Anxiety

This can cause you to feel very worried about a wide range of situations and issues, rather than one specific event. You may worry about similar things to your peers, such as school, but your worry is much greater, making you feel anxious most days. You might be overly self-critical and find yourself trying to solve or prepare for your worries by overthinking. This can interfere with everyday life, making it difficult for you to manage or control your worry. 

Social anxiety is more than feeling shy in social situations. It involves an intense and overwhelming fear when engaging in activities such as seeing friends or talking on the phone. You might feel afraid of being the focus of attention and fearful that you might do or say something embarrassing. This intense fear of being judged negatively can cause you to feel self-conscious and have low self-esteem. You might feel extremely worried about upcoming events, spend a lot of time overthinking the events afterwards or avoid them altogether. This can lead to significant emotional distress and feelings of loneliness and isolation. 

If you feel very worried about being away from your parent or main carer, this is known as separation anxiety. The feeling can make you distressed when expecting or experiencing separation from home or from key adults you feel attached to. This distress can create images, thoughts and nightmares that something bad is going to happen to your parent/caregiver or to yourself. It can be difficult to get out anywhere without a parent/carer, impacting on your ability to engage in everyday tasks such as attending school.

If you spend a lot of your time worrying about yourself or others becoming unwell, this is known as health anxiety. You may frequently seek reassurance, check your body for signs of illness and can often experience physical symptoms without a medical condition diagnosed. You are likely to seek repeated medical assessments and treatment, even when professionals have reassured you there is not a health condition. Health anxiety can cause you great emotional stress and can affect many aspects of your life. You might avoid certain activities through fear of getting unwell or believing that you can not participate as you are already unwell. 

It is common to dislike or be afraid of certain things. When this feeling of fear becomes really intense, it is called a phobia, and can cause a lot of extreme anxiety. You might find that you are anxious just thinking or talking about the fear. A phobia can develop over anything such as flying, heights, water or animals. Phobias can get in the way of everyday life because they can stop you getting involved in certain activities or visiting a certain place. 

Panic involves regularly having a sudden panic attack, which is an unexpected and intense fear in response to a situation or trigger that may not be obvious. You might experience physical symptoms such as shortness of breath, racing heart, feeling sick and sweatiness, which at the time can feel scary. Panic does not harm you and will pass; however, it can impact your life as you might then be fearful about additional panic attacks and change your behaviours to reduce the risk of having them, for example avoiding places where you have experienced a panic attack before. 

Selective mutism often starts in early childhood. You might be able to speak fluently in some situations, for example at home with you family, but find it really hard or impossible to speak in other places, like school. You might feel physically unable to talk and appear “frozen” to others, which is due to the high levels of anxiety you experience.

If you think you, your child or young person you care for might be struggling with anxiety and you want to find out more, the useful self-help resources further down this page are a good place to start. 

Your school health nurse can help and Off The Record can also help and support you.

Mental health and wellbeing support for people with anxiety

If you already have a diagnosis of anxiety or you are waiting to be diagnosed, there are lots of services to support you with your mental health and wellbeing. 

CAMHS supports people with anxiety who also have other mental health difficulties. Visit here for further information about the support you might need.

Other agencies to support with anxiety 

If you think you, your child or young person you care for might have anxiety and you want to find out more, the following self-help resources are a good place to start: 

NHS approved mobile apps 

• Chill Panda
• Big White Wall

Other apps

• SAM: Self-help for anxiety app
• Clear Fear: App to overcome anxiety, developed for teenage mental health charity Stem4
• Headspace: Mindfulness and meditation app

Books

• Reading Well series
• Successfully managing anxiety

Further information  

• Yound Minds - Anxiety
• Yound Minds - Phobias
• Online resources from Anxiety UK
• No panic
• Online resources for selective mutism

• Creative Youth Network: work alongside a wellbeing practitioner for 6-12 weeks to understand more about your difficult thoughts, feelings, behaviours and physical responses and develop some coping skills to help you manage.
• Off The Record: sign up to groups such as Resilience Lab or Mind Aid to learn more about anxiety and develop some coping strategies. Alternatively, you could sign up to 1:1 therapy with a professional or build your confidence through Pro Real, their virtual reality form of counselling.  
• Kooth: join an online mental wellbeing community and talk to a trained counsellor through their chat function. Visit the online forum for peer support and to hear from others experiencing similar difficulties.

For families and carers of people with anxiety

• NHS 
• South Gloucestershire Council
• Off the Record - Take a look at their resilient parenting group
• No panic

For professionals supporting people with anxiety

• Teachers - Successfully Managing Anxiety - Information for schools

If you have struggled with anxiety for several months or you have tried support from elsewhere and things have not become improved, then you may need help from CAMHS. You will need to be referred to CAMHS by a professional and you can find out how to be referred here.