Understanding and Managing Parental Anxiety: A Deeper Look
A common goal parents have when they enter therapy is: “I want to learn to manage my anxiety.” But what the heck does that even mean? For the most part, even when I’ve asked parents they’re not sure. “I just don’t want to be anxious,” they’ll say with a shrug.
Managing Anxiety ≠ Getting Rid of Anxiety
Anxiety doesn’t just disappear - and honestly, that’s a good thing. We need anxiety. It tells us to pay attention.
I get it. It can feel like it runs your life; being anxious can be a nuisance, getting in the way and holding you back.
It would make sense that the best solution would be to get rid of it, but given the impossibility and impracticality of elimination - I ask that parents dig a bit deeper.
Getting Clearer About Anxiety
We go on to talk about what being anxious looks like for them because anxiety shows up differently for everyone. Using myself as an example, I tend to get short and snappy with my family; rushing around getting things done to try to regain some semblance of control. Others that I know go quiet; the wheels in their head are turning, they’re distant and distracted.
My point here is that anxiety isn’t the problem, the way we react to our anxiety is. We all can feel anxious and react completely differently - some of us lash out and some of us turn in, for some anxiety is a completely physical experience whereas others it’s mostly in the mind. There’s no right way to be anxious and there’s nothing wrong with how you experience your anxiety, until it causes problems like when you can’t be present or are tense and restless.
Changing How You Think
In order to change how you respond to your anxiety, you need to change how you think about your anxiety. We all have thoughts and feelings about our thoughts and feelings and if we’re not mindful of what we’re thinking and feeling then we might find ourselves in a loop of reactivity.
By bringing awareness to how you think and feel anxiety, you can shift your relationship with anxiety ultimately making anxiety more manageable.
Common Beliefs about Anxiety
Approaching anxiety as if it were fact. Like all feelings, anxiety is only one small piece of a much larger puzzle. If you’ve ever done a puzzle you know you need more than a couple pieces to make sense of the picture, just like you need more information than what you’re feeling to make sense of the situation.
Making judgments about ourselves, the situation, and our anxiety. Feeling like you’re a bad person for feeling anxious, that anxiety is a bad feeling, or the fact that you’re feeling anxious means you’ve done something wrong. We don’t like feeling bad so we stop or try harder to not feel bad. Emotions, including anxiety, are neutral. They are not good or bad, they are just information to help us make sense of our world.
Believing that feeling anxious means we need to take action, often responding out of reflex rather than intention and usually making things worse. Like I mentioned before, anxiety doesn’t always need a response - there may not be a solution or fix - some anxiety needs to be noticed and is reminding us to pay attention and take notice.
Next Steps
Managing anxiety means anxiety has less of a hold on how you live your life. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never feel anxious, but that your relationship with anxiety is more neutral.
I invite you to take notice of your beliefs in times you feel most anxious. How are your beliefs influencing you? Are they helpful in this moment?
As always, if you’re looking for more support start the conversation by completing this brief inquiry form.
