What if my bus doesn’t come on time? What if I can’t fall asleep? What if I fail my project? What if, What if, What if….
Everyone worries, but nowadays, more and more children and adults are feeling overwhelmed in their daily lives–and ashamed of the worry they feel. Around 2015, Colleen Fawcett from Wilton Youth Services observed a noticeable increase in the number of kids coming into her office suffering from anxiety.
“I was beginning to think about how can we help more kids at once. How can we cast the net wider?” Fawcett said.
When Fawcett stumbled upon GoZen!©, an international, video-based, skills-building program to help kids understand, accept, and manage their everyday stress, Fawcett said she was “hooked.”
“I love that it was evidence based, cognitive-behavioral therapy style but psycho-educational,” Fawcett said. As a social-emotional informative course–not a form of treatment or therapy–GoZen! provides kids with vocabulary to describe their emotions and the skills to manage them when they get overwhelming.
The program launched in 2015 at Cider Mill School through Wilton Youth Services. The schools were very receptive to the idea, Fawcett said, adding that they “they helped with space, use of the smart boards and communicating to the families about [GoZen!] being available.”
Within the first session, the classes filled up so fast that people joined waitlists hoping for a chance to join.
“We knew we struck a chord.” Fawcett said.
Since then, the program has expanded to Miller-Driscoll and Middlebrook Schools and is offered three times a year for an $100 fee, though scholarships are available. It is led by two professionals, Kara Berghaus, who leads the Cider Mill and Miller-Driscoll classes, and Tracey Pechkis, who leads Middlebrook’s group. In the Winter of 2019, Continuing Ed took over offering GoZen! so it could be offered alongside every other after school activity, a conscious choice made to further de-stigmatize it, Fawcett explained.
The course remains supervised by Fawcett, a licensed clinical social worker, because of the mental health component.
“I’m excited,” she added. “I believe it’s right where it needs to be at this time.”
Since 2015, GoZen! has reached almost 200 Wilton children. The now 8-week program is designed to engage the kids in a developmentally appropriate manner and has already had incredible results, certified school counselor Berghaus says.
“I wish I had something like this [as a kid] because thinking back, I don’t even know how I made it through,” Berghaus said. “I think to have something like this that teaches kids skills that they can own and [lets them] feel in control…is amazing.”
In the program, the old brain, or “worry command center,” is personified in the character “Widdle the Worrier,” who, though he can overreact, protects people from danger. The rational part of the brain is personified in “Til the Thinker,” who reacts slower to situations than Widdle but more logically. Unlike many children expect, however, Widdle isn’t the villain of the story, but a necessary part of the brain that protects us from harm.
Fawcett recounts a story of a student, who had been in treatment for anxiety for a few months, running up to his mom after his first GoZen! session, saying, “‘Mommy, Mommy, anxiety’s not all bad, I need it some time, so I don’t have to get rid of it all!’”
“He was under this pressure to defeat his anxiety and it was such a relief for him to learn that you don’t have to get rid of your anxiety, that you you need it to protect you, but you can learn to calm it down when it overrides the system,” Fawcett said.
After explaining to kids the scientific basis for worry, Berghaus teaches the students how to recognize and manage the physical symptoms of stress. This includes mindfulness breathing, teaching kids to find their “freeze space”–a happy place they can visualize in their mind when overwhelmed–and how to weigh the best, worst, and most-likely scenarios against each other to get out of a “thought hole,” or a thinking error that leads to irrational fears. Fawcett said she sees kids use this vocabulary in her one-on-one counseling sessions, and even teach it to their siblings or friends to help them.
Beyond these skills, Berghaus said hands on activities are an essential part of the curriculum to reinforce what the kids learn. One of the kids’ favorite activities is roleplaying, where the kids select one of the characters and discuss how they would react in different scenarios.
“The students that are the quietest and the most anxious at the beginning… when they get to put on a character, [they] feel so much more comfortable behind that mask,” she described. “There’s been a couple times where me and my intern are like, ‘Wow he totally came out of his shell!’”
Beyond an individual basis, Fawcett and Berghaus have high hopes that GoZen! will help shape the community for the better.
“It’s my hope that many, many children will take this course and when those cohorts reach high school we will find lower rates of anxiety,” Fawcett said, referencing the 2018 Dr. Luthar survey of Wilton teens.
In the future, Berghaus hopes to expand the program by adding GoStregnths!, a partner program of GoZen! that focuses on resilience building, to help reinforce the skills kids have learned.
“I think overreaching the theme of well-being and wellness has come to the forefront, not just here, but across our nation, ” Berghaus said. “Programs like this really to help give your kids lifelong skills.”