Parenting Your Child through Anxiety: Part #2

Foreigning 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?

So great. And we are going to pick up from our Last Call podcast episode on childhood and adolescent anxiety. Um, we spliced the episode in two, so here's the second portion of it. And I wonder if maybe we could walk through a scenario where a child might be experiencing a highly anxious state or. And what maybe a healthy and helpful way as a parent we could respond. What might that look like? I'm not gonna start acting like an anxious child. I could, but I'm not gonna do that.

You don't wanna go back in your childhood?

No, I don't have to. I have a lot of other anxious kids that I could just.

Just mimic your children reenact this morning.

Getting ready for school.

Perfect.

Okay. Maybe you have a. A good case study that maybe we could imagine.

I'll give you one. It's something that we did with our daughter, an example of that. She was getting ready to go to an activity at our church, and my wife was a teacher, also with the youth. And my daughter said, I don't want to go. And at this point, I'm there. My wife's not there yet. Everything inside of me said, well, if you're not going to go, then go down to your room. I mean, this is an activity that they've prepared for you and it should be fun. And so everything entitled me is like, no, well, go down to your room. Except for I was a little bit smarter that day. And I said, well, why don't you want to go? And at about that point, my wife comes into the room and she says, I'm afraid that my friends won't like my mom as a teacher because my wife was going to be their teacher. And her fear, anxiousness, anxiety was that her friends wouldn't like my wife as a teacher. Now, my wife, being wise, had already done Joy school with many of her peers, and so she had done those activities. And so she said, do you remember that when we did Joy School here, how did your friends respond when we did Joy School here? And she said, oh, that was fun. And then my wife gave a couple of other examples. And all of a sudden my daughter said, okay, mom, let's go. Now, I could have responded by shutting her down. Go to your room. But something inside of me said, what are you concerned about? Why don't you want. Trying to get the story because going back to what I said before, anxiousness needs a voice. So we need to help them express whatever the fear is, whatever the concern is. There may be times where they don't know what their fear is. That's okay, too. We have strategies to help them do that, but for the most part, in that situation, just simply having a reframe. Oh, yeah, we did do this. Okay, mom, let's go. Helping them give the voice helps them transition through it. What happens with anxiety is when we can't solve it, it just stews in there and stews in there to the point where it overwhelms us. And that's when we're more likely to have a panic attack. That's when our body begins to say, I don't feel safe. And that's when it's escalated to the point where you literally, you feel like your heart's going to just jump out of your.

That's a fantastic example, because I loved that one. This is true, I think, for almost every parent's experience, is that anxiety is never convenient. A child's anxiety is never convenient. It's always at a very inconvenient moment. You're always trying to go somewhere, do something, and the natural reaction of a parent is to try to squash it, shut it down, just say, this isn't what we're doing right now. This is not helpful. This is hurtful. But in reality, to get through it quicker, to get through the storm quicker, is to turn into it. And I loved what you said. To listen, to learn to listen. Not just in my experience, as I've tried to do this, listen with my body, listen with my eyes, stop what I'm doing, look at my child, get down to their level, listen to what they're experiencing, and then ask questions. What is it that you're feeling? Why are you feeling anxious? I think has always been really helpful. And then I love this idea of rephrasing and repeating it back to them, which I don't think is something that is just for a child. I think it's every human being, from the moment they are born, needs to be heard and understood and seen and validated. Looking into a child's eyes, there's something that relaxes inside a child when you look into their eyes, as I've noticed. Um, it allows them to feel like you're aware of what they are feeling, even if you don't understand it completely. But they feel like you see them and that they are not alone. And then I love this. We talked about this earlier, putting A name to what they are experiencing. We have this wheel in our house. A friend gave it to me who does social work. We were having some conflicts with one of our kids, an anxious child, and I didn't quite know how to deal with it. So she gave us this will and said, put it in different rooms of your house, especially when you send them to their room. I just found one in my son's closet while I was putting Ray's clothes and my teenage son's closet. It's a will with all different emotions and there's hundreds of different names to them and they all branch off of each other. But it's so great because they go in there and I'm like, go find what you're feeling on that wheel. And a lot of times it's like I feel afraid or I feel annoyed or I feel resentful or worried or hurt or lonely or confused or powerless. There's all these words on there. And even my husband and I, we've used that when we've tried to get through some conflict. What am I really feeling? And we'll go to the will and we'll look at the will and say, this is actually what I'm feeling. Because I think a lot of times we don't quite understand why or where it's coming from. And that is emotional intelligence. To be able to help your child, say, put a name to this. What are you feeling? And not exactly why you're feeling it, because I think that can be tricky. But what you were feeling, we can put a name to that. So I love that you said that.

