TPP 113a: Psychologist Dr. Dawn Huebner on Helping Children Who Worry Too Much
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
33 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 14 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Who is Dr. Dawn Huebner and what led her to specialize in childhood anxiety?
Hey there, it's Debbie, and welcome to Playback Friday. Every Friday, I'll re-release one of my favorite conversations from the archives. Unless you're a long-time listener of the show, there's a good chance you haven't heard this one yet. And even if you have, you just may get something completely different listening to it this time around.
children and parents kind of trigger one another. So a child's anxiety sets off a parent's anxiety because anxiety is a really uncomfortable feeling. So often parents are learning the skill set along with their child. And a part of it is learning how to tolerate the discomfort rather than immediately giving into it.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Reber, and today I am so excited to be bringing the prolific Dawn Huebner to the podcast. One of the coolest things about making this show is that I continue to get to connect with people whose work I've not only been following for years, but people whose work and books have literally impacted my family in such a meaningful way. And then I get to ask them everything I want to know. And hopefully I covered the same things that you would ask if you were sitting in my chair. So today is one of those conversations, as we have owned and have been using Dawn's books for many years.
And if she isn't already on your radar, Dr. Dawn Huebner is a clinical psychologist, a parent coach, and popular speaker specializing in the many phases of childhood anxiety. She recognized the need for lively, easy-to-read materials to help children practice the strategies they were learning in her office. So she created a format effective for 6- to 12-year-olds, the What to Do Guides for Kids, which teach complex psychological concepts using language and humor easily understood by kids. Her newest book, Outsmarting Worry, maintains her distinctive voice while adding a layer of detail and sophistication appreciated by older children and teens. And that's the book that Dawn and I are talking about today, Outsmarting Worry, The Older Kid's Guide to Overcoming Anxiety.
I really love this book because Dawn has a real gift for creating practical, doable, interactive toolkits, for lack of a better word, to help kids feel empowered to take control of their emotional experience and make changes that can make the way they're moving through life just feel so much better. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Hey, Dawn, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. Well, I'm excited. I'm always excited for talking to any of my guests. But as we were just discussing, I'm a little bit of a fangirl with your history of writing just such great books, useful, practical books to go through with your kids. We have... I was gonna say I have a bunch of my shelf, but I've actually realized I've lent them out and I haven't gotten
the bag.
So Charlie and Mark, if you're listening to this, I want my books back. But you've written so many great books. And I'm excited to talk about your new book, Outsmarting Worry, which came out in 2017. But before we dive into the book, would you just take a minute to tell us who you are and how you got into this work, what your sweet spot is in the work that you do?
Sure. I am a clinical psychologist. I have a private practice in New Hampshire in the US and I see children ages 12 and under and their parents. And I'm also the author of eight books at this point. And my specialty area is anxiety. I kind of fell into that. It wasn't really by design. I fell into it by having an anxious child. And I had an anxious child at a time that I was a psychologist, but I didn't really know much about treating anxiety. And I parented in the way that seemed logical and loving to me, not realizing that I was inadvertently feeding his anxiety. And the more I accommodated him, the worse things got. And we were a ways down that road before I realized that I needed to understand something differently.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Dr. Dawn Huebner and what led her to specialize in childhood anxiety?
0:00–4:14
2
What is the new book *Outsmarting Worry* and who is it designed for?
4:14–8:31
3
What does ‘normal’ worry look like in children and when should parents seek help?
8:31–12:21
4
How do anxiety and worry differ, and why is it important to treat them as the same in practice?
12:21–16:36
5
What is the anxiety‑worry loop and how can parents stop feeding it?
16:36–20:47
6
How can parents help kids externalize their worry and see it as a separate ‘bug’?
20:47–24:47
7
What strategies work for children who resist using the tools in *Outsmarting Worry*?
24:47–29:05
8
What is one actionable step parents can take right now to empower their child against worry?
29:05–33:38
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
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TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids