Anxiety as the Appropriate Response

🌟Weekly Inspiration🌟

I can think of many good reasons why one might be anxious in our world today. Can’t you?

We often get calls for kids who run anxious or parents who self-report that they are anxious. We discuss how anxiety doesn’t mean that something is” wrong" with someone—it often means that something is “right” within a person, it’s like a car alarm sounding to protect them. Often anxiety is trying to tell us that something is “off” for us—a person, situation, or experience is setting off alarm bells and escalating our nervous system. Sometimes we are hyper vigilant and everything sets off our alarm, when it’s not warranted. Other times our anxiety response is too big for the situation at hand and one can learn to challenge the anxious thinking and bring it back under control.  

However, sometimes anxiety makes total sense, especially for kids who don’t have our life experience to realize that things will probably be ok:

When parents divorce
When someone dies
When the news is scary
After a natural disaster
When the stakes feel high
When you’ve lived through a pandemic
When you really care
When you make a mistake
When you have a conflict with a friend
When one is bullied or discriminated against 

Anxiety is adaptive. Accepting that it is part of life sometimes is necessary. Helping our children understand their own internal cues is important. If we can acknowledge it, not deny it or numb it, we might have a better path towards corralling it.  

In today’s world, I have more difficulty understanding people that are not anxious about anything at all ❤️.

Ask Yourself

What makes me anxious? What happens to me when I become anxious?
How did my parents respond to me when I was fearful or stressed?
Was my generation as anxious as my children’s? Why or why not? What contributes to this difference in my thinking?
What sets off my children’s alarm system?
Do I reassure too much? 
Do I have trouble sitting with their distress, grounding myself in knowing that they will be ok?
Can I tolerate their bouts of anxious behavior? Can I normalize it for them?
Do I think my kids are inherently resilient?

Be well!