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Carina McEvoy, a mother of two, former secondary school teacher and now cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) practitioner based in Gorey, Co Wexford, would love to get the message out that anxiety is normal and that we don’t have to suffer it, or fight it - we just have to learn about it.
“In my own life, it’s when I stopped fighting my anxiety and learned why it’s there and started to challenge my thoughts – that’s when it really settled down.”
She points out that anxiety is a biological response to danger. “It’s your fight or flight response. We were born with that to help us fight off danger. The danger is coming from what we’re thinking now, however, from inside our heads. It’s coming from thoughts like, ‘The party was cancelled, I should be going! Oh my God that’s terrible! I can’t stand this!’
It’s when I stopped fighting my anxiety and learned why it’s there and started to challenge my thoughts – that’s when it really settled down
“Our subconscious hears, ‘Oh my God this is terrible’ and it immediately picks up on ‘danger, danger, danger’ and the next thing we know we’re going into fight or flight mode. The anxiety is being triggered by our own thoughts when there is no actual danger.”
She speaks of how anxiety itself is a good thing and of children needing a level of worry and anxiety to keep them safe, but that anxiety has become a buzz word now.
“We should go back to remembering that anxiety is normal and that learning about it is important – and challenging our thoughts.”
Over-protective parenting
We are living in a society that is breeding anxiety, she believes, one where news reports are available 24/7. This constant awareness of negative events is leading to over-protective parenting in some cases.
“As parents, we are doing our absolute best to protect our kids,” she says, “but that level of comfort and protection can lead to a sense of children beginning to think that they can’t do things for themselves. That lack of, ‘I can do it’ belief is really important.”
Parents jumping in to solve children’s issues can mean that kids lose the ability to problem solve, however.
“When we lose the ability to problem solve, we’ve no resilience in life so we can’t deal with problems as they come up. The ability to problem solve is the number one key skill to being resilient.”
Parents, wanting to keep their children safe, also don’t want them to feel discomfort.
The ability to problem solve is the number one key skill to being resilient
“We’re living in a society where we’re not allowed to be bored,” she says. “We have screens, TVs, there is no such thing as waiting anymore so it leads to a society where we are constantly entertained and instantly gratified so that when it comes to a time when we do have to wait or we are bored, we get anxious. That’s even us as adults.”
She mentions the term “lawn mower parenting” – where the parent goes ahead of the child mowing down all their obstacles so the child doesn’t have to meet any.
“You’re going to get to a stage, however, where a child meets an obstacle and they are not going to know what to do, so the better thing is to ‘prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child’. It’s about preparing them to go out into life rather than shielding them from life.
“We have to rear children to go out into the world, to be able to deal with ups and downs in life because there is one certainty, ups and downs do happen. It’s about helping them cope with them, manage them, become resilient to them, problem solve and be able to regulate their own emotions.”
So what can a parent do when their child is very anxious? Here are Carina's five tips:
Listen
Listen with full body language and eye contact. Come down to their level to hear what they’re saying. Sometimes all they need is to talk it out. Listening also leads to them feeling a connection with you. They understand that they can come and talk to you about anything so listening is vital.
Validate what they are feeling
We rush in to tell kids “don’t worry about it” or “don’t be silly”, but when you feel anxious you feel like you’re the only one that’s feeling like that, so a lot of pressure is taken off if you feel validated about your feelings.
Secondly our subconscious mind doesn’t understand the word “don’t” or “not”. If you’re told not to think of an elephant what do you think of? An elephant. That’s because your mind is programmed to think about the thing you’re not to think about, so if I say, “don’t worry about that”, the child may hear “worry about that”, therefore saying things like that can actually makes things worse. By saying “it is okay to feel that way” we’re saying the right words and we are validating how they feel.
That’s important also because when we try and run away from how we feel because we feel silly for having such feelings, they actually get worse so when we say: “It’s OK to feel this way”, the anxiety actually calms down.
Empathise
Say: “I understand”. We may not understand what it is to be anxious to go to school, but we understand what it is to be anxious. We may not understand what it’s like to be afraid of the clown under the bed, but we understand what it’s like to be afraid.
Again, it goes back to when you’re feeling anxious or scared, you feel like you’re the only person who feels like that, but if someone says, “I understand what that’s like” then you can almost feel the relief. You could say you used to be afraid of the clown under the bed, but then look at problem solving, about how you can solve that issue of being afraid. By empathising with your child, you are teaching your child to be empathetic as well so that they will be able to look at other people and what they are going through and see things and life from a different angle. It’s an important skill to teach our kids.
Explain
Anxiety is mostly future based. If we are worried about something that happened in the past, it’s normally because we are worried about it happening again in the future. The types of anxiety thinking would be “what if, what if”. Anxiety is high when we are uncertain about things and when things don’t go to plan and we are just not sure what’s going on, so explaining whatever the issue is in an age appropriate way really helps to calm down anxiety.
Only explain what they need to know and only what is within their comprehension. We can do that by asking what they already know. Say they are upset because their friend’s birthday party was cancelled because of COVID-19. Your child says they cancelled X’s party because they said that there is a disease going round.
I would tease out what they know and clarify that as honestly as I can in their language. I wouldn’t go beyond that and say: “Last night five people died of COVID-19,” but always be open to explaining and discussing.
What a six-year-old will do, for example, is go away and think about it and then they’ll come back and ask another question, so just be open to discussing it, but explaining it in an age appropriate way as honestly as we can.
If you don’t know the answer, it’s OK to say: “I don’t know”, but explain things in a way that models a calm and relaxed attitude to things. Kids are very clever on picking up on what we don’t say. On that note, parents don’t have to be perfect. Children need the “good enough” parent. I think we need to give ourselves a break and say: “I am doing my best.” That takes a lot of pressure off us as well.
Teach your child to problem solve
If there is a problem, sit down with them and say: “What do you think the solution is?” Sometimes it could mean drawing pictures about what the solution is or for older kids, writing out a list of solutions or just chatting to them about it. Help them to come up with their own solutions.
If the child is struggling we can influence them to come up with answers because when you are feeling really anxious, you feel like you’ve no control over anything, so being in control can really help with that anxiety.
Say the child says: “My pen is not working.” I could say: “Go get a different pen.” But that’s me coming up with the solution for the child and taking the child’s control away from him or her.
But by influencing the child – saying something like: “I wonder would it be a good idea for you to find a different pen,” and then saying: “That’s a great idea.”
When the child says yes, the child gains more confidence. It’s about helping them to come up with solutions and become more confident as a result.
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