Parenting Your Child through Anxiety: Part #1

Foreign. Welcome to Finding Noble, a podcast where we climb into the world of young people's mental health and where we provide support for the adults who support them. I'm your host, Carly Red.

Carly, how are you?

I am really well. How are you doing?

I'm doing okay. It's a rainy day here, which I always like rainy days because it gives us a diversity.

It is nice that we get to have all the seasons where we are, isn't it? Today, I'm really excited about this topic. I've liked preparing for it because I've learned a lot and I'm excited to learn from you. But today we are discussing childhood and adolescent anxiety, which, as we go forward today, I think it will become apparent as we discuss this that adult anxiety plays as a major contributor to the anxieties inside the youth around us and in our homes. So as we explore this topic of anxiety, we hope you and me will inherit better information to help understand and respond to our own anxieties as well as our children's.

The only thing I would add is we live in a time where we're probably more anxious than we've ever been. So today's topic for children, adolescents, and even us adults, I think it's really important that we understand anxiety so we can respond to it.

Yeah, I think that's really true that we are dealing with a lot more than probably previous generations just because of the type of information we are inundated with all the time. So, yeah. Dr. Skinner, perhaps you might give us a brief definition as to what we mean when we use the term anxiety.

Yeah. Something that may be important for people to understand. There are different ways that we can be anxious or have anxiety. So we could have generalized anxiety. I just generally feel anxious. We can also have social anxiety. So in social settings, we have a sense of, I don't fit, I don't belong. We can also have O, C, D, which fits under anxiety, which we're obsessive. Did I lock the door? Check the stove? So we can have an obsessiveness associated with anxiety. And then we can have post traumatic stress disorder, which includes things like reliving events, avoiding people or places, negative thoughts about myself, there's something wrong with me. And what we refer to as this hypervigilance, which is, I'm checking, I'm careful, I'm always on alert. And there's different types of anxiety. If I just mention some. Just understand that anxiety is one of the most common mental health challenges that we have as a culture. And it's Literally worldwide. One of the most common mental health challenges the world faces, and correct me.

If I'm wrong, but we all experience anxiety and stress innately as part of being a human. And what is considered what we're considering anxiety is maybe a prolonged or high end anxiety that is a, a span that maybe is unhealthy for us.

Yeah. So we are built to respond to stressful events. That's how our bodies are created. So that's very normal for us to feel a little bit of stress and, and then we come back off or down from that stress. But anxiety that we're going to be talking about is, it doesn't stop, it just continues. And as you said, there's a time period, usually a month or more, where we see these symptoms not stopping or continuing with us. Something we should probably mention there is that when we have that kind of anxiety, our body is in this fight or flight perception.

It's.

In other words, I don't feel safe, so I'm, I'm on guard. There's gotta be a tiger here somewhere. And that's often how we see anxiety, is there's a threat and our body is preparing for that threat. It's like, how do I respond to this? And so anxiety is. If you've ever seen Where's Waldo?

The book.

Yeah, yeah.

So, okay.

Yeah, okay. If you've seen where Waldo, the book, then you understand how anxiety works. You turn a page in, you're looking for the problem. So when you're anxious, it's almost like, Where's Waldo? Where's my anxiety? Where's the thing that's the problem here? Anyway, so.

And it attaches itself to something and once you relinquish its attachment to one thing, it could attach itself to something else.

Right, exactly. So I'm always looking for it because I, I think there's a problem. And that's often how anxiety works. Interesting.

Okay, so moving forward, are there certain indicators that can help us assess if our child or us are experiencing a prolonged state of anxiety or kind of this heightened state?

Yeah. So let's separate it out into two different parts. One is our body's response to anxiousness. And we can tell that our body's anxious at the extreme level would be a panic attack. Feeling like our heart's just going to jump out, we're going to feel sweaty hands, we might feel this tension in our neck. So we have a physiological response to the perceived threat. And then we also have our thoughts. This form of anxiety could just be the way we're thinking, I don't feel safe. Something's gonna go wrong. I'm gonna say something stupid. And so we have these thoughts that are going, literally triggering even more anxiety. It's where's Waldo? Where's my anxiety? And so the physical response, in contrast with those thoughts that are going on in the background. And again, as we started, these are common for many of us. You put most people in a new situation, they're gonna feel anxious. But some people, they never stop feeling anxious, which is overwhelming because the body's not designed to consistently feel like there's a threat somewhere.

