Becoming A Worry Free Parent

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Understanding worry and anxiety can feel like a pretty big task in today’s world. If you have struggled with anxiety yourself, the research shows us that your child is seven times more likely to deal with anxiety. Anxiety tends to be an isolator, but we know it is not an isolated issue. When we have a child that is dealing with anxiety, one of the first questions we often ask ourselves as a parent is “what am I doing wrong”? Research indicates that one in four children are currently dealing with anxiety. This statistic indicates that it is not necessarily what we are doing right or wrong as parents, but rather how we can begin to understand this epidemic of worry and anxiety that we are currently in. Two things to remember as we talk through issues of anxiety and worry is that: 

1.     There is no right way to do it.

2.     Your child’s behavior is not a direct reflection of your effectiveness as a parent.

One of the best tools we can offer our children who are struggling with issues of worry and anxiety is recognizing and working on our own anxiety issues. We can’t focus on our children’s anxiety without looking at the core of our anxiety and how we have managed or mismanaged our own anxiety. We often believe that what makes us “good” parents is worrying about our children. It can feel like a prerequisite to parenting. Looking at how worry sets us up to have anxiety, and how worry is more pervasive than fear and how it’s more abstract, we often worry about…. Fear is also adaptive. Anxiety is maladaptive, it will often misinterpret and distort our thinking. Anxiety will often cause our worried thoughts to get stuck.

So how do we begin to change this and look at worry and anxiety differently to be able to help our worried and anxious children? We first need to learn about and address our own worries and anxiety. Often when I am talking to parents who have anxious children, they are not aware of their own anxiety and how it actually is affecting them. In essence : we can’t give what we don’t have or haven’t identified.

The average age of anxiety starting in children is age seven. So if you take your current age and subtract seven that will often give you a correct timeline on how long anxiety has been affecting you and perhaps guiding you in your life. So what do we do with this information? I recently saw Emma Stone in an interview before the Oscars. The interviewer had asked Emma what she would give to not be an anxious person. WIthout skipping a beat she answered that she would never want to get rid of her anxiety because it’s her super power. She went on to explain that anxiety is a motivator and doesn’t let her sit still and will often get her going to do what she needs to do in her life or even move her to a place of uncomfortableness to push through what she needs to do. What a great answer! What I love about this answer is that Emma has recognized a wonderful coping strategy. She realizes that anxiety is part of her but it doesn’t have to be the whole. She has been able to use her anxiety in ways that she wouldn’t be able to cope otherwise. So how do we turn our own anxiety into our superpower? I think it first starts by looking at a few truths to gain greater insight into anxiety. There are 5 truths that Sissy Goff shares in her book “The Worry Free Parent”. They are:

  1. The more we understand about worry and anxiety, the easier they are to fight.

  2. Anxiety left untreated only gets worse.

  3. Worry plays tricks.

  4. Worry needs truth and a whole lot of other tools too.

  5. Every parent worries. Especially the good ones.

Addressing these truths will not automatically make our worries and anxiety go away but it helps us to begin to reframe how we address these two things in our life. If you are someone who needs a bit more help with this, please reach out to begin therapy. We can help!

The mental health therapists at our office offer counseling for a variety of issues including trauma using EMDR, depression, anxiety, grief, and couples counseling. We work with kids, teens, adults, and couples. We also offer online counseling services which can be great for people with busy schedules or for people who live in parts of Pennsylvania with limited counseling options. You can check out our website to see the full list of counseling services that we offer. Or, Request An Appointment here.