I met Zara’s parents, Annie, and Dan, at a parenting workshop I ran in their remote hometown. Over 60 parents crowded into a small school hall, tired, worried, and hopeful. That night, I shared a true story about children’s dysfunctional ways of seeking love and attention—and about how parents struggle too. How we must take care of ourselves if we want to care for our children. There were lots of crying parents there.
That workshop ended after 9pm, but the conversations didn’t. Parents stayed, queued patiently, and waited to talk to me personally. Annie and Dan came to me after 11pm. Annie was teary and barely able to speak. Dan gently touched her arm, grounding her.
Their daughter, Zara, was 16. She hadn’t been to school for over a year. She didn’t leave the house. What they were facing had a name many parents know too well: teen social anxiety.
Teens social anxiety doesn’t arrive overnight. It grows quietly when fear replaces movement.
Ronit Baras
When Teen Social Anxiety Takes Over a Family
Annie and Dan had been separated for six years. They lived close, co-parented, kindly, and stayed deeply respectful of each other. Their older child lived overseas. Zara lived mostly with her mom. Dad picked her up, had meals together, tucked her into bed. This wasn’t a broken family.
Yet Zara refused school. She didn’t speak to anyone. She didn’t leave the house.
She had been diagnosed with autism and social anxiety years earlier. But as a special education teacher and someone who has worked with children for decades, I didn’t see autism. What I saw was a nervous system stuck in freeze, something I often see in teenagers with teen social anxiety.
Why Teen Social Anxiety Gets Worse (And School Refusal Follows)
Teen social anxiety doesn’t improve by itself. The more a teenager avoids people, the more the nervous system learns that isolation equals safety. School refusal is not rebellion—it’s self-protection.
This had nothing to do with Annie and Dan’s separation. Teenagers don’t shut down because of divorce when love, stability, and cooperation are present. Zara shut down because her nervous system learned to freeze.
School refusal is not defiance. It’s a nervous system asking for safety.
Ronit Baras
The First Session: A Body That Had Forgotten Safety
When Zara came to see me, both parents stayed at first. She was frightened. Half of her answers were “I don’t know.” After a while, she agreed for them to leave.
I gently touched her shoulder while speaking. I watched her body soften.
When teenagers experience long isolation, they are deprived of oxytocin—the bonding hormone. Safe touch, used appropriately, can bring the body back to regulation. I knew this strategy would work and I have used it often. Touch matters deeply in teen social anxiety recovery.
The Prison of the Mind
When mom and dad left, I played a game with her. It was easy, she didn’t have to talk much but use a pen and paper to describe her thoughts and feelings. When I asked her, “what made you rated it that way?” she was quiet.
I waited and smiled. I only had to do it 3 -4 times when the gate opened, and she answered any question I asked.
When she described her feelings, it hit me again that teens often described their anxiety as being in prison. It is mainly because they are in prison. The prison of their own mind.
Zara told me she couldn’t stand it when people looked at her.
“What happens when they look at you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
That answer is common in teen social anxiety. The body reacts long before the mind understands. The mind then tries to explain fear instead of resolving it.
Understanding does not heal fear. Movement does.
Our body reacts to signals of safety or danger long before our mind understands what happens. We are wired for survival and react in split seconds before we can turn on the logic button.
If the reaction is happening over and over again and is debilitating (like not being able to leave the house, go to school, socialize with friends…) we become disconnected from our body and can’t notice the signals anymore.
The signals are there, the body still “talks” in fight flight freeze or in Zara’s case, mostly freeze, but the line between the body and mind is disconnected.
This is when the “mind” takes over and constantly trying to find an explanation to the problem. The mind mistakenly thinks that understanding why Zara has severe social anxiety will make it go away.
It won’t! Not necessary!
I’m sure you have met many people in your life, thinking that understanding someone’s dysfunctional behavior (or their own) will ease the pain of this behavior.
I wish!
When we understand why we did something dysfunctional that causes us pain, we use it as… excuse!
When we understand why someone else did something dysfunctional that caused us pain, we use it to excuse him,
The pain itself does not go away!
We take the path of… no change and the pain stay inside the body, aching to be released.
When we only understand fear, we excuse it. When we move, we change it.
Ronit Baras
Why I Don’t Dig into the Past
I don’t believe repeatedly re-living the past heals teen social anxiety or any nervous system malfunction. The nervous system doesn’t need analysis—it needs new experiences of safety.
