Family members

Body-focused repetitive behaviours, or BFRBs, are a cluster of habitual behaviours that include hair pulling, skin picking, nail biting, nose picking, and lip or cheek biting. Currently, the most recent edition of the clinician’s diagnostic manual (DSM-5), has listed both hair pulling, called Trichotillomania, and skin picking, called skin excoriation, as BFRBs that are of clinical concern.

Anxiety is normal. Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. It alerts us to threats, protects us from danger and helps us reach important goals. For example, it is normal to feel anxious when encountering a bear on a hike, or before taking an important exam.

Anxiety can impact the lives of children, teens (and adults!), in the following 6 ways: affect, behaviour, cognition, dependence, excessive and extreme, and functioning.

Children and teens look to their parents, teachers and trusted adults for information about the world around them, enabling them to reach expected milestones and mature into adulthood. However, for some children and teens, knowledge is insufficient; they also want reassurance and comfort that feared outcomes will not occur. Furthermore, they're dissatisfied with simple reassurances, such as "You've studied enough. You'll do fine," and seem to need unending examples, promises, and guarantees. This is called reassurance seeking.