Childhood anxiety, worry, and fear: individualizing hypnosis goals and suggestions for self-regulation.

Determining hypnosis goals and specific suggestions for childhood anxiety, worry, and fear can be enhanced by a developmental psychopathology perspective. This article examines underlying causal risk factors that guide a focused assessment and individualized interventions, targeting self-regulation of emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and psychophysiological arousal and reactivity. The author summarizes current knowledge about childhood anxiety disorders and outlines a hypnotic approach when encountering anxious children and youth, including strategies to use spontaneous trance states and enhance underdeveloped resources (e.g. locus of control, discrimination of realistic risk appraisal, coping capacities).