Zara was diagnosed with Autism and social anxiety very early in her childhood. She has seen many psychologists in childhood, but they didn’t help her at all to prevent the “breaking point” where she totally refused to go to school and not leave the house.
If she really had Autism (which is a brain malfunction) how understanding what happened, would change her autism?
It was used as an excuse for so long, she started believing in it.
Zara had spent years explaining her diagnosis. That explanation became her prison.
What we needed was movement.
Teaching the Body That Movement Is Safe
Annie and Dan described a very amicable separation and very healthy parenting.
When I talked to her parents, I convinced them that finding “what actually triggered it” is not so important as to get her out of it and move.
I explained to them that something created a state of “freeze” (the opposite of freeze is…movement! So, when someone is in a state of freeze, it can’t move.) and we need to teach her body to feel safe again. We talked about our main goal to get Zara moving. We focused on movements: small, gentle, non-threatening movements.
The opposite of Freeze is movement. And movement restores hope.
Ronit Baras
I know that most forms of therapy focus on talk therapy to “convince” the client that they are not in real danger. Though I think “talk therapy” is important (After all much of my work is on that space) the focus in talk therapy is to “connect’ the person back into his/her own body.
Why?
Because the body knows best and the body will protect itself at all costs. When I show the body that “movement” is safe, the body will regain the sense of safety it needs to regulate itself.
And this is exactly what I did with Zara.
I had one hour to get her “moving” and show her she was safe so the option of her willing to leave the house and drive two hours (each way) to see me, will be considered.
Me as inspiration
We talked about the “disease to please” and how we are all, in some way, have that disease. I knew I had some bonus points when she asked me about my teen years and I told her that my life was horrible in childhood (sick, no friends, troublemaker at school, academically a failure…) and that my life changed when they kicked me out of school in grade 9.
Well, I got a notice in grade 9 that I can’t come back to school in grade 10 and then I became a top student in my class, a student leader, had a boyfriend (still have him), went to study, had a degree in education and opened my first business at the age of 25.
She was shocked and opened big eyes.
“Look at me now” I said to her smiling. “Now I’m helping all children realize they too can make it. Even if things are tough, it only makes them tougher.”
“Did you have the disease?” she asked me.
“I did! Big time. I had it until they kicked me out of school and never after. I’m a very healthy person in my mind and body. If you blame anyone for something, you have the disease to please, and it is exactly what I did. I blamed the whole world for everything. I blamed my parents, my teachers, my siblings… they were all stupid. You see, When I blamed them, I told my own body that I have no control and when you talk to your body, it listens and does exactly that, take away control.”
She was listening and her head tilted to the side as if she was contemplating. I could see the wheels in her head turning. I planted a seed in her head. Maybe several seeds. I call them seeds of greatness.
Teens social anxiety does not need fixing; it needs seeds that one day will grow into sweet fruits.
I don’t fix teenagers. I plant seeds and let life do the rest.
Ronit Baras
Seeds of Greatness
Sharing my personal story was real and helped her believe in her ability to heal as well.
I strongly believe in planting seeds. I have a quote I use in my writing material that says that once you change someone’s mind, it never goes back to its original dimension.
I know that the second I planted seeds in my client’s mind, they couldn’t get them out.
I planted many seeds during that hour with her:
We are not what happened to us.
Teen years can be the most awesome years in your life.
Even “failures” in schools can have an amazing life and be successful.
Everyone can do it.
Whatever struggles we have, are going to be the things we will use to contribute to the world.
What other people think about you is none of your business
You are much stronger than you think you are.
Change takes forever is a myth, it can happen in a very short time (mine took about 3 weeks)
When the brain is stuck on some beliefs that are not serving us, it is because at one point in time, those beliefs served us somehow. I do not mock them, belittle them, make fun of them. I encourage my clients to be grateful for them. Thank them for their service and move on.
At no point during the three double sessions, I had with Zara, which expanded over 3 months. I asked her about “what happened?” It didn’t matter what happened. Focusing on the past is not going to bring us to movement. It would have strengthened the freeze.
Small Steps. Small Wins. Big Change
I asked Annie and Dan to join us in the last 15 minutes of the session. I explained to three of them what “exposure” and emotional stretch is. It is a fantastic psychological tool that worked for me successfully for years.
I told them we are focusing on teaching the body to feel safe again, after something that happened to us disturbed the nervous system.
It was very simple, no talking about trauma, not focusing on what created it, not making a big deal. It was not even Zara, it didn’t blame anyone, didn’t say she was broken, it was her nervous system.