So it's learning how to bring it down, not say, oh, this is so weird. I'm feeling this way. Saying, it's normal. I feel this way. Now let's learn how to bring this down. And I think, especially after Covid, I would say the majority of people, I don't consider myself a very socially anxious person. But even going out and about to kids, sports events, things like that, all of a sudden, I was nervous. I'd get nervous around people because it felt new. I was so comfortable in our home. I was so comfortable doing the same all for a long time, as I think most everybody on the whole planet was used to doing. And then all of a sudden, when things opened up, it. It was new, and it wasn't something that I'd ever think I'd experience.

I think that's a really important point because Covid, in and of itself, I think it, statistically speaking, more people feel anxious now than before. Now, I don't think it's necessarily because of COVID I think there are additional factors that I think we'll talk about a little bit later. So anxiety is something that we often, as a society, we experience. But now you have a big event like Covid, and all of a sudden, it just goes off the charts. Because who felt safe during COVID We didn't understand how. Whether we were going to get it, how we would get it, whether we would survive. And when you start having some of your peers or neighbors dying from COVID of course everyone's going to feel a threat to that. So, again, I think that then we have our children staying home from school, not being able to go to school. One of my daughters was at college, and they literally abruptly, okay, everybody. No in class, go home. And. And so, again, I think that timeframe evokes a lot of anxiety in most of us.

Yeah, that's interesting, because we talk about anxiety, it almost acts as a protector to if there's a threat what did you say, a mountain lion or a. A tiger or something? Yeah, but it's Covid. There really was very real physical threats and then even social threats. I felt like a lot of people experienced social judgment and harsh interactions. It did feel like the volatility of the entire world just skyrocketed. And so even navigating social interactions, even with family members, became difficult. I think I repressed most of COVID But, yeah, coming out of that, I think the need for learning how to deal with this anxiety and now that things are less threatening and how to not just reintegrate, but maybe learn how to do it better, learn how to be. Yeah. A more present, calm human, more active rather than reactive.

Well, I think that's a good point. So, Carly, I think something that we have to recognize is anxiety's been with us for as long as probably we've had humans on the Earth. Right. Some form of anxiousness. Before, it probably was on the savannah, and. And people were afraid of a tiger getting them. But today, what's our tiger? And that's a. A very interesting question because we're not on the savannah hunting for or protecting ourselves from being attacked. But nevertheless, we still feel anxious. But what is your tiger and what is my tiger? And we might have different tigers, but the reality is we have more anxiety in this generation than we've had on recorded history. So what the researchers now know we're more anxious than we've ever been. The question is, why? Why are we more anxious? And this is really relevant for parents and for all of us because we're seeing in this generation what Gene Twinge in her research shows is a hockey stick. And what that means is we have anxiety. It's bumping along. It went, you know, da, da, da, da, da. It wasn't going higher, wasn't going lower. It was pretty common. And then about 2012, it started going up and to the point where we are 2023. It's done out what they call a hockey stick up. And it's escalated so quickly over the past 10 years that the researchers have been literally just on edge trying to figure out what is going on with today's adolescence. And what's to me, so interesting is it really comes down to a shift in how we consume technology.

2012, that was when I first got my first smartphone, was in 2012. So it's hard to negate any correlation between digital devices on us, on our person at all times with anxiety. That there has to be some correlation there.

Yeah. And that's what the researchers have found they, they looked into families, they looked into school settings. And what they found is the most common denominator for the increase in anxiety is it's not just having a smartphone, it's what we're doing on the smartphone, how we're using our time. So the more time we are spending on the device, so mind numbing activities, the more anxious we are. An example of that. If I'm on Instagram making sure that I have the perfect picture because I want to make sure that I get the most likes, I'm actually more likely to be anxious and depressed. And so we start playing at that and then we have the potential for being bullied on our phones. We have the potential for seeing things that are inappropriate, violence, sexual behaviors, whatever it may be. And so all of a sudden we have all of this consumption going on with all of the information plus. Oh, by the way, did you get a text from so and so to the party? Why didn't I get that text? So there's a lot of potential challenges there of being isolated, feeling like it all, being bullied, consuming things that are probably not healthy for you. Oh, and by the way, if you're doing that in your own room at night and it's o' clock and now it's 11 o' clock and now it's midnight, now it's 1 o' clock and you gotta get up and go to school, it's a perfect storm because it's brought you in, now you've consumed to the point where you're exhausted the next day.

