Principal’s Post on Empowering Young Women
Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion.
Below is a case study from The Australian newspaper (Stephen Lunn, 7 January 2025), building on last week’s article about managing anxiety in young people. This case study explores the negative impact of overprotective behaviors and excessive intervention in managing anxiety among young people. It highlights how such actions, often fueled by parents and teachers, can reinforce anxiety instead of helping children build resilience, and advocates for a healthier approach where anxiety is viewed as a normal emotion to be faced and managed.
How Anxiety can Develop
Case study of Mary*
By Dr Danielle Einstein and Dr Judith Locke
Mary was always a bit of an anxious child and it seemed to be getting worse each year. Because of her nerves about her race in the primary school swimming carnival, her parents allowed her to miss it and for her and her mother to see the new Disney movie instead.
Her parents hoped this would make her feel special and more confident. But it stopped Mary from going and realising that it wasn’t as bad as she imagined. Worse, this meant Mary expected to avoid the athletics carnival too, and that morning, she cried and screamed until her parents agreed.
Mary also reported some anxieties at her new high school. Many of her primary school friends went to different schools and she had to make new friends, which felt tricky for her. Her parents checked in daily to see what had happened, but their discussion focused much more on her challenges than the good things – making her feel her school experience was much worse than it is.
When giving a speech in English, one of her cards was out of order and she told her parents how mortifying it was. Her father – keen to help her – emailed the English teacher about her performance anxiety. The teacher offered to assess her next speech without the class present. This felt better for everyone, but Mary didn’t get a further chance to learn that she could get through making a minor mistake. In fact, the adjustment made Mary think she could only do difficult tasks if she had special accommodations.
Sometimes, when Mary is very emotional, her parents allow her to stay home for a “mental health day” (the occasional day is not a problem, right?). But Mary is then allowed to be on her tablet or play video games, and this makes her want to retreat into her devices, rather than deal with the ups and downs of typical school days and friendships.
Her family observe that she spends more time scrolling a screen and less time with them or extended family, and blame it on her sensitivity when with other people. Mary starts following certain people online who primarily discuss their emotional challenges and sees her similarity to these people. She starts to think of herself as being very different from the people who can deliver speeches and participate in competitions.
Mary believes her anxiety is permanent and that considerate adults should not make her face challenges that make her feel nervous. When Mary came to the psychologist, she believed therapy would simply be listening to her issues that week to support her. While this was a small part of it, the psychologist knew effective treatment was going to involve ironing out all the factors that kept Mary’s anxiety going. Special accommodations, long discussions about nerves, and inadvertent rewards of avoiding challenge might have made Mary feel better, but were cementing her anxiety. Importantly,
Mary needed to slowly learn to face difficult things, and those around her needed to encourage this.
It was hard work for all, but the only way for her to improve was to push through it all and truly realise her potential. Treatment only took a few months.
She is now doing well in Year 9 – on the B Netball team, in the musical, and thinking about becoming a teacher.
* Mary is an anonymised composite of a number of cases.