School avoidance (also known as school refusal) is not a recognized mental health diagnosis in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM 5).1 Yet extensive research on this type of avoidance confirms its links to emotional disorders—specifically anxiety disorders.2

At the school I help oversee, this research led us to train our entire staff team in the neuroscience of anxiety. When we understand anxiety is a primal survival mechanism to fear, an evolutionary response designed to keep us safe, we create empathy and compassion for our students, many of whom have been out of school for months, even years.

Through the lens of anxiety, we view school avoidance not as a choice our students are making but as an organic response to fear gone awry.

When presented with a situation the brain perceives as scary or dangerous, the limbic system (where the amygdala, the alarm system for the brain, resides) sends a signal to the body telling it to prepare to fight/flight/freeze for its life.3 Put in the context of our evolutionary past, it's like the brain is telling the body, "A lion is chasing you!"

For many children with school avoidance, there was an initial stressor—a falling out with a friend, a significant loss, or bullying—that triggered their fear response. Once safety is reestablished and the threat is removed, the limbic system should stop telling the body it is in danger.4 Yet for many students with school avoidance, their brains continue to tell their bodies that school is a lion they must fight/flight/freeze from. The brain then stores the memory of the stressful/scary event to avoid future danger.5

The more times the limbic system tells the body that school is dangerous, the more entrenched the belief becomes.6 The brain creates a new pathway: School is a lion to be avoided at all costs.

Understanding the pathophysiology of anxiety offers so much hope. The brain has neuroplasticity, the ability to change and adapt over time, and can relearn school is not a lion.7

Experts tell us anxiety is an overestimation of threat, and........

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