How to help frightened child/ teen?

[parrotonmyshoulder]

Stupid title. Didn’t know how to phrase it.
DD (12, Y8) slept in her little sister’s room last night. Except didn’t sleep. She was up every 40 minutes or so.
New group of friends (and she’s tried so hard to make them - another story!) at school. Talked about ‘really scary things’ which turned out to be Squid Games. She can’t get it out of her mind. Didn’t see anything, she says, they just talked a kit it.
I understand what it’s be like having images and thoughts you can’t get rid of. How can I help?
We tried an audiobook - nice familiar one. Talking about things not being real and how some people like to be scared like that, but that she doesn’t. She is anxious generally. Any ideas about how to get though the next few nights? She won’t easily forget. I know this from her being scared by a friend age d9 - didn’t sleep alone for months.

A few ideas here, which may help longer term:

www.youngminds.org.uk/young-person/mental-health-conditions/anxiety/#Realstoriesfromyoungpeople

Maybe this (or similar, via an app) before bed tonight?

Hope things improve soon for her (and you).

This happens to me over horror films as is horrible! I see the whole scene as if it were happening in front of me. I would tell her squid games is really scary and it's normal to have memories of scary things but they will go.
Watch really carefully what you allow her to watch. Squid games is really inappropriate for under 14s at least. And for some kids even longer.

Thank you. I absolutely take care over what I allow her to watch and she doesn’t want to see anything scary. She was scared of Octonauts as a little child!
This isn’t even seeing it - it’s other people talking about it. I can’t shield her from that, not forever. This was a new group she was trying to be with, as she is struggling with friends. She’s now thinking she’d rather not have any, which isn’t helpful for her either.
I’m trying to help her find like minded friends, but it isn’t proving easy. School can’t help.
I think she sometimes feels able to walk away from such conversations, usually to read, but didn’t want to with this group and they don’t know her.
Halloween coming up! Bound to be some scary things.
I’ll look at the linked resources above, thank you.

Any idea why she is so anxious? maybe she almost feels in the scene if that makes sense, has very switched on senses. Seems like this then becomes very dominant and is all she can focus on. I suppose distraction is the only thing that’s easy to do straight away.

She’s always been anxious really - no root cause.
She trying distraction and grounding techniques today. First time she’s expressed physically feeling anxious - she says she’s not even thinking about it (did eventually say she’d seen a clip on someone’s phone - now she understands my rules!). Lack of sleep can’t be helping today either. She says she knows ‘it’s irrational’.

Could you show her a really ‘boring’ (out of context) short bit of it to sort of ground her? Perhaps the bit where the dad takes his daughter out to eat and gives her the shit birthday present and they chat. No idea if it would work but you can say something like ‘I know in your imagination it’s scary but really this is all it is.’

Xpost. Sorry, I’ve just seen that she’s seen a clip of it.

My little cousin used to get very anxious over things he had watched. His parents started to show him 'the making of type shows where they showed how programmes/films were made with green screen etc and had the actors talking about the roles they played and how much make up etc they wore for the effects etc. It really helped him understand the difference between made up and real life. I dont know if something that might help.

I wonder if shielding from it all is the right approach? Sounds as though her imagination runs away with her, reminds me of a clip of a horror film I saw as a child and then couldn’t get out of my mind. I then saw the whole film and could accept it wasn’t real, was just this gross film, my brother kept pointing out how it was special effects too.

Maybe she is almost too sensitised and there’s no context for her to make sense of it.

Just to echo Hellocatshome, if you show the making of/behind the scenes from YouTube and the like, it blows away the mystery and atmosphere, and lets her see that it's not real, and the actors are fine. I do think in some cases especially when you're young, your own imagination is far worse than the reality, and this helps demonstrate that.

My son is exactly the same. His friend is obsessed with horror and he came home from his friends (ages ago) talking about slender man and then wouldn't sleep properly for months 🙄

I bought a subscription to moshi which helped, and he now listens to audiobooks before bed. Sometimes if doesn't want the book he'll have white noise and will try and daydream about something nice (I'll ask him to imagine what he'd spend a million pounds on for example)

That's a good tip about the 'behind the scenes' stuff

Sounds like your daughter is a highly sensitive little person and we need more of those in the world quite frankly! However, it can be hard to be that person, myself and my daughter also struggle with this and the intrusive thoughts do sometimes become really hard to handle. We bought a couple of lovely books (based on ocd cbt techniques as intrusive thoughts are linked to that) to work through together so my daughter could learn techniques to help her.

Breathing and relaxation exercises can be very helpful. There's a visualisation exercise called Safe Place which my dd2 uses a lot to cope with anxious thoughts.

All really helpful thanks.
Interesting that some of you have suggested ‘behind the scenes’ stuff - she has been interested in this for a long time and plans to be a movie director. So she knows it’s not real.
She’s been looking at the young minds resources today. I’ll follow up some of your other suggestions.