Is anxiety present in your home?

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety’s footprint is large, I am sure you will agree that we have all experienced anxiety at some point, it can present itself a lot like fear. However, anxiety is more complex and it can have deep roots. It is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.

Parents are Key to Success

Parenting a child who is anxious can be a real challenge which is why involving parents in the journey is critical to having a lasting and powerful impact on reducing anxiety.

A parent is the most important person in your child’s life and their anxiety naturally affects and is affected by family life.

How is Anxiety Showing Up?

·      Constant worry

·      Catastrophizing

·      Perfectionism

·      What ifs…

·      Excessive avoidance

·      Social fearfulness

·      Irritability

The long-term effects of these behaviours are huge, as in an effort to control the anxiety and to preserve a sense of safety your child may avoid trying out new challenges or taking reasonable risks. This can lead to a pattern of avoidance and can have a significant impact on your son or daughter’s identity, confidence and skills development.

Stumbling Blocks to Helping

Put very simply one of the major stumbling blocks is the parent/child relationship, as they perhaps in an attempt to maintain their bond might let you in less often. Or they find it challenging to express what is going on and you experience secondary behaviour such as shouting, crying, tantrums, anger, and sickness.

Your child could resist your input, ‘What do you know?’ or ‘You can’t help me, you don’t know what I am going through.’

Your child might also avoid confronting things that they find challenging thus narrowing their life experiences in an effort to keep themselves safe.

Strategies that don’t work

·      Saying - stop thinking about it, you’re not anxious

·      Jumping in with advice

·      Allowing the avoidance of fears

·      Giving excessive reassurance

What Works?

·      Mindfulness – be present, stop projecting into the future, be in the here and now

·      Connection before correction – how can you connect with your child to allow them to know that they are loved? These moments of connection do not need to be big, in fact, small is better – a hug, a hand on their arm as you talk to them, laughing together.

·      Externalize the anxiety & talk back to it. Give anxiety a name. By giving the anxiety a personality and talking back to you it, you are giving the control back to your child.

·      Team up with your child, have code words, have a code word for when things get too much or feel too hard. This way your son or daughter doesn’t need to find the words to describe what is going on for them, you have an understanding of what this code word means. It is your families, secret language.

·      Help their negative thinking – reframe. Can you look at a situation from a different angle, put on someone else’s shoes and look in?

·      Redirect to problem-solving, how can we look at this differently? What can we do to help? List all ideas however grand or silly, then you can sort through to work out what you are going to try.

·      Acknowledge what is going on for your child, simply by saying: I see …, I hear …, I understand … after each phrase, add the facts, not opinions about what you are observing.

·      Stop dancing to anxieties tune – there may be a time when you feel it is ok to say, enough is enough, anxiety does not control me, I am ready to be brave. This is possibly not the first thing to try but worth keeping in your tool kit.

·      Encourage tolerance of uncertainty and risk, life will always have an element on these things. It is ‘normal’, how can you and your child navigate this together?

·      Encourage small steps towards change

·      Support them to face their fears, what would it look like to come out on the other side of fear? Wave the magic wand.

·      Seek professional help and support, should you feel the situation is worsening or you need some outside guidance to help you navigate.

However anxiety is showing up for you and your family, you are not alone and there is help out there should you feel you would benefit as an individual or as a family.  

Have you tried something from my list or are you going to try something? I would encourage you to pick one thing, know that it will most likely be difficult as you start to use the skill or tool but it will get easier with time. Don’t get lost in the pit of despair, push through and find the light in the tunnel.