The thought of making friends with any kind of anxiety can feel a bit like making friends with the neighborhood bully when you were a kid. Anxiety says untrue things to you and can threaten all kinds of harm. If you struggle with anxiety and you suspect it may be impacting how you parent, you may be right. 

Why making friends with anxiety can help you with parenting

Making friends with your anxiety could really help you to become a calmer presence in your child’s life, especially when they feel uneasy or worried. Ask yourself if you are parenting from a place of calm, or are you anxiously reacting to your child?

What’s going on with you impacts your child. As a parent, it’s a given that we need to protect our children from danger. However, if you experienced something traumatic as a child, or before you had children, that experience may affect how you perceive danger. You may carry within you a sense that the world is not a safe place. 

How you cope with anxiety can impact your children

There are two main ways I think about how anxiety impacts our children. First, parents often model less than ideal ways to cope with basic emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear.  For better or worse, our children learn by watching us.

 Second, if you have a poor relationship with your own anxiety, you may parent unintentionally from a place of fear, worry, and uneasiness. You may find yourself overreacting or being hypervigilant in regard to your child. It may be more difficult for you to assess if something is truly dangerous, and you will potentially over-estimate risks.  You may also struggle to allow for some natural consequences because of your own fear.

Changing your relationship with anxiety can help your relationship with your children

If you would like to change your relationship with your own anxiety, I recommend an approach rather than an avoidance strategy. Learn about anxiety, but specifically, get acquainted with your anxiety. When we get newly acquainted with someone, there is a natural curiosity. We ask questions. We don’t avoid interactions; we lean into them.

In the same way, you can curiously approach your anxiety as it pertains to how you parent. Observe yourself and ask questions, and really develop an understanding of this relationship you have with anxiety and how it may be impacting your relationship with your children.

Here are some questions to consider:

• What circumstances or situations related to your children increase your anxiety?

• When you’re feeling anxious what does it look like? Do you become irritable and start barking orders? Do you become unfocused and struggle to complete tasks? Do you shut down? Do you overact?

• When you feel anxious how do your children and other family members respond? Do they fear you?  Ignore you?  Become frustrated?

• When your child is anxious, does your anxiety go up? 

• When is your anxiety better?

• What helps you feel less anxious?

For parents, starting to reflect on how anxiety or a past trauma may impact relationships can be a starting point to changing interaction patterns in a family.

Are you having fight or flight reactions that impact your family interactions?

If you experienced a parent who raged, when you were a child, it’s possible that when your child has a tantrum or gets upset you may overreact. Your own brain may switch into fight or flight mode, and you may find yourself wanting to shut down or run from your child’s anger or avoid anything that would trigger upset.  Basically, you may be repeating patterns you learned long ago to survive. 

You may also think if your child can just learn ways of coping with anger or their anxiety it will solve the problem.  It will help, but another piece of the puzzle may be for you to deal with a past issue, so you can respond calmly to your child, rather than anxiously reacting.

Art Therapy can help you discover why you may be anxiously reacting

My name is Tami, and I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and a Registered Art Therapist in San Diego North County. While therapy, in general, can help you address your own anxiety, art therapy, in particular, may help you in a unique way.

Often as adults, we use lots of words, and sometimes our words create a hedge around the real issues.  Art therapy can gently bypass many of those words and provide you with insights into why you may be anxiously reacting the way you do to your child or within your family. Sometimes, the reasons are beneath the surface, creating a blind spot in relationships and how you interact with your child.

Art Therapy provides a way to really see your anxiety

One of the aspects of art therapy that I think is so helpful for my clients, is the opportunity it provides to externalize an internal experience. You can begin to see anxiety as separate from yourself.  Which may help you to view it more objectively and make friends with it in the long run.

When you experience distance from the anxiety or any issue, you can gain a new perspective.  It also loses some of its power over you. There is the possibility for “aha” moments when people make connections and better understand themselves.

Free consultation from a San Diego Art Therapist in North County

If you suspect that your parenting is being directed by your anxiety, and you would like to respond from a place of calm, Art Therapy can help.  You can click here to visit my contact page where you can book a free, 15-minute, phone consultation.

If you find yourself doing things like overprotecting your child, or conversely pushing them too hard because you don’t want them to avoid things, there is a happy medium.  Click here to read a blog entitled, “10 easy ways to increase your child’s anxiety”.  

I’m a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist specializing in Art Therapy in San Diego for Anxiety & Trauma for kids & adults, Therapy to help Parenting Anxiety, and Child Therapy in San Diego for Anxious Kids ages 6-10. I help children and adults feel calmer and more at ease.

Thank you for visiting my website. I hope you found this blog helpful. Take care and be well.

Tami