We all have some disturbance in our nervous system, every day in fact. Every time something happened that “disturbed” the way we think the world should be (for us to be safe) our subconscious mind is disturbed.
Most of the time, it goes back to sending messages of “you are safe again” and if we experience too many disturbances at once (I hurt my ankle, didn’t sleep enough, ate some junk and my body didn’t get enough nutrient for healing, I was in pain, I called a friend that didn’t reply to my call…) the subconscious can’t process so many things at once so it sends it to the body for “storage”. I told them we can slowly bring it back to a sense of safety.
Slow, gradual exposure is the name of the game.
I gave the example of fear of a lift and the gradual seven steps exposure I suggest.
Zara asked, “What if it doesn’t work.
I shared with her my special education philosophy. I told her that if a child didn’t get something I was teaching, it was only because I didn’t chunk it down to chewable size.
I drew a ladder and said that life is a process of climbing up this long, endless steps ladder.
If a child fails on one of the steps, my job as teacher and therapist is to build another step in between that will make it easy for him to go up and if that isn’t good enough, I need to build another step in between. There is always another step I can “build” in the middle.
This is how we create a safe stretch; this is when growth is smooth and simple, small steps! Small wins! Small victories! Small pats on the back saying “good on me, I’m progressing, I’ve done something that was a bit hard for me before, that means I’m moving up the ladder.”
Are you following?
Movement!
Please note. I have removed all my explanations from Zara herself and her parents. I normalized the challenge.
I talked about movement without saying “you are in freeze, something is wrong with you, you need to move.”
If I could summarize the process, it was more like “you’re ok, it is perfectly normal and easy to manage, you can do it” without saying it. (I couldn’t say that not leaving the house for a year was normal, could I?)
We talked about gradual exposure. No pressure. No force. Small steps.
That’s how teen social anxiety loosens its grip—quietly, gently, consistently.
We finished the session playing with marbles and chopsticks, and Zara laughed in joy. Mom and dad looked at each other surprised. I gave Zara some homework, suggested she started a journal, (I suggest it to everyone) gave them some games to do at home to bring Zara back into her body and escorted them out.
On the way out, I looked at her. She was not autistic.
I have been working with Autistic children for over 30 years, (at that stage) She was not one of them. She made good eye contact, she talked to the point, her face had a lot of expressions that were appropriate to the conversation, she showed interest, she asked questions, she laughed in the right place, she wasn’t stuck on thoughts and ideas, she wasn’t even Aspergers.
Just before they all got into the car, I gave her mom and dad a hug and then went straight to her and gave Zara a hug as well. She paused for one second but then hugged me back.
Annie asked, “When should we come again?” and I said, “When Zara asks to come again” In my head I thought, choosing is moving.
Usually, when parents need to wait, I suggest they go to the closest shopping center and do their shopping or wait outside in the car. Since it was a double session (When people come from far away, to save them from the travel, I offer them double sessions) Annie and Dan spent more than an hour at the shopping center.
From an email I got from mom, this is what happened after they left me.
When they got into the car Dan said that when they went to the shopping center, they saw a great ice cream shop she might love and asked Zara if she would like to go. And she said “yes.”
When I worked with them, we focused on asking her questions without the sign of fear in the tone of voice.
There is “Would you like to go?” in fear, begging you to say yes, and there is a confident “would you like to go?” no apologies and taking into consideration she would say “no” and with no heart feelings. I’m guessing, Dan was practicing confident talk with his daughter, during our “exposure” talk, and it worked.
They drove a bit scared to the shopping center (literally 3 min from my house) and went inside worried she would see so many people there and freak out (after one whole year of no contact with humans).
They went into “make your own ice cream place” with millions of toppings and Zara basically ignored the hundreds of people in the food court and made herself some ice cream in excitement.
Annie asked her if she would like to sit and eat her ice cream and Zara said she would rather eat in the car, and they drove home to mom’s place.
Zara didn’t speak in the car. Dan and Annie talked about Dan coming to fix the balcony. Zara finished her ice cream and didn’t put on her earphones. Once or twice, she joined in the conversation about the balcony. Her parents were over the moon.
Her mom wrote “Whatever you did, it worked. She was not around people for over one year. First time in a year, we went to eat together in a restaurant on the way back home.”
Who says change takes forever?
Two weeks later, they came again. This time, Zara came only with mom who stayed to work in the car.
I asked her to share with me small wins and victories from the previous weeks, and her eyes lit when she shared.
