Managing your own stress is the best way to keep your child from picking up your anxiety. You can try mindfulness techniques like deep breathing. Practicing mindfulness every day can help you feel calmer in general and make the techniques more effective when you are feeling anxious. You can also try to identify the things that make you anxious and set boundaries or come up with a plan for how to respond to them. Working with a therapist can help.
Once you know how to manage your own stress, you can help kids learn those same skills. You don’t need to hide your anxiety. Instead, talk to kids about what you feel and how you cope with it. You might say: “I’m feeling scared right now, but I know it’s not that likely that the thing I’m scared of will actually happen.”
If you do something you regret later, talk about that too: “I yelled at you this morning because I was anxious we would be late. But I know there are better ways to react when I feel that way.” Talking about anxiety sends kids the message that stress is normal and they can manage it. It can also help to plan for dealing with anxiety before it happens. Talk to kids about how you can work together to make life less stressful. For example, maybe they get points toward a little reward every time they get ready for school on time. But try to avoid putting kids in charge of managing your anxiety. If a certain thing causes you a lot of stress, find other adults to take over or give you support. Parenting while taking care of your own mental health is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone.
Witnessing a parent in a state of anxiety can be more than just momentarily unsettling for children. Kids look to their parents for information about how to interpret ambiguous situations; if a parent seems consistently anxious and fearful, the child will determine that a variety of scenarios are unsafe. And there is evidence that children of anxious parents are more likely to exhibit anxiety themselves, a probable combination of genetic risk factors and learned behaviors.
It can be painful to think that, despite your best intentions, you may find yourself transmitting your own stress to your child. But if you are dealing with anxiety and start to notice your child exhibiting anxious behaviors, the first important thing is not to get bogged down by guilt. “There’s no need to punish yourself,” says Jamie Howard, PhD, director of the Stress and Resilience Program at the Child Mind Institute. “It feels really bad to have anxiety, and it’s not easy to turn off.”
But the transmission of anxiety from parent to child is not inevitable. The second important thing to do is implement strategies to help ensure that you do not pass your anxiety on to your kids. That means managing your own stress as effectively as possible, and helping your kids manage theirs. “If a child is prone to anxiety,” Dr. Howard adds, “it’s helpful to know it sooner and to learn the strategies to manage sooner.”
Manage stress with mindfulness
It can be very difficult to communicate a sense of calm to your child when you are struggling to cope with your own anxiety.
When we are feeling anxious, we start worrying about what might happen in the future — all those “what ifs.” To avoid getting caught up in worries about the future, try practicing mindfulness, which is a technique for focusing on the present. Here are two common mindfulness techniques to try:
Squeeze Muscles: Starting at your toes, pick one muscle and squeeze it tight. Count to five. Release, and notice how your body changes. Repeat exercise moving up your body.
Belly Breathing: Put one hand on your stomach and one hand on your chest. Slowly breathe in from your stomach (expand like a balloon) and slowly breathe out (deflate).
You can try to practice mindfulness in the moment when you’re feeling anxious, but it is also a good idea to set aside time to be mindful every day. Regular practice will help you use the techniques more effectively when you really need them, and it can also make you feel calmer in general.
Learn your triggers
Pay attention to what triggers your anxiety. While feeling anxiety is unavoidable sometimes, we can also make it worse by dwelling on it. If you are someone who jumps to the worst-case scenario when you have a tickle in your throat, using WebMD might make you even more alarmed. Likewise, if you are stressed out by what’s happening in the news, spending time reading it — or even using social media — might make you feel worse. Setting boundaries about when and how you will engage with things that could trigger your anxiety is a good idea.
If your anxiety is severe and practicing mindfulness and setting boundaries on your own isn’t helping, consulting a mental health professional makes sense. A clinician can help you work through methods of stress management that will suit your specific needs. As you learn to tolerate stress, you will in turn be teaching your child — who takes cues from your behavior — how to cope with situations of uncertainty or doubt.
“A big part of treatment for children with anxiety,” explains Laura Kirmayer, PhD, a clinical psychologist, “is actually teaching parents stress tolerance. It’s a simultaneous process — it’s both directing the parent’s anxiety, and then how they also support and scaffold the child’s development of stress tolerance.”
Model stress tolerance
When you learn some strategies for managing stress that work for you, you can then impart them to your child when she is feeling anxious. If, for example, you are working on thinking rationally during times of stress, you can practice those same skills with your child. Say to her: “I understand that you are scared, but what are the chances something scary is actually going to happen?”
Try to maintain a calm, neutral demeanor in front of your child, even as you are working on managing your anxiety. Dr. Howard says, “Be aware of your facial expressions, the words you choose, and the intensity of the emotion you express, because kids are reading you. They’re little sponges and they pick up on everything.”
