‘The Worry Monster’ aims to help kids handle anxiety

After trying for years, often without any acknowledgement that her manuscripts were received, UB faculty member Catherine Cook-Cottone is eagerly awaiting the publication of her upcoming children’s book, “The Worry Monster: Calming Anxiety with Mindfulness,” this December.  

Now that her book is available for pre-order, Cook-Cottone says she’s finally accomplished a lifelong dream that came from her mother’s love for books. 

“My mother was an English teacher and loved children’s books. Even now, I often use children’s literature when I work with children — and even adults — and recommend my students do the same,” says Cook-Cottone, professor in the Department of Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology, Graduate School of Education.

The idea for the book came to her when she was using mindfulness strategies with a patient.

“My research includes embodied self-regulation and disorders such as anxiety, trauma and eating disorders, and how practices like yoga, mindfulness and mindful self-care help us regulate our bodies and minds,” she says. 

Her idea was to have children practice mindfulness tactics, along with the worry monster.

“Mindfulness,” she says, “refers to learning how to notice and have a relationship with yourself, your thoughts and your feelings, and others and the world.”

Mindfulness has become increasingly integrated into traditional therapy, but this has been a slow change. “The big shift,” Cook-Cottone notes, “is not trying to make thoughts or feelings go away, but rather to have a different relationship with them.

“When we don’t ask our worries to go away, we learn how to be with and work with our worries,” she says. “The goal of this book is to offer a way to practice some of those skills.”

Cook-Cottone teaches courses in counseling children and adolescents. Her largest focus, she says, is teaching others how to be a mindful therapist. She teaches yoga and breathing techniques, as well as other empirically supported practices. 

She hopes her new book will provide a pathway for parents to talk to their children about anxiety, and to help them build toolkits for working with their anxiety. In the back of her book is a letter to parents that provides information about anxiety and guidance for when it’s a good time to speak to your child’s pediatrician to get more support.

This is not the first time Cook-Cottone has used children’s literature to tackle heavy topics. Along with her published research and academic books, she’s published three other self-help or intervention books, two of which are for children. One is a group manual for middle school girls that uses yoga to prevent eating disorders, and the other, “The Embodied Healing Workbook: The Art and Science of Befriending your Body in Trauma Recovery,” features mindfulness practices for anxious kids.

Beyond the strategies for embodied self-regulation, Cook-Cottone hopes the storyline in her newest book will be helpful in processing anxiety. 

“Reading, as a way of listening to the stories of others, can be a deeply therapeutic process,” she explains. “It can help us consider our own story and how we might write the next few pages, and maybe even the next few chapters.”

While celebrating the publication of “The Worry Monster,” Cook-Cottone has begun writing another children’s book about self-esteem that will feature a little girl and a tree who learn to love themselves exactly as they are. 

Cook-Cottone is eager to add “The Worry Monster” to the list of children’s books she uses in her courses at UB. “I hope other faculty that teach about working with children find it helpful,” she says. 

“The Worry Monster” is scheduled to hit shelves on Dec. 4. Cook-Cottone will attend a book release event from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 9. at Talking Leaves Bookstore, 951 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo.