Youth who are living in care have experienced unbearable separation from their primary attachments. For Indigenous youth, this includes disconnection from community, land and traditional life ways. They experience anxiety as a natural response to too much separation.

It is useful to use a tree to explain the difference between behavioural, cognitive and emotional perspectives on anxiety. The behaviours associated with anxiety are the most obvious and easy to see, much like the leaves of the tree. However, if the leaves are drying out, we do not water the leaves themselves—we must go deeper. At the trunk of tree, we see the cognitive symptoms and ongoing worry and fear. To reduce the behaviours and thoughts related to anxiety we must address the root cause—the emotion of alarm found beneath the surface, in the tree’s roots—which can be hard to identify.