It is a common misconception among adults that children don’t get affected or don’t go through the emotional turmoil that an adult can otherwise experience. Maybe this is because children are relatively immature and inexperienced as compared to someone 10 or 20 years their senior. That’s partly true; however, it is totally possible that children can experience depression, anxiety, fear and many others of those feelings that are normal for us adults.
The bad part about that is the fact that these feelings have much more serious effects on children compared with adults, who have the maturity or emotional stability to cope up with these feelings and deal with them. The effects on children are quite different and perhaps more alarming than those on adults.
For example, too much depression or anxiety on a child can cause him to become obese as they deal with the feelings by eating or engaging in video games and other forms of a sedentary lifestyle. We know what the effects of obesity on people, and we certainly don’t want our children to suffer those, do we? Unfortunately, obesity is only one of the effects of depression and other emotional conditions on children; too much anger in them, for example, can contribute to problematic behaviour like aggression.
As if to make things more difficult, psychiatric treatment or counselling will not do any good for children. It may even cause things to be traumatic for them, as it can contribute to a lesser appreciation of their selves because of the stigma associated with seeing a “shrink” and that will only aggravate the problem. Even if some children are able to cope up with psychiatric treatment, the medicines that are usually prescribed in some cases might not do them any good.
What children need is an approach that can gradually but surely help them release those pent-up emotions without subtly telling them that something is wrong with them, which psychiatric counselling is bound to do because of the present stigma in society. What they need then is a suggestive approach to treatment, where the treatment is administered through gentle coaching and encouragement until they are able to free their minds from what is bothering them… like hypnotherapy, for example.
Think about it. Children need to be coaxed into doing something instead of being ordered around, which triggers feelings of resentment at being ordered around. Hypnotherapy for children involves a gentle approach where the therapist guides the child into releasing his inner demons, rather than forcing or ordering them to do something. After a few sessions, your child’s mind should’ve been conditioned enough to open itself up and get rid of those unwanted emotions that is bothering him or her.
