Two of my children have suffered from severe anxiety at different times in their lives, and are prone to anxiety as their natural way of dealing with stress. My ds had abdominal migraines as a young child. The thing that has helped my kids the most was trying to identify what was causing the anxiety, and then either work to eliminate the impact, diminish the cause, or find methods of coping with the issue if it wasn't something that could be eliminated or worked around.
We also tried counseling for both children and it didn't work - not even with highly recommended counselors - both children found talking to a therapist an additional stress. We've found that working through workbooks about anxiety and how to handle stress/worries, and just talking it through worked best for them - but that might not be the best approach for other children.
I have also found that for my ds, it's difficult sometimes to separate physical symptoms based on stress from physical symptoms with an actual physical cause. I mentioned he had abdominal migraines when he was younger (around 6-7 years old). Those migraines disappeared overnight when a large stressor in his life was eliminated. However, there is a strong history of migraines in our family, and now that he's older he occasionally has a headache-migraine, and those sometimes appear to happen when he's stressed, other times appear to happen just out of the blue or related to something he's eaten. So, one thing I'd suggest is a second to the idea of the journaling to look for patterns. There's an *outside* chance one thing you might find is the stomach issues in some cases come are the stressor that triggers anxiety.
Best wishes,
polarbear