She told me about the ice cream at the shopping center, at the restaurant on the way back home, she started painting her room, helped dad pick some things from the car and fixed the balcony with him. She made dinner for mom and dad (which she didn’t do before), went with mom to buy groceries once, she called her brother whom she didn’t talk to for several months, she walked to the front of the house to bring the post from the letter box… and that was about 10 minutes of expressed pride and joy.
What “I don’t know” means
The next half an hour, I tried to find out what she wanted from herself, from me, from the session, from life…
For people in Freeze, the question of what they want sounds weird. She wasn’t as disconnected as she was in the first session but mostly answered “I don’t know.”
For me, “I don’t know” means the muscle of “choice” the muscle of “wanting” is very weak.
People answer “I don’t know” when they learned over the years that “wanting” is painful.
I explained to her what the message her subconscious receives when she says, “I don’t know.” We spent 15 minutes talking about the feelings, the thoughts, the beliefs that come with that phrase.
Examples we gave about true meanings of “I don’t know” were:
- I didn’t think about it.
- I don’t have enough information to answer that.
- I’m not sure it is safe for me to answer that (it is either you I don’t trust with that information, or I don’t want to hear me saying it, I’m afraid of being wronged or judged, Or I don’t want to hear myself answering it because it will trigger something unpleasant for me…)
- I don’t care.
- I don’t know how to put the answer into words (in Zara’s situation, I can’t describe my feelings).
I told her it’s OK to say, “I’m not comfortable sharing”, “I’m learning to recognize those feelings and I’m not there yet”, “I need to think about it”, or “I can’t put that into words, yet.”
I demonstrated by standing and expressing each of those sentences we shared in that brainstorming section.
I asked her to pay attention to my body, my posture, my tone of voice, my facial expressions with each statement (I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t have enough information, I am not comfortable sharing…) and then, I asked her to do the same (stand and say each phrase) and notice what is the difference in her body language when she said the sentences.
Zara was spot on and noticed even delicate things in the eyes and mouth (Autistic my ass!)
Want muscle is active again!
After this activity, I asked her what she wants and she said, “to lose weight.”
We came out with a plan. (she did, I only facilitated) A plan to eat well, sleep enough (not too many screens in the evening), do fun things and run.
I was so surprised when she said “run” as something that would help her lose weight, so I asked her, “Where would you like to run?” and said there was a park next to their house with a running track.
“Do people run there?” I asked and she answered confidently.
“Oh, yes, there are people running there all day” and I assumed she felt “safe” that there were people around.
We had a fantastic session, it was open, productive, very expressive and she was a fast learner, just before we packed up, she said “Ronit, can I ask you a question?” I was so excited. I believe when people ask questions, it means they lead the session. I loved it.
“Sure” I said “anything.”
“I was thinking or registering to Early Childhood tertiary education. It is a small group of students, only 3 days a week for several hours and it’ll be working with children, young children. Do you think it is a good profession for me?”
I was… wow… so surprised. I was speechless.
I told her about my philosophy on studying. I believe we need to learn in company of other people, that we don’t learn information, we learn how to learn and what we get out of it is learning about who we are and that she would be excellent at working with children.
She said “Thanks” as if she had already made up her mind to do it and only needed a confirmation.
At the end of session, I asked her what were the meaningful things that she took from the session, and she counted 9 items she wrote in her notebook throughout the session. She came to take as much as she could, and she took a lot.
On the way out of my balcony towards the car, Zara gave me a hug.
Mom looked surprised and happy and gave me a hug as well and said they were going for the ice cream again and then they are going for a girl’s night in the city (taking the ferry on the river in Brisbane city).
I know that after she came out of her freeze, she is like a child, realizing the world is a playground, she can explore.
In the following weeks, I was in contact with her over email and we talked on the phone several times. She came to see me, 2.5 months later.
She came with dad this time and they were laughing between them when they were at the door. They looked happy.
As always, I asked her to share with me all her wins and victories and she took out a big notebook and read everything to me. (Every day, as I told her, to spend some time before bedtime, to write her small wins and victories, things she was proud of herself for, things she appreciated in her life or within her, things she was grateful for, and the list was huge)
She went with mom to the ice cream place after the previous session and went to the city ride on the river and she asked mom some questions about her teen years and they had a wonderful time. They got home very late and cuddled in front of the TV together.
She started running, bumped into other running people and joined their running group. Most of them were old people and lately one of the runners brought her son, who is young man. “He is lovely… no, there is nothing between us. I really enjoy it when he comes” she said.
