Why your own relationship with anxiety is the secret to supporting your anxious child
Discover how mindfulness practices can empower and support you, to bring you and your child back to calm at the school gate
I see a lot of parents struggling to support their anxious child as they believe that anxiety is a feeling that needs to be fixed and eliminated. I see you, because I was that parent too.
You’re here because you’ve been late night googling, “what to do when your child has anxiety”, and “how to get rid and fix anxiety”. You feel out of your depth and are struggling to support your anxious child because you just can’t work out how to fix and eliminate it. That’s your role as a parent right?
Actually, there’s an alternative to trying to fix anxiety for your child. It’s called mindfulness. Even more baffled now? Don’t worry, you’re about to get the full breakdown of what mindfulness and anxiety have to do with each other, and how you can easily use mindfulness as a tool to support your anxious child.
Firstly, despite what you might have been brought up to believe, anxiety isn’t a bad emotion; sometimes there really is something to be anxious about and it tries to protect you but it can’t tell the difference between a perceived threat and a real threat . And talking about it is a good thing.
For parents when anxiety comes to visit their own child it can bring them back to their own childhood experiences and their own relationship with the emotion. When our child is anxious, us parents go into our own fight and flight mode. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Mindfulness was the game changer for me. I found a new way to relate to my own anxious feelings and from this place I could support my child. Please read on to find out the ways mindfulness can help you in how you relate to your own anxiety.
Bring mindful self-awareness to your own anxiety, allowing and tuning in will help you empathise and support your anxious child
The feeling behind anxiety is fear and this feeling can present with a lot of uncomfortable bodily sensations. It can present as a tightness in the chest, heart racing, pain in the head and butterflies in the stomach.
A big part of mindfulness is awareness and self-reflection. A useful exercise is to reflect and journal on how it feels for you when anxiety comes to visit, drawing out a picture of what anxiety looks like and naming it can be helpful in allowing the feeling and bringing it to the surface.
Reflection gives insights and awareness, we allow what is there and from this place we can respond to ourselves with kindness and compassion.
Cultivate a healthy attitude and understanding of anxiety that you can share with your anxious child
Mindfulness is a tool that helps you bring a new attitude to how we deal with our emotions. What I have found from my own experience is that it is helpful to keep coming back to these reminders.
Anxiety is:
A part of me, not all of me and it tries to protect me, it is my body’s defense system. It tries to tell me it feels that I am facing a threat but it can’t tell the difference between a perceived threat and a real threat.
Bring openness and curiosity, we can be playful and befriend anxiety.
Thoughts are just thoughts, we can become blindsided by anxiety not just because of the fear feeling but following all of the thoughts such as “I shouldn’t feel this way”, “everyone is watching” or “I want this to go away”. Our thoughts can feed the anxiety and make it bigger and bigger. It is important to remember that we can’t stop the thoughts but we can observe rather than react.
Use mindfulness practices to respond to your anxiety, modelling will give your anxious child examples of how to respond
I see you if you’ve been putting energy into shutting down anxiety and trying to push it away. It is uncomfortable. Wouldn’t you love if you had practical tools to respond to anxiety when it came to visit. Mindfulness gives you practices that will empower you.
Examples of some tools:
Mindfulness and Self-Compassion meditations
Mindfulness practices
Creative practices
For example one of the ways that you can bring calm when anxiety comes to visit you is with the STOP practice.
S-Stop whatever you are doing
T-Take a few mindful breaths, bringing attention to the sensations of the breath
O-Observe, check in with how you are feeling in your body, mind and heart
P- Proceed with mindfulness and kindness, you might need to take a kind action for yourself, take some air or a glass of water
In summary, the inner work we do with our own anxiety and building in our own mindfulness practices increases the space between what happens and how we respond. Bring mindful self-awareness to your own anxiety, allowing and tuning in will help you empathise and support your anxious child. Cultivate a healthy attitude and understanding of anxiety that you can share with your anxious child. Use mindfulness practices to respond to your own anxiety, modelling will give your anxious child examples of how to respond.
It is from this place that we can model to our own children coping strategies and empower, support and help our own children manage their anxiety at and beyond the school gate.
Come chat to me and discover the ways that I can help and support you.
I’m Lynn McLoughlin a Mindfulness Coach.
I help parents feel calm, connected and confident. Moving them from being overwhelmed and stressed.
Enabling them to quieten down the
self-criticism and judgement replacing it with a kinder inner dialogue.
Supporting them to create a life that feels centered and grounded.
Guiding them to cultivate more energy, rest, resilience and confidence to handle parenting challenges.
Disclaimer: It is normal to feel anxious in certain situations in your life but if it is an ongoing problem that is affecting your mental health and functioning on a daily basis it is advisable to contact your GP or seek a therapist. Mindfulness is an intervention that can work well alongside additional support but it is not a replacement for therapy.