Well, and I even think the ability to be in a moment, in that moment has become so much more difficult. I think as a mom, I really dislike that I'm sitting last night I was at my daughter's cello concert and I'm getting 13 different texts about carpal for tomorrow. And if I remember to bring this to a neighbor's house and all the different things that are popping up that don't need to be taken care of in that moment, but they're popping up on my phone at all time. And I guess I probably should have put it on do not disturb. But then at the same time I have other kids at home that still need to get a hold of me. The whole thing becomes very difficult to be relaxed in the moment that you're in and enjoy the moment you're in because I think we're constantly even news feeds all these things that keep popping up all the time. And I know, I think we're getting better. Turning off Notifications turning off, putting on downtime. I think we're getting better. But the reality is it is very difficult to not be anxious. It's difficult to be present in a moment and be relaxed in that moment without being being interrupted. It feels like it's almost wrong to be relaxed in a moment. Like you're missing something.

Yeah. And there's too much data coming in. Right. Okay. I get all these messages. Which one do I respond to? And do I respond to it while I'm listening to my. Was it your son or daughter's cello concert?

My daughter, Marley.

So here it is. I'm getting all this data coming in. And yet without that device present, what would have that concert been like? Because we would be more attentive to. To what we're actually hearing. But now I've got. I'm hearing, but I'm also looking and I'm using more senses, trying to get this done, respond to this. And here's this concert. Right. And that. That's a really good example of how disruptive the technology has become because it can come to us at any time. I mean, at nighttime, my phone goes to bed too, and so it's off. Except when my daughter was having our second granddaughter a month ago, we intentionally left our phone on for a week or two until that happened. But I guess the point is we have to create guidelines. And if I could start anywhere on how to reduce our anxiety is to create guidelines around the thing, technology and consumption. So you have specific rules or guidelines to help you. It's that we are being inundated with information and it's coming through this device or these devices. If we were to be more intentional about it, we could have a drastic influence on reducing anxiety in our homes and actually in our culture.

What I'm hearing you say is that these devices may not be the complete cause of all anxiety, but that they definitely keep us in this elevated state where we're not able to come down and have a stress peak and then come back down and then a stress peak. It feels like they're more frequent and they're more prolonged, and that can be a huge problem. And I think, just hearing you talk about this, that as parents, we ourselves struggle to do a self audit or regulation on how much we are using our own technology, not only to let it interrupt good interactions that we're having with families or other people that we care about, but also how we cope. I'm. I think a lot of parents, me included, use a phone to cope where, whether I'm Just reading the news or whatever. Not that it's bad at all times, but unplugging is a great way to bring all cortisol stress levels everything down. And I think we sometimes trying to bring it down, we turn to our phones, which not all the time helps.

Yeah, validate that. Cal Newport wrote a book called Digital Minimalism. And in his book he has a. Cites a study and this is a few years ago, but the average adult picks up their phone and checks it how many times a day? Any idea? Carly, what would you guess?

I know this because you told me when we were discussing the podcast. So you really want me to know? I know it's 39 times.

39 times. So we are likely to check our phone 39 times during the day. How much time are we spending on the device? Every day. And contrast that with a generation ago when we had a landline and a generation, I'm referring to 25 years. So in the last 25 years, our culture has shifted that rapidly and now we're looking at some of the consequences and we do have more anxiety. We have to be intentional. And now we have to shift into how do we help with this anxiety? Like it's here. What do we do?

Yeah, I really like that. I think as we come back to a more generalized idea of anxiety, it becomes crucial to pay attention to not just how it's affecting our kids, but the entire family and the entire home, which I. We actually talked about creating a healthy technology plan and we have a lot of information on that. So. So go listen to that episode if you want more on technology. But yeah, I feel like especially in relation to our anxiety, it just helps know that there might be something simple that we can be doing that maybe we haven't thought of before. Just like unplugging. Just try it. Just try unplugging. I said that to my son the other day. Just try it and see how you feel and see if maybe don't bring your phone into school, maybe just leave it in your car and see how that feels.

