If you’re getting our daily camp videos (or hopefully will be soon), you’ve probably noticed I spend a ton of time walking around camp each day.

It means I get to see a lot of things like:

• Soccer games at Olympia.
• Artists absorbed in pottery at the Hearth.
• Go-karts at Indy with huge grins behind every wheel.

As I write this from the office, I’m looking out the window at a group of Aquanauts discussing techniques for bucket golf (a new activity this year).

Everywhere I look, I see engagement. Focus. Kids trying new things, pushing themselves, celebrating small victories, celebrating big wins.

But what’s really caught my attention is what I’m not seeing.

I’m not seeing as much of the anxiety that seems to follow kids everywhere else these days. The nervous energy. The paralysis that comes from uncertainty about what to do next. The worry about whether they’re good enough, smart enough, included enough. I’m seeing none of it.

You’d think camp might be peak anxiety time for kids. Away from home, away from parents, surrounded by new people, trying unfamiliar activities.

But it’s exactly the opposite.

Somehow, kids seem remarkably relaxed here even in a highly active environment. More than a dozen campers this week have already lobbied to call home to ask if they can stay longer.

It’s always been clear to me that kids get to be amazing versions of themselves here. Something about camp helps kids feel less anxious and more comfortable in their own skin.

Breaking Down Anxiety

I’ve been exploring a simple equation that’s helping me understand what’s really happening:

Anxiety = Doubt + Discomfort.

Doubt is uncertainty about how something will go.

“Will I fail? Will people laugh at me? What if I can’t do it?”

Discomfort is the physical and emotional unease we feel. The knot in your stomach. The racing heart. The urge to avoid or escape.

When you have both doubt and discomfort at the same time, you get anxiety. It’s paralyzing because it feels like it’s getting bigger and bigger, which prevents one’s ability to take action and make decisions.

But the thing is, you only need to solve for one of these components to make anxiety start feeling smaller. Remove the doubt OR the discomfort, and suddenly a person can take action again.

You might still feel either uncertain or uncomfortable, but you’re no longer trapped bouncing between both. This is how we get unstuck.

Addressing the component parts allows us to prevent anxiety from spiraling.

How Camp Naturally Solves for Anxiety

Once we understand the anxiety equation, it becomes clear why camp works so well. We’ve (maybe by accident) built an environment that systematically reduces both doubt and discomfort.

It looks like this:

Removing doubt → Camp has clear structure and age-appropriate challenges. At the climbing wall, it isn’t “What am I supposed to do?” or “Is this safe?” The counselor explains the route, checks the harness, and walks campers through each step. The doubt evaporates because the path forward is clear.

Reducing discomfort → We’ve eliminated many of the biggest sources of social discomfort that plague kids elsewhere. When a kid tries ceramics and their bowl looks wonky, nobody’s keeping score. The environment itself says, “You’re safe to try and fail here.”

Action-oriented environment → Camp is structured around frequent movement from one activity to the next. There’s no time to spiral into overthinking because there’s always something happening. Kids don’t have the luxury of getting stuck in their heads. They’re too busy doing.

Bite-sized challenges → Every activity is broken down into manageable pieces. Each challenge is designed to be just hard enough to be interesting but not so hard that it feels impossible.

The result? Kids learn they can handle uncertainty and discomfort. They discover they’re more capable than they thought.

Building Durable Skills Around Confidence

What’s really happening is that kids are building durable skills around managing anxiety.

There’s considerable strengthening every time they move from “I don’t know if I can do this” to “I just did that!”

Learning flexibility when things don’t go their way.

Learning to expect that challenges will come up from time to time.

Learning to expect and be okay with an appropriate amount of uncertainty.

Most importantly, they’re learning how to get “unstuck.” No more paralysis when feeling anxious. Instead, it’s discovering how to name what they’re feeling, take one small action, and keep moving forward.

And, of course, they’re not walking around analyzing whether or not they feel anxious. Most of their experience of camp is just having fun. But something important is happening in the background.

They are building a confidence that can travel with them wherever they go.

Why This Matters

Anxiety isn’t the enemy. It’s just a signal that we’re feeling doubt or discomfort about something. The goal isn’t to eliminate it, but to learn how to work through it.

Camp serves as a laboratory for practicing resilience. Kids get to experience challenges in small, manageable doses within a supportive environment. They learn that feeling uncertain or uncomfortable doesn’t have to mean staying stuck.

When they leave camp, they’re not anxiety-proof.

But they do leave with something valuable: the belief that they can take action even when things feel uncertain or uncomfortable. They’ve practiced it. They’ve seen it work.

That’s a tool they’ll use for the rest of their lives. And they will be ahead of their peers who haven’t learned how to get unstuck.

Erec Sir