The Secret to Getting through High Anxiety Moments with Your Child
When you’re an anxious parent and recognize anxiety in your child it can feel like every step you take is a step in the wrong direction.
Without truly understanding anxiety it can feel impossible to help your child. When you learn what anxiety really is you are armed with information to use against worry when it shows up. Many people feel that anxiety means danger. That when anxiety shows up it means that we MUST respond to the threat in front of us. Typically that response is to avoid and run away OR to fight it through anger and irritability.
As a parent in these moments your instinct can be to resolve the threat, to get rid of the fear as a result get rid of the anxiety. This approach almost always backfires whether it leads to the fear growing stronger or the fear finding a new place to land.
Anxiety is built to protect us. It is built to send alarms throughout our brain and body that there is a danger in front of us and we must do whatever we can to survive. This is an amazing skill to be able to assess for danger and respond to danger. We all need some level of anxiety in our lives. Without it we’d run out into oncoming traffic without the fear of being hit by a car. When fear turns into an anxiety disorder we have begun to believe what our worry says without first stepping back and assessing the danger.
Anxiety is sneaky and tricky and often likes to tell stories. Our fear response is absolutely amazing however, when it turns into an anxiety disorder it has become completely dysregulated and is responding as though common tasks, like going to school, are a huge threat to survival. When we are anxious we often overestimate the situation as a threat and in turn we underestimate our ability to navigate the situation. We listen to the survival instincts to avoid and believe them to be true. We may spend countless hours thinking about something that could happen. In these moments our brain struggles to differentiate between a real threat and a perceived threat, it responds as though it were the same thing - and that’s where we begin to really feel anxiety.
Some of the most creative children and teens I know struggle with anxiety. Their imagination is so robust, they can paint a very detailed picture of a worst case scenario, and their brain believes it. Anxiety demands certainty and comfort - it needs to know what’s going to happen and it needs to feel safe - otherwise it gets loud and sets of danger alarms signaling that it’s time to do whatever it takes to survive, typically avoid.
The more you try to help your child get rid of worry in these moments the stronger it will get. With every reassurance or avoidance anxiety receives, it also receives the message that this threat, let’s say school for example, was worth being worried about - we stayed home because we were worried, mom and dad let us stay home, it must be something really worth being worried about. The more you resist anxiety the more it persists. Learning how to face those worries with strength and confidence is the ultimate goal to create long lasting relief against worry and anxiety.
Here’s the secret recipe to getting through those tricky high anxiety moments with your child:
Be the calmest person in the room - Dial down your emotional temperature. Take a breath yourself, remind yourself that their response has nothing to do with you and prepare to calmly engage with your child.
Speak less - Your child’s rational decision making capabilities have gone offline. The only thing functioning for them during high anxiety is their fight/flight/freeze response. They cannot hear you, and speaking to them will not slow down their fears. Use this rule of thumb, speak 85% less in moments of high anxiety.
Be thoughtful with your words - When you do speak, use simple yet powerful phrases such as, “Your worry does not scare me.” and, “We will get through this together.” and, “I can hold this space with you.”
Regulate - Support your child in slowing down the physiological response from anxiety. Engage in diaphragmatic breathing. 20 seconds of slow inhales and exhales is all it takes to signal to the brain that it can call off the cavalry and begin resetting. Utilize mindfulness. Try the 5-4-3-2-1 method to engage their senses and take them out of the anxious response.
Often times, as parents, we want to fix our child’s worry. This typically does not work. And here’s why - your child doesn’t need you to fix it. Their worry is so strong they just simply don’t believe you when you say everything will be ok.
Remember, anxiety is temporary. Even though it is high in that moment, it will come down.
