8 year old with anxiety. What to do?

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How do I go about dealing with an 8 year old with anxiety? He's such a lovely little boy but he worries about everything. He has health anxiety, a sickness phobia, anxiety over people he loves dying, a phobia of heights, a fear of fires etc.
He is constantly worrying and taking ages to fall asleep as he's crying and panicking about things.
Is this something he needs to see a GP for? Or just reassurance? Anything I can do at home. We do the 3 things you can see, feel and hear game but could really do with some more tricks up my sleeve!
He seems to cope ok at school. Sometimes he'll tell his teacher he feels "weird" which I think is his way of saying he feels anxious, but they don't seem too concerned. He has loads of hobbies and plays lots of sports as I try to keep him active and he's very kind with a lovely group of friends. I just don't know how to help him.

Reassurance tends to make things worse in the long term, as they become more and more reliant on it.

Read Helping Your Child With Fears and Worries by Cathy Creswell and Lucy Willetts and work your way through it.

Whether the GP can help depends on where you live, unfortunately - child mental health is a real postcode lottery.

Do you think it's worth asking school if they have any resources to help? I don't want it to become a big thing though and for him to think there's a reason to worry or be anxious either. I'll look up those books thank you.

Where does he sleep? We’ve brought my similar aged child back into our bedroom as she was struggling to sleep. It’s worked really well. Not enough sleep impacts everything and especially anxiety.
I would defintely speak to school. Ours had selective mutism at nursery and nothing resolved it until we changed nursery. School knew all about it, as she had older siblings already at school and they’ve always subtly given her a little target support and no pressure to answer questions unless she offers an answer.

Anxiety can snowball really quickly - so if you think it’s increasing I would ask for help asap. Ask GP if they can help or signpost and also look privately. We had a speech therapist help with the selective mutism (which has a root cause of anxiety). Therapy through play is also great.
Do you have a family history of anxiety? It useful to know if there might be a genetic element.

He sleeps in his own bed but then in the night he'll get in with us or more often than not one of his siblings. They all have double beds so more room if they get in with each other!
And yes big family link re anxiety. But obviously adults can take medication, children not so much!

My Dd is slightly older (she’s 10) and very anxious (also suspect adhd). she struggles a lot with sleep and it seems to be that her mind goes into overdrive with worry. Then the lack of sleep exacerbates the anxiety. It’s like a vicious cycle.

the school has referred her for counselling and just today to the gp referred her for an adhd assessment.

however, one other thing that’s helped us personally are vitamins supplements. This combination seems to work for Dd (so far 🤞🏼).

https://novomins.com/products/kids-day-night-bundle

Something a friend did for her ds was draw three circles on paper.
My worries

1. Things I can control
2. things mummy can help me control
3. things we can’t control

then he’d write his worries in each circle. It was to help him identify the difference between his worries and he could talk them through. Something like that might be a good starting point.

I also believe it’s helpful to validate feeling anxious as normal and the only difference between us is how we manage those feelings. Dd1 is an anxious dc and her teacher told her, unhelpfully imo, she had anxiety. She was older - 12 I think. I pointed out that if the world was full of people with no anxiety, everyone would be like Donald Trump, and that’s terrifying. I want the person making my plane to have a certain level of anxiety pushing him to do the job properly. For her it was about accepting her feelings weren’t odd, and learning coping mechanisms. Mostly talking about them. In dd1’s situation, where it wasn’t too much, I felt referrals into nhs would endorse her feeling wrong in her feelings and make her spiral. That was my judgement in our specific circumstances so I’m not criticising cahms, I just don’t always think it’s the answer.

Our daughter was very overtired and teary at bedtime last night. It reminded me that we try to give the anxiety as little attention as possible. I’m sure that was what was advised on the information the speech therapist gave us on helping children with selective mutism. We let her talk about it if she wants to but keep our replies to it’s ok you’re safe type comments and lots of physical contact, via loading her teddies up with hugs if she’s too tense for direct hugs. Then quickly distract her, usually with something that needs movement, such as who can get somewhere fastest or something that means she has to correct us by saying something comically wrong . She’s old enough to know what we’re doing now but it doesn’t stop it working! We find talking about her anxiety tends to multiply it - I believe that’s not uncommon.

edited to add: we also focus on working on ourselves. Trying not to get anxious or frustrated or try and fix her thoughts and feelings. Just be there. Not always successful at this but getting better!

Dr Dawn Heuber’s What To Do When You Worry Too Much workbook was transformative for my DD at that age. She still has anxiety as a teen but it’s far more easy to manage because the tools the book taught her really help her rationalise why she’s feeling like she is.

I was also just coming to recommend this book, my DS anxiety was really bad and this helped massively

Just bought it on Amazon. Fingers crossed!

i think talking to your GP will be helpful. Your little one seems to be struggling quite a bit and without sounding too alarming, if these issues are not addressed now, they may get worse.
have you had any losses in your family recently that may have triggered this anxiety? Might be worth creating a time line and try to think about possible events that may have triggered this? And then you could talk to your DS about it

Have you tried letting him listen to some audio books at night to help with the sleep element? Some calming audio books can help the mind focus on something else and help with the anxiety.

wanted to mention just in case- my daughter around age 9 would say she felt weird, had lots of anxiety about school… her feeling ‘weird’ turned out to be coeliac disease- no other symptoms bar tiredness and the odd infrequent tummy ache that I put down to the anxiety. Turns out the anxiety was heightened due to the number of nutrient deficiencies causing poor cognitive function and it got much much better as we addressed those.

Likely it’s not but just another POV to consider. Hopefully GP can help and he has a good medical experience!!

I would definitely see if school can offer support - play therapy etc was available in my daughter’s school. Reassurance can backfire as it’s never quite enough … I fell into this trap and can’t find my way out of it!