Today’s guest is Lynn Dutrow who is a licensed clinical professional counselor and courage coach in Frederick, Maryland. She has over 25 years of experience in the psychology and education fields and now offers coaching to teens and adults who struggle with anxiety.
In this episode you will learn:
- Difference of coaching vs counseling
- How coaching can be effective with managing anxiety
- Benefits of parents doing coaching
How coaching is different than counseling
- She explains how coaching can begin before parent or teen is diagnosed with a mental health diagnosis, such as generalized anxiety disorder
- Coaching focuses on the present vs reflecting on the past
- Lynn shares how Auntie Anxiety came about for coaching business
- This “character” can help bring in humor to the hard work and get teens and parents to get outside themselves for a moment
How coaching can help manage anxiety
- Education about the parts of the brain that activate anxiety and fear
- Amygdala works like a smoke detector and its has an important job, but for some of us our smoke detector works like it will go off if steam is coming out of the shower
- Help people recognize they won’t get rid of anxiety and not the goal Turn it from enemy to ally
- Work for you vs against you
- Begin process of taking action to make change
- Begin to get comfortable in the uncomfortable and lean into the fears
- Gain understanding of reacting to vs responding to
- We all have anxiety
Coaching parents
- Helping parents recognize their own anxiety
- Understanding the idea that society has sold us that we can all be happy if we just buy this product.
- Reality is learning how to be uncomfortable, don’t have to like it, but embrace it because it is important part of teens process and life
- Many well intentioned mother’s who are in the role of taking care of everything who try to “speed up the process” have created more stress for themselves and teens are less confident because someone else has been doing the skill/task they need to know how to do
- Let your daughter be part of the family-let her get engaged in doing these tasks to help the whole family
What can stop parents in beginning coaching
- Fear of being uncomfortable
- Doing the work to begin to manage the worries
- Having initial session with coach can help challenge the old beliefs and gain understanding of embracing the uncomfortable
Benefits of Coaching:
- Educating parents and teenage girls about anxiety
- Anxiety is like a socially awkward friend who wants you to pay attention to it
- Anxiety makes our world really small
- How to manage it-expand your world, gain more confidence
- How to change it from being an enemy to being an ally
- Courage is showing up everyday
- Look for opportunities and keep moving forward
Book Recommendations:
Anxious Kids,Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children by Reid Wilson and Lynn Lyons I invite you to sign up for my newsletter.
I have some upcoming announcements I will be making, so go to www.LaunchingYourDaughter.com. This podcast is also available on Stitcher, Google Play, YouTube and now iHeartRadio.
Lynn’s Information:
Website: www.auntieanxiety.com