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While you don’t want your child to witness every anxious moment you experience, you do not have to constantly suppress your emotions. It’s okay — and even healthy — for children to see their parents cope with stress every now and then, but you want to explain why you reacted in the way that you did.
Let’s say, for example, you lost your temper because you were worried about getting your child to school on time. Later, when things are calm, say to her: “Do you remember when I got really frustrated in the morning? I was feeling anxious because you were late for school, and the way I managed my anxiety was by yelling. But there are other ways you can manage it too. Maybe we can come up with a better way of leaving the house each morning.”
Talking about anxiety in this way gives children permission to feel stress, explains Dr. Kirmayer, and sends the message that stress is manageable. “If we feel like we have to constantly protect our children from seeing us sad, or angry, or anxious, we’re subtly giving our children the message that they don’t have permission to feel those feelings, or express them, or manage them,” she adds. “Then we’re also, in a way, giving them an indication that there isn’t a way to manage them when they happen.”
Make a plan
Come up with strategies in advance for managing specific situations that trigger your stress. You may even involve your child in the plan. If, for example, you find yourself feeling anxious about getting your son ready for bed by a reasonable hour, talk to him about how you can work together to better handle this stressful transition in the future. Maybe you can come up with a plan wherein he earns points toward a privilege whenever he goes through his evening routine without protesting his bedtime.
These strategies should be used sparingly: You don’t want to put the responsibility on your child to manage your anxiety if it permeates many aspects of your life. But seeing you implement a plan to curb specific anxious moments lets him know that stress can be tolerated and managed.
Know when to disengage
If you know that a situation causes you undue stress, you might want to plan ahead to absent yourself from that situation so your children will not interpret it as unsafe. Let’s say, for example, that school drop-offs fill you with anxiety. Eventually you want to be able to take your child to school, but if you are still in treatment, you can ask a co-parent or another trusted adult to handle the drop off. “You don’t want to model this very worried, concerned expression upon separating from your children,” says Dr. Howard. “You don’t want them to think that there’s anything dangerous about dropping them off at school.”
In general, if you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed with anxiety in the presence of your child, try to take a break. Danielle Veith, a stay-at-home mom who blogs about her struggles with anxiety, will take some time to herself and engage in stress-relieving activities when she starts to feel acutely anxious. “I have a list of to-do-right-this-second tips for dealing with a panic, which I carry with me: take a walk, drink tea, take a bath, or just get out the door into the air,” she says. “For me, it’s about trusting in the fact that the anxiety will pass and just getting through until it passes.”
Find a support system
Trying to parent while struggling with your own mental health can be a challenge, but you don’t have to do it alone. There is a lot of support online, on blogs, forums and social media. Getting support from the people in your life is important, too. Those people can be therapists, co-parents, or friends — anyone who will step in when you feel overwhelmed, or even just offer words of support. “I am a part of an actual support group, but I also have a network of friends,” says Veith. “I am open with friends about who I am, because I need to be able to call on them and ask for help. ”
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James Donaldson is a Washington State University graduate (’79). After an outstanding basketball career with WSU, he went on to play professional basketball in the NBA with the Seattle Supersonics, San Diego/L.A. Clippers, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, and Utah Jazz. He also played for several teams in the European Leagues in Spain, Italy, and Greece, and he toured with The Harlem Globetrotters to wrap up his career. James was an NBA All-Star in 1988 while playing center for the Dallas Mavericks. In 2006, James was inducted into the Pac-10 Sports Hall of Fame and also the Washington State University Athletic Hall of Fame. In 2010, James was elected as a board member for the NBA Retired Players Association.
James frequently conducts speaking engagements (motivational, inspirational, educational) for organizations, schools, and youth groups.
In 2010, James was the recipient of the NBA Legends of Basketball ABC Award, awarded for outstanding contributions in Athletics–Business–Community.
He believes in being a role model for success and professionalism to the scores of young people to whom he devotes so much of his time. He currently serves on several boards and committees and is a member of many organizations.
James believes in developing relationships that create a “Win-Win” environment for everyone involved, and in being the best he can be!
For more information about James Donaldson or to request he speak at your event, contact him at:
James Donaldson is the author of “Standing Above The Crowd” and “Celebrating Your Gift of Life” and founder of the Your Gift of Life Foundation which focuses on mental health awareness and suicide prevention, especially pertaining to our school aged children and men.
If you’re interested in having James come and speak to your group of young adults, business entrepreneurs, aspiring political and community leaders, and athletic teams, please contact him at jamesd@yourgiftoflife.org and or leave a personal message for him at 1-800-745-3161. Keep up with him and read about how he is reaching out and making a difference in the lives of so many around the world at www.yourgiftoflife.org
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