Today’s Excerpt:

What can you do to help someone who is worried?

Anxiety Shapes
Materials needed: Play-Doh, clay, markers, pens, or paper

1. Invite each person to draw or create what they think their worry or anxiety might look like if it were a tangible figure in their brain. Maybe it’s a lion yelling loudly or a filing cabinet stuffed full of papers. What does that part of your mind and the voice it has look like when embodied?
2. Invite each person to share their creation.

Thank that part of your brain for helping you prepare for the future and then allow it to take a break. You could physically practice with your creation by thanking it out loud or even keep it somewhere in your room to remind you to ask that part of your brain that you’re grateful for what it does, but that it’s not always necessary.

Discuss:

• How does the worry or anxious part of our mind try to help us? Do we benefit by allowing that part of our mind to have such a loud voice? Why would we want to thank that part of our mind?
• Do you feel any negative feelings about that part of your mind?