The thing I would add to this is something you said earlier, this eye contact. One of the ways that we help with anxiety is meeting our child's most basic needs. Now, basic needs, there's four specific ones we ought to fit. Eye contact is one of our most basic needs. When an infant is born, their eyesight, their connection is that's how they feel safe. So eyes, number one, facial expression, a smile, our tone of voice and physical touch add to that nourishment. When we have those things, we are more likely to socially connect and bond with other people, which actually helps reduce anxiety. So we want that, though, those basic needs to be met. So if I'm, as you said, as if I'm at my child's level, they're seeing me now. There were times, as an example, the daughter that I was referring to, she was afraid that her friends wouldn't like my wife, as a teacher, understanding that she had anxiety. There were times Where I would go down into her room at night and I could sense her anxiousness. There were times I would actually put my head up to the side of her head and together we would hum. Might sound strange, but go with me for a ride here. Okay, try this. Go.

V. Maybe less.

You feel it? Do you feel that?

Yes.

What that actually does is it actually activates our vagus nerve, which actually helps us calm down. So it's. The vagus nerve is like the brake of the body. So anxiety is fight or flight. But when we access the vagus nerve, which is really the head heart connection, we. You literally do not forget. And you can actually feel it. You start to resonate. You might have a tingling in your throat. You're actually accessing your vagus nerve. It's a really simple exercise to help calm down. It's like the break of the body. So anxiety is like you're pushing the pedal down constantly. Just constantly pushing the pedal down without a break. And eventually your body gets worn out and exhausted and you have health consequences. That's what happens with anxiety. But if we can push on the brake, our body's. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. So now I can sleep and I can digest food and my body responds effectively because the brake has been pushed. So we want to access the vagus nerve. If you want me to give you one more simple thing you can do. It's called the basic exercise. To all of our listeners or those who are watching it, type in the basic exercise on Google and you will see this really older guy teaching you how to do the basic exercise. It's absolutely fascinating. It is a proven strategy to access our vagus nerve, which actually helps us calm down.

Oh, cool. I'm gonna go Google that. The basic. What is it called? The basic exercise.

Exercise. Yep.

Okay. And it's the vagus nerve. I've heard a lot. I actually have this little thing that, that I got for Christmas. I don't know what that means, but someone gave it to me for Christmas. And you wear it on your chest and it vibrates right here. And it has. You connect it with an app on your phone. I can't remember the name of it or else I. I'd give her the shout out. And it's that it's a. It's almost like a monk humming exactly a chant. And I swear it works. So I believe it. Basic exercise. I'm gonna go Google it.

And so the basic exercise is. It's a one to two minute exercise. And in essence what it allows us to do. We basically turn our head to the right, turn our head to the left, lay down, put our heads, hands behind our head, the skull of our head. And then we keep our head straight, but we look up and to the right until we yawn or swallow. Then we come back to the center and then we put our eyes up and to the left until we yawn or swallow and then we come back to the center. Then we turn our head to the right, turn our head to the left. And that is the basic exercise in simple, simplified.

And it's supposed to relax the nerve. Is that what it's.

It actually helps to access the vagus nerve or the ventral vagus nerve. So it actually helps us calm down and relax. It's like a doing a mindful breathing exercise. It's just allowing the vagus nerve, which actually is the brake, to be activated.

I really like that because I feel like often I'm trying to redirect thoughts. Re we call it like a lane change, which I think can be helpful where you're in this singular tunnel and I almost use it as a visual with myself for my kids. Like you're on some lane and I want you to do a train track change like Thomas the Train. Pick em up and put em on a new part of your brain and start using a different lane. But I think at times to try to manipulate or control our brain becomes so overwhelming. I really like this idea, doing something visceral with our bodies that can help redirect or change our focus. Like you said, putting a break on. So I like this. The basic exercise.

I'm gonna go, all right. So can I give our listeners a common rule that's really important to understand? We don't talk anxiety away.

Ooh, could have used that a while ago.