She started her early childhood course a week after our second session (the course started a month earlier, but she asked to join and promised to catch up on that month and they agreed) She had work experience once a week, which she totally loved.
We talked about the fact that kids are so pure, less complicated, so innocent and not scary and she was so tuned and sensitive to the children that needed more help and support that again, made me laugh at the Autistic diagnosis.
She takes the bus to her course and to her work experience. (the bus station is five minutes’ walk from her house)
She was in charge of making the shopping list and she cooks three times a week and does not touch procced food.
Mom went back to work; she was a hairdresser and Zara helped her paint her studio and prepare it to see clients back again – That’s why she was helping with cooking in the house. (Dad joins in dinners and sometimes he cooks with her)
They go as a family to a restaurant once a week. (and she picks food she has never tried before)
She contacted a previous girlfriend from school and that friend came over one evening. “The next step is for me to go to her place” she said and I knew she got the slow, gradual, stretch, step thing.
She just started studying for her driving license.
She lost only a bit of weight but felt toned and strong (She said she could feel it if she didn’t run for 2-3 days)
She was rocking!
We spent the third session talking about the future. We talked about dreams, about finding a partner, having children, growing old, travelling, about experiencing life.
I put two of the pyramids I have on the table and told her that one of them is 26-year-old Zara and the other is 16-year-old Zara and asked her to touch them. I asked her what 26-year-old Zara would have told 16-year-old Zara to help her cope with that tough year.
When she talked, she was a very wise, mature, grown-up person, with much compassion towards her young self. She talked about that year as if it was far, far away. She was teary and I know she healed. There were “sacred” tears of acceptance and compassion. I asked her to add to her Journal writing a letter from the future Zara to the one struggling.
I was with full admiration for this young girl. I shared with her my philosophy about Autism diagnosis and how much damage it did to her and her family.
She asked me when it is a good idea for her to come again and I said it is not a good idea to come again.
I shared with her my philosophy that going for therapy for a long time is not healthy. It means the therapist did a bad job and that the subconscious thinks that something is wrong and it is not true.
I told her that she only needed some tools. She wasn’t broken or needed fixing. She only needed tools to communicate with her subconscious and that she was an amazing student and a joy to teach because she implemented everything immediately.
“Now, you just need to practice being in that mode. Just enjoy the fruits of your work. There are always things to learn, it is a forever process. It is important to remember we learn in order to use it and enjoy life not as a way to accumulate information. If you ever reach a point you need to move to the next level and want more tools, you can come again.”
We played with the marbles and the chopsticks again. She was faster as she was more relaxed and when we finished, I escorted her the car and hugged her and her dad.
When fear stops running the show, life rushes back in.
Ronit Baras
Ten Years Later
Annie wrote to me every month about Zara’s progress and after about a year the connection stops. I sent happy birthday wishes and heard nothing back.
Ten years later, I got an email from Annie. I won’t share all of it here because it was very personal. The gist of it was.
Annie and Dan are back together; they have a grandchild from their son who came back from overseas with his girlfriend and settled in a nearby town.
Zara continued to do a degree in early childhood and moved with her boyfriend to England and is now managing an early childhood center in London.
Annie attached a family photo of them on a trip they took to England with their son, daughter-in-law, and grandchild, to visit Zara and her boyfriend. It was so beautiful. They looked so happy, So much together. I was so happy.
Annie expressed her gratitude and said they had an opportunity on their trip to talk about that meeting with me in the local school hall their daughter refused to go to, and how one small thing, gathering the courage to come and talk to me, changed their life.
She finished the letter with “I can’t believe we have reached this point and what happened as a result of this meeting with you and we didn’t even know what caused the problem in the first place”
One family at a time
I was so happy to read her email and see their photo.
I have a special passion for teens. Mainly because I myself woke up when I was teen and I hate the bad reputation they have. I even wrote a book about teens.
I remembered Zara. A teen with social anxiety, afraid of people looking at her, refusing to go to school and in my mind, that could go wrong in so many ways, but it didn’t.
So many adults look at teens and their social anxiety and see behavioral problems, punishment, shame, bribes, criticism and mock and they don’t understand. Teen social anxiety is real, and it does not mean they are broken and need to be fixed. Teens only need some tools and learn to trust their own body, so they train their nervous system to feel safe again.
We, the adults, only need to respect the process and be there to carry them when they fall.
When I committed to this work, I wanted to make this world a better world, one family at a time.
I knew that there was one family out there that allowed me to fulfill my purpose. One more brownie point to my karma.
Hugs,
Ronit
From the Life Coaching Deck
