JJ Chapter 5

Focus: Confronting and understanding fears, and building strategies to overcome them.

CBT Focus: Exploring how fears impact thoughts and behaviors, and learning to reframe negative thinking.
Assessment Tool: Fear Survey Schedule for Children (FSSC) or adults, depending on the audience.
Expressive Arts Activity:
- Children: Draw their “Fear Monster” and make it smaller or friendlier by adding things that make them feel safe and supported.
- Adults: Visualize their fear as a character or symbol and journal about ways they can reduce the power of that fear.

Experiential Family Therapy Activity: Families discuss their fears together and create a support plan to help each other face those fears.

Parent-Child Attachment Activity: Create a Fear Box. Each day, family members write down one fear and place it in the box. At the end of the week, the family discusses how they worked together to face or manage these fears.
Executive Functioning Activity:
- Children: Reflect on a fear they faced during the week and write about what they did to overcome or cope with it. Discuss with their parent how working together made the fear less powerful.
- Adults: Write about a fear they faced this week and break down how they used emotional regulation and planning to handle it. Discuss how the experience can help them with future fears.

YouTube Video: "How to Overcome Fear"

"The cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure you seek. " - J. Campbell