Anxiety youth resource idea by Sarah Hogan, Youth Worker at St Leonard’s, Eynsham, Oxfordshire

I’m recommending and reviewing a resource I wrote and put together, that we used with our youth to help them explore anxiety and how to manage it.

For context, we planned and used these two sessions within our youth cell groups (weekly small groups divided by school year). These groups are online at the moment using Zoom. Our rhythm with cell groups at the moment is to spend a couple of weeks looking at a big topic. The first session is more of a chilled social vibe, while the second session goes a bit deeper.

The topic of anxiety is so relevant right now, but also poses a challenge – how do we approach this in a fresh engaging way that’s going to be actually helpful for our young people and their faith? For as much as they may resonate with feelings of anxiety, it’s difficult to wrestle with and explore within an hour or so’s session …oh, and don’t forget leaving them with something applicable which is genuinely useful.

As much as my background training in psychology and counselling helped, it was my own journey with anxiety which really fuelled my ideas. In the Bible, we see time and again how God uses individual stories for big impact; so that’s the route I went down having prayed it through.

Session 1
Session one started with time to catch up on the week just passed and play a game. We’ve found that launching straight in can be jarring – especially when the young people have been online all day to do school – plus there’s always the few that are running late!

Next we watched a video (shared over Zoom) of me sharing my experiences of anxiety and more specifically how my faith interacts with this. The purpose of this was to engage the young people with the question: what’s it like to be a Christian who is anxious? There was then space for them to discuss any thoughts or questions they had following the video.

Within the group I lead (16-17 year olds, year 12), it was like the ice had been broken. They were more able to speak about their own experiences or point out bits they could relate to (or not relate to as the case may be) within what I shared. By following this up with prayer, the group seemed more open with sharing their requests and praying for one another, which was a beautiful thing to see.

Ending the session with a game brought the mood back to something lighter. It seems important, especially within the current climate, for the young people to leave cell group on a positive. Not to paper over the cracks of any difficulties they may be experiencing but so they have gone through a down and up trajectory (i.e. going down to more painful or difficult things and back up to fun and more light-hearted things).

Session 2
The second session started similarly to the first – chatting and waiting for the stragglers… then we watched the video produced by HeadStrong, where Dr Kate Middleton (HeadStrong’s Project Director) reflects on Philippians 4:6-7. There was a natural flow between this and going into a time of prayer. Kate set a challenge within the video to share everything that’s hard with God – so that’s what we asked our young people to do. We shared some music over Zoom to help keep them focused and calm, and allowed them the space to respond however they wanted to: speaking out loud (with their microphone off), quietly praying, writing things down, etc.

The group responded well to this; Kate definitely hit on to something by setting the challenge as there seemed to be a hunger within the young people to do just as she asked!

There was then time to delve into what the Bible says on anxiety; in particular, what Jesus had to say about it. By asking them to reflect on this, I hoped they would have even a tiny bit more understanding of Jesus’ character and how he cares for them. It can be a struggle to get young people engaged with the Bible in this way, so I wanted to make the direct link between something they know and/or can relate to (anxiety) and what Jesus taught.

For the final part of the session, we reminded them of my “anxiety first aid kit” (which I spoke about in the video from the first session) and encouraged them to make their own. Again, there was space for as much as creativity as they wanted or could manage. With a few prompt questions (“What helps when you’re anxious? How does what we’ve looked at in the Bible come into it?”), we tried to draw connections between everything they’d heard and responded to in the previous sessions.

Again, the group I led responded well to this. Some were trusting enough and willing to share an idea or two of what helps them, which felt like a big step in cementing the group together. It also gave me and the other leaders a sense of how they’re coping right now, how we can pray more specifically for each of them and if there were practical things we could help with.

 

I’m sure for our other youth cell groups, these sessions were not so well received; often it’s a case of it being the right day, the right mood and the right group of individuals to take it on board and run with it.  But overall, the feedback from the sessions was positive.

As I said before, the topic of anxiety is so relevant right now. I think one of the most effective ways we can serve our young people is providing them space where they can speak freely, pray openly and share authentically. Our main tool in doing this is to model it ourselves and hopefully, with his help and grace, our loving God who cares so deeply about our anxieties, will be reflected to them.

 

Perhaps, Sarah’s review will encourage you to put together your own anxiety session or sessions for your young people using some of the elements she mentioned. If you’d like to access the HeadStrong set of resource & content by Youthscape featuring the Dr. Kate Middleton Video she mentions the links are below.

https://www.youthscape.co.uk/services/headstrong

Youthscape are currently offering a Headstrong ready to use session for youth groups free https://www.youthscape.co.uk/store/product/headstrong-youth-group-programme