They did a study with youth who were dealing with some depression and they took them into the mountain. All devices were left behind. A couple weeks later when they came back down, their depression levels were significantly lower than when they went into the mountains. Again, I think going back to leave your phone in the car for a period of time or have a break for a day. Right. And I know we're talking a lot about technology and anxiety, but it's the number one correlated thing with what increases anxiety. So we need to talk about it. We'll get to more practical things if your child's dealing with anxiety in a little bit later. But these are some common strategies that can help you now. Just be aware of what's actually going on. My hope is that everyone listening will think about how we are all consuming our devices or they're consuming us.

Maybe I should say, well said. Yeah, that's really helpful, especially because I feel like it is. We're all very resistant to it. It feels like it's. It'd be too hard to let it go. But I think most of us would find that the more we step away from it, the easier it is to stay away from it. And not saying that we have to completely eliminate technology in our lives, but just to be more intentional. Like you always say, what is your aim? What is your purpose? Why are you picking up your phone rather than having it be habitual, which I think is not a child, an adolescent problem. It's a everybody problem.

Yeah, it's an everybody problem.

Okay, I have a question for you.

Okay, then.

How can we as adults become more aware of how our own anxiousness is rubbing off on our children? How can we do that? I actually have a quote that I want to read really quick. It's from this book called Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. And he says, this family life is our first school for emotional learning. In this intimate cauldron, we learn how to feel about ourselves and how others will react to our feelings, how to think about these feelings and what choices we have in reacting, how to read and express hopes and fears. This emotional schooling operates not just through the things that parents say and do directly to children, but also in the models they offer for handling their own feelings and those that pass between husband and wife. The ways parents handle feelings impart powerful lessons to their children, who are astute learners, attuned to the subtlest emotional exchanges in the family. I've been reading bits and pieces from this book, Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman, and I have to say, it's a little bit harrowing to feel like, oh, man, there's a lot on me, and I already feel inadequate, and now I'm feeling even more inadequate. That seems overwhelmingly impossible.

First and foremost, we won't always be emotionally available, present. We won't always be emotionally on cue. That's just the reality of our human nuts. The. The challenge that we are actually facing of what he's talking about in my mind is we are, so to speak, every family has an emotional barometer which. What we might refer to as an emotional climate. So in some situations, the emotional intensity. I'll give you an example of this. I was talking with somebody a few years ago and they said I knew where I should be in my house. The way my dad shut the door after work, very powerful. But it, I need to be in my room, or I could be in the kitchen, or I could be in the living room. But if it was shut a certain way, I'm going to my room and, and talking about that emotional climate. That's just the, the sound of the way a door is shut. Now, children are always observing our emotional climate. Mommy, are you sad? Dad, what are you upset? Or why are you angry? And so we have children who are the emotional barometers. They, they, they know. But we as parents, we too have emotions. The best thing that we can do is learn. To answer your question, we can learn about our own emotions. Am I feeling sad? Talking about emotional intelligence, actually being attuned to our own emotions. I feel sad, I feel lonely, I feel scared. I'm afraid. That's emotional iq and it's actually smart to understand our own emotions. I often tell the story about the cows and the buffaloes. And if you haven't heard the story of cows and buffaloes, real quick story. This is the plains of Colorado. And in the plains of Colorado, when the storms come over the mountains, the cows share the plains. But when the storm comes over the mountain, the cows move away from the storm, but they can't outrun the storm because the storm is faster than they walk. The buffaloes, in contrast, turn and face the storm. And in real, some cases, they'll actually charge into the storm, lessening their amount of exposure to the storm itself. That, that's the metaphor I use for when we have emotional challenges. We can numb them out, we can try to escape from them, but the storm will always catch us. So we are so much better off understanding our emotions, even if it's anxiety, feeling it and being aware of it rather than trying to stuff it down. Don't feel that. Don't think that. I know you can't say that. You can't do that, but self reflection would say what's actually happening in oh, I am feeling anxious. And that self awareness, that attunement actually helps us in our parenting because we're actually aware of I am feeling this. I might even say to my child, I'm feeling a little bit worried right now. Which is great modeling for your child, knowing that it's okay to share emotions because anxiety Comes when we have unspoken emotions, voices, we have feelings inside that we don't know what to do with. So the human body, when it's most anxious, if it doesn't know what to do with it, turns inward and that's when we have panic attack because we don't know how to regulate our body. So if I can simply say, oh, there is my anxious feeling. I'm buffaloing up, so to speak. And I'm not running from the storm. And that is how we begin to change. Anxiety is actually to be, so to speak, be a friend to it, understand it. The storm is coming. I we all have storms. So we can act like the cow and move away from it, hide from it, numb it out. Or we can turn and face it.

