How to help your child overcome anxiety. A Happy Hour Conversation with Angela Mastwijk

This week's show is with Angela Mastwijk. After a short career in international banking, Angela became a stay-at-home mom, freelance translator, journalist-with-a-weekly-newspaper-column, private tutor and a spiritual seeker.

When her 14 year old son stopped eating and was diagnosed with anorexia, she decided to look for and speak to his innate health, refusing (most of the time at least) to buy into all the fearful thinking surrounding this label. She wrote a book about his swift recovery and their joint journey of uncovering their well-being and clarity.

Later on, stumbling across the Three Principles, Angela gained a deeper understanding of the workings of the human experience, which profoundly changed the nature of the conversations she now has with adolescents struggling with eating disorders, their parents and other people seeking guidance via the ShiftAcademy, a company she co-founded with colleague Linda Spaanbroek to bring the inside out understanding to the Netherlands.

Angela has written four books; her latest (children’s) book is Inside Out Izzy, a story about a very ordinary, nine year old girl discovering the inside out nature of life.

In this show we talked about Angela's experience of her own son's recovery and of how she helps parents and their children who are struggling with eating disorders, anxiety and other challenges.

What you'll learn from this episode:

• We can either look at a child's labels or we can look at their innate health which is always there... regardless of what appears to be going on on the surface.

• When a child is struggling, we can either jump in our own boat of fear and start rowing desperately alongside them or we can be the lighthouse which beams love.

• When we see a child as having its own inner strength, we give them the space to flourish in their own unique way, free of our expectations and judgements.