Using Jenga to Teach Anxious Kids That Body Sensations Aren't Dangerous

If you work with anxious kids, you already know the problem: you can explain the fight or flight response beautifully, and the child will nod, and none of it will land. They haven't learned it in a moment where they could actually experience the lesson.

This is why I don't start with the explanation. I start with a game.

I don’t announce that this a learning moment

I keep a Jenga tower in my office, and at some point in the early sessions with a new kid I'll just say, "Hey, you want to play Jenga?" That's it. I don’t set up up or frame it as a therapeutic activity. The child doesn't need to know I picked this activity on purpose.

The moment I'm waiting for

As we play Jenga I'm not rushing anything. Eventually the tower gets wobbly, and I usually really do notice a sensation in my body that comes along with that. I might say something like:

"Wow, my chest feels really tight right now. I feel like I have butterflies in it. It's so wild to me that I can feel that way even though I know we're just playing a game."

And then I stop talking.

I let the silence do it’s thing here because I want to see what the child does with it. Some kids will immediately say "me too!" and when that happens you’ve got a wide open door. Some will laugh. Some will say nothing, and that's fine, because I've just planted the idea that a body can react to something that isn't dangerous.

Leading them there if they don't go on their own

If the child doesn't pick it up, I nudge a little:

"Has that ever happened to you? Where you've been really worried about something and felt it in your stomach or your chest, even though you knew everything was okay? Isn't it wild that our bodies can do that?"

Most kids can find an example: a test, a doctor's appointment, walking into a birthday party. If they can name one, they've just connected the sensation from the game to a sensation from real life. From there, we can bridge to what they need to learn to help them with the problems that are leading them into your office.

Bridging to the false alarm

From here I go a little more direct:

"Actually, this reminds me of something I teach people all the time. Our bodies can respond to things as if we're in danger or there's a problem, when really there's no problem at all. And when people don't know that, it can make things that don't have to be scary feel a whole lot scarier."

This is where I introduce the concept of the false alarm. It's the kid-friendly version of psychoeducation about the fight or flight response: the racing heart, the tight chest, the stomach drop, the shaky hands. I explain that this response is wired into every human. Way back when we were living alongside real predators, being overly cautious kept people alive. The alarm still works exactly the way it was built to. It just doesn't always know the difference between a wobbly Jenga tower and an actual emergency.

The key message I want the child to leave with: the alarm going off does not mean something is wrong. It means your body is doing its job, sometimes at the wrong time.

Who this works for

Kids and teens of all ages. I've used a version of it with very young children and with high schoolers, and the game does the heavy lifting either way. The only real adjustment is how much vocabulary you give it afterward. With a six year old I might just call it "the alarm." With a fifteen year old I'll use the words fight or flight and talk about adrenaline.

Where this leads

This activity isn't exposure work yet. It's the on-ramp. Once a child understands that body sensations can show up without danger and that the sensations themselves aren't harmful, you have the foundation for teaching kids to allow and then unhook from difficult physiological experiences - all while letting the sensations just be there - because we know it’s that pesky false alarm. With this set up, kids often get curious instead of scared.

Want more activities like this?

I have a quick download of the five activities I use most in exposure work with kids, with scripts. [Grab it here.]

Full demos, scripts, and session ideas for all of this live inside The Child Therapist Hub, a membership for clinicians who treat childhood anxiety and OCD.