again.

You were hoping this year would be different. You worked so hard, collaborating with your child's teacher, and finally had a good system... by April. But now it seems like it's back tracked. And it kind of feels hopeless. You wonder if your kid is every going to get their act together when it comes to doing their homework.

What do you do?

You have a lot of needs to meet as a parent.

You want your child to be fed, but fed the best version of homemade, organic, local and nutritious meals - and oh yeah, you have your own food blog to document this and help other families.

You want your child to have self-esteem, and you want that self-esteem built at a prestigious private school, which doesn’t come cheap. But you have to give your child every opportunity that you can!

You want your child to have friends, but the right friends - friends who are also considering top colleges, or looking at the peace corps, and you want your kid to be influenced by these very driven peers.

You set your child up for as much success as you can…

So what to you do when they still have anxiety, and it feels like your fault?

Learn more about using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with anxious or angry kids and teens!

When you’re an anxious child, you need help understanding what’s going on with you - and why.

Frequently, children we see in therapy for anxiety, and even anger management, worry that there’s something wrong with them. They don’t like feeling so overwhelmed all the time. They wish the felt different, and they may even think that they’re a bad kid because of their anxiety and overwhelm.

Anxiety books for children help us understand what’s going on

They normalize that our reactions are normal. If they’re great books, they also help us understand what to do next.

Below, you’ll find our top 6 books for anxious kids.

All beautifully illustrated, easy to find, and recommended by chid therapists.

These are all books I purchased in March of 2020, when our office needed to close and move to fully virtual session due to the coronavirus, and fears about keeping everyone safe from COVID-19.

So, rest assured these books are tried and tested, and easy to use a jumping off point for conversations about anxiety management for kids.

Relaxation techniques are a huge part of anxiety therapy.

Kids and teens need to be able to calm down in order to move to the deeper, important work of therapy, whether that therapy is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, like ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), or if that is a more trauma-informed therapy, like TF-CBT or EMDR.

The virtual school year, anxiety, and our covid 2021 summer:

Your child is wrapping up a whole year of primarily virtual learning and as anxiety therapists in St. Louis, we know how big of a feat that is. AWESOME JOB! You got through it! Right now, though, we’re on this weird precipice of almost fully returning to normal.

Vaccines are available to all adults. It seems likely that we’ll be back to fully in person school in the fall. And while your child may have already returned to school in person for some days, or almost all days, there’s still this lingering fear about case counts, social distancing, and what changes may need to be made for a safe return in the fall.

As anxiety counselors in St. Louis, we know that therapy is not always one size fits all.

That’s why we are thrilled to share that our therapist, Allegra Grawer, is now certified in EMDR. Having Allegra offer another kind of therapy for our clients, helps us meet the needs of our kids, teens and college students that may benefit from a different kind of therapy.

Allegra shares her expertise below, about EMDR for kids, how it can help with anxiety and when you should consider seeking this kind of help.

It’s so important to find the right fit for you and your child.

And with our therapists, when we come together as a team, we help to make sure you’re getting the best help possible. All of our therapists have their own individual clinical backgrounds and experience, but they also have the specialized training as team in how to best work with anxiety and anger management in kids, teens, and college students.

What makes Compassionate Counseling St. Louis special? All of our therapists understand that anger and anxiety serve a purpose.

Our team would never call anxiety or anger bad. We may not like how it feels, or our reactions that we have may be unhelpful, but we always want to figure out how to move forward with anxiety and anger, and how to help it not feel so big.

It’s okay to dread the holidays.

Holiday season can bring on a lot of anxiety. You might be gearing up for extended family to come stay with you, preparing big feasts, packing for a trip or helping your kids study for their last few finals of the semester. It seems like the last few months of the year always go by the fastest and there isn’t a lot of time to relax. This time can be especially overwhelming for families with divorced parents.

Even if you have a great relationship with your ex, the holidays can bring up a lot of emotions for you and your kids.

There’s no one-size-fits all model when it comes to how to approach the holidays with your kids. Even if you have a custody agreement of where they spend their time, you might notice irritability, angry outbursts, tension and sadness more often than usual. It can be tough and even frustrating at times to get them to “be on their best behavior.”