What is lifelong anxiety?

Psychologist Alan Yellin, PhD, shares advice for parents on the best way to help your child overcome anxiety to ensure that it doesn't become a lifelong issue for them
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What is lifelong anxiety?

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We know a few things about anxiety. One is that anxious children, tend to be the nicest children. Whenever a see a child that is anxious, I know they are a nice child. Secondly, anxiety often runs in families. So it's not uncommon that a parent or a grandparent also felt anxiety. The third factor that we want to agree upon, is that avoidance of the anxiety, is not good and not helpful for the child. The phrase I like to use a lot is: Comfort is not our goal, getting through this is our goal. For example, if a child was afraid of going on an escalator, our goal should not be to remove escalators in the child's life. Our goal is to teach the skills so they can get on the escalator, with their anxiety, and be able to ride the escalator. At the end, that's a success. Anything you did, and you got through it; that was a success.

Psychologist Alan Yellin, PhD, shares advice for parents on the best way to help your child overcome anxiety to ensure that it doesn't become a lifelong issue for them

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Alan Yellin, PhD

Psychologist

Dr. Alan Yellin is a licensed psychologist as well as licensed marriage and family therapist.  He has been in practice for over 30 years working with children, adolescents and adults. Dr. Yellin did his post-doctoral fellowship at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. In his practice, he sees children with learning problems, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, fears and social skills issues. Additionally, he has a sub-specialty in working with children from divorced families as well as helping parents deal more effectively with their divorce. Dr. Yellin’s practice also includes working with adolescents and adults with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive issues as well as issues around life passages. Dr. Yellin believes that therapy works best when the client and therapist have a collaborative relationship as they explore thoughts and feelings and work towards solutions, and uses a combination of scientific data along with humor to help people achieve change. He is in a long-term happy marriage and has two grown children.

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