Hypnosis and Anxiety in Children

What is normal in a child's anxiety, and what is less so

A child who is frightened is not abnormal. Some fears are even expected at certain ages, and they are a sign of development taking place.

In the youngest, separation anxiety. Tears at the moment of parting in the morning, clinging to whichever parent is there, sometimes simply in front of new people. It is a normal stage in learning a new environment. It becomes a subject when it persists, worsens, or tips into panic.

Fear of the dark and of monsters, around the age of 3. With language and the imagination that stories feed, children come to dread darkness, unfamiliar noises, whatever might be under the bed — at that age the line between what is real and what isn't has not yet been drawn. It is commonplace, and it can wreck a household's nights.

School anxiety. Fear of failing, pressure, difficulty making friends. Some children develop an excessive perfectionism, others refuse to go to school for fear of being judged. When it lasts all year it is the subject of our page on school stress; when it concentrates on September, that of going back to school.

Performance anxiety and social anxiety, which appear later — the end of primary school and the start of adolescence — as expectations rise and other people's eyes become very present.

How it shows

A child's anxiety is rarely named with the word "anxiety". It shows elsewhere:

• marked fears — the dark, school, being abandoned;
• sleep problems and nightmares;
• avoidance, a strong need to be reassured, clinging to a parent, or on the contrary withdrawing;
• a tendency to ask a great many questions, often the same ones;
• stomachaches or headaches with no cause found, sometimes vomiting;
• difficulty concentrating or remembering, and slipping results.

It is often made worse by whatever unsettles the child's world: the start of a school year, a change of school or daycare, a move, parents separating, a bereavement, or the arrival of a little brother or sister.

What hypnosis can offer

Hypnosis replaces neither your paediatrician nor a psychologist when the situation calls for one. For anxiety disorders in children, the Canadian Paediatric Society recommends psychotherapy first — most often cognitive behavioural therapy, with graded exposure to what frightens the child. Where the disorder is moderate to severe, it recommends considering medication alongside it. That is what to turn to first if the anxiety is established.

What hypnosis offers alongside rests on a real advantage: it goes through imagination, play and relaxation, which is to say through a child's natural ground. He has nothing to explain and nothing to analyse.

The work can be about managing emotions and bringing down the day-to-day tension; about gently getting used to what he avoids, through play and imagination; about sleep, often the first change parents notice; about confidence in school and social situations; about day-to-day comfort, when the tension lodges in the body; and about a tool of his own, a gesture or an image he can call up alone, without you.

That last point is central: the aim is not for him to be reassured, it is for him to discover that he can calm himself down.

Carrying on at home

If your child is willing, the work continues between sessions: a breathing exercise, an imagined place of calm found again before sleep, a metaphor picked up together.

Some children, and teenagers especially, would rather not talk about it with their parents. That is to be respected.

What the research says

There is no solid evidence on hypnosis and anxiety disorders in children. A French review of the clinical studies concluded that the evidence is "negative or insufficient" across every category of anxiety disorder, at any age. We prefer to tell you.

Where paediatric research does exist, it is on a neighbouring but different subject: the anxiety and pain that come with medical procedures. A Cochrane review of needle procedures in children lists hypnosis among the effective approaches, while rating the quality of that evidence as very low. That is in fact the subject of our page on fear of blood draws.

For anxiety in general, a meta-analysis reports better results when hypnosis comes alongside other psychological approaches than when it is used on its own. That is exactly the place we claim here, and our page on what science says about hypnosis goes through it subject by subject.

How a session with a child unfolds

Before the session, a phone conversation with at least one parent, to understand the situation and check that we are the right resource. Sometimes the answer is no, and we say so.

Your child has to be willing. That's a condition. Show him the practitioner's photo or introduction video: he'll decide whether he feels like meeting this person who tells slightly magical stories. Often the word hypnosis alone sparks their curiosity.

The session starts with the three of you, parent and child present, then generally continues with the child alone.

At the end, a quick debrief with you. If all is well we don't go into detail: children like to keep it to themselves, and he'll talk about it when he wants to.

Worried about what happens during the session? Do discuss it with your practitioner. Some members of the team offer a video monitor, without sound, allowing you to follow the session from the waiting room.

From what age? Around 5 or 6 depending on maturity, and from 6 by video. Some of our practitioners see children from the age of 4 — that is the case for the practitioner you hear in the video on this page — with the parent staying in the room.

How many sessions? That's discussed at first contact. We don't give a number in advance.