Yeah, that feels a lot less just suffocating that you don't have to be fully composed. Or what I like to call robot mom mode that I often go into where you don't feel any emotion. We're abolishing all emotion, all feeling. Cuz I'm so scared of showing a negative emotion or that I'm having a negative emotion, but rather that it's more powerful and better to model this positive turning towards your emotion, putting a name to the emotion and maybe not reacting to the emotion. But I do feel like when you name the emotion or get curious about the emotion or turn towards there creates almost like a space where you have this ability to act rather than react. Whereas if I feel like you let the emotion overwhelm you, you end up reacting to it rather than usually doing something that you might regret but rather naming it getting curious. I know you always talk about getting curious about it. You're creating this space and time where you can choose how you want to react. And I loved what you said about saying hey, I'm feeling worried right now or I'm feeling frustrated or I'm feeling overwhelmed or I'm feeling exhausted. Those are all things that I think I'm nervous to share with my children. Like I can't be the superhuman that you think I am. But rather it gives them the capacity to understand their own emotions when they experience them and how to deal with them in a healthy way. Which I think is really empowering and.

Really beautiful that you just. So let's take it even a step further to make it even better. Experience. I'm feeling this feeling fear, worried, anxious. Let me think about it. I'm going to come back because I want to talk with you about my experience. So we may take an adult time out to reflect on what we're experiencing. But imagine us now coming back to our child and saying, I just learned something valuable. I think I was feeling worried because of whatever that thing is that I was worried about. And I just wanted to finish that story with you because I don't want you to just think. That's where I left it. When we can think about our own thoughts and feelings and we can really seek to understand them, to give them a voice, and to go through what's actually happening, you get good outcomes. And so what I want to share with you is this is what I learned as I reflected on what I was experiencing. So now you're actually teaching them how to finish this story is to think about it, work through it again. Anxiety is often an unknown thing. We feel anxious about something, anticipating a problem. So if I feel anxious and I give it a voice, I give it a language, and I pause and look at my body and say, I need to figure this out. Where's it coming from? I'll give you an example of this. I had a friend when she was in stress. They're close cousins. She said, when I'm stressed, and she would rub her hands together and she said, woohoo, I get to learn something today. And when she first did that, I thought, you're crazy. But the more I understand it, she's like, I get to figure something out about how I'm responding to this event, which I thought was phenomenal. What a brilliant way for us to look at these things that are coming at us, the storms that come into our lives and face them and say, I see you. I'm gonna learn, and I'm gonna not let you overcome me. That is an intentional way to slow down our mind. And if we model it properly, we. We can actually create the right type of climate in our homes. So our children learn how to do the same thing, what we refer to as emotional regulation. One more metaphor here. Anxiety is like turning up the thermostat in the house, and it's just getting hotter and hotter, and all of a sudden it's not. It's not 70, it's 80, 90. It's just hot. That's what anxiety feels like. Now, emotional regulation is the ability to turn the thermostat down so it feels comfortable. If we go too far down, then we just shut down. It's. We've been overwhelmed and it's literally cold. Frozen is a term we use. So we want to figure out how to regulate our emotions and teach our children to do the same thing. So we're emotionally aware. I'm stressed, I'm lonely, I'm scared, I'm afraid. All of those common core emotions. And we're not afraid of them. We learn from.

Yeah, that's good stuff. I really like that. This has been a wonderful episode on understanding not just our children and adolescent anxiety, but also our own. Thanks for being with us today. You've been listening to Finding Noble. I'm Carly Redd. Follow find Finding Noble on all available podcast directories and find out more on our website, findingnoble.com that's finding noblen o b l e dot com and if you or anyone close to you are looking for further resources on young adult and adolescent mental health, Dr. Skinner and a host of other leading professionals working in the mental health world share courses and even answer your questions all on Parent Guidance. Org, that is parentguidance. Org, brought to you by the Cook center for Human Connection.