I can't talk you out of your anxiety. I can show you how your body can regulate so you can let the anxiety pass through you. So what I'm in essence saying is your body is storing anxious feelings. And we don't talk that out, we don't just release it. In reality, the body says, I feel safe now and now I'm going to relax. The body is actually the mechanism, so to speak, that says I feel safe now because anxiety is not safety. When I feel safe, my body goes, huh? Thank you. The exercises that I've just given to our listeners and to you is designed to say body, it's okay to relax right now. It's okay. And that's how you do it.

This is great. I Love that I get to do this podcast with you, cuz I really feels like free therapy. So thank you. I appreciate it.

I hope our listeners are enjoying this. My hope is that you'll actually take it and use it with your children. I want all of us, if we will practice this with our children. As I said at the beginning of the podcast, anxiety is the number one issue that our children are dealing with today. So everything that I'm going through today are simple strategies that you don't need to go to a therapist for. You might need to go to a therapist for other things, but you can actually help your child work through anxiousness by educating yourself and your children about what's going on. And then if it doesn't go away, that's when you go to a therapist. But in the meantime, try these strategies and see how your children respond.

Yeah, I really like that. Especially because I think as parents, we can often feel like to be a good parent, we are tempted to eliminate the source of anxiety. We think that eliminating that source or removing them from something that makes them anxious, whether it's, I didn't want to go to that activity, that youth activity that you were talking about, or okay, so you don't have to go, rather than talking through and saying, you can do this, you can go. And I think so much of what's difficult about anxiety is that we aren't certain of outcomes. We have a fear, and we don't know how to tolerate uncertainty, if that makes sense. But that can feed anxiety, especially if the outcomes, they are uncertain. And sometimes outcomes are not what we want. They're not when we don't always get to choose them, but instead sending the message to our children that they can handle the situation no matter what happens, and giving them tools to handle the situation no matter what happens. That's a very different way of thinking about it. And as parents, I think we'll have to train ourselves to not just say, okay, this is scary for you, let's not do that. And I'm not saying in all things, we don't have to take him to some freaky haunted house and be like, learn how to not be anxious in this. But. And normal daily living helps him clean cope with the normal avenues of life that we all have to walk.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm really interested in this concept of tolerating uncertainty. And I feel like it goes hand in hand with this popular concept of grit. There's that wonderful book Angela Duckworth wrote on grit that got a lot of attention and resilience. And adaptability in developing good mental health, that talking about sending the message that you can handle the situation no matter what happens, that you're empowering, rather than removing any difficult situation or obstacle. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more how the brain is activated. And we were talking about this previously, maybe I'm not saying this correctly, but you said something about when we eliminate hard, our brain gets bored.

Yeah.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah. So in our culture today, we often find that you'll hear your child say, I'm bored. Boredom is a perfect way for anxiety to increase. And the reason why is because when it doesn't have anything to do, it goes in searches for things. So you might be reading what's going on in the world, you might be watching what your friends are doing out here, and you might all of a sudden be getting all of this information where you don't feel like you belong or you're not a part of. So boredom, then I could be numbing out with games or whatever it is. Contrast that with developing a skill, whether that's basketball or track, or whether that's being a play or developing a skill, as with a musical instrument. Productivity creates our own stress. For example, we know that when we exercise, you are actually creating your own stress. When you're jogging, you're creating your own stress, and your body then is learning how to deal with that stress and come back to a set point. So those types of activities are increasing our stress, and our body's like, oh, I know what to do with this. But when I'm bored, when I'm not doing anything, I'm not pushing my body, my mind, to. To be a better me. That boredom then creates this place which I think is a just a schoolhouse for learning how to be anxious. So productivity actually is another way that we can reduce the anxiety by creating our own stress. Now, that may sound strange, but pushing yourself a little bit out of that comfort zone, you're going to be stressed. And that's actually what we want you to do, is learn how to do that and then come back to a set point. When we do work with individuals dealing with trauma, one of the skills that we teach them is to go into the trauma, but make sure that they have a way to come back out of it. The same is true with anxiety. When a person's feeling anxious, they go into anxious feelings, and then we help them come back so they can regulate. So breathing exercises, doing what we talked about before the Basic exercise. Anything that's going to access the vagus nerve to relax is going to help us come back from that anxious feeling. So if you are feeling anxious, deep breathing exercises can be a simple solution to help you. The basic exercise I shared earlier would be another one. Now, there are many guided meditations that are designed to help you just attune to your body. You will notice most of today's relaxation techniques are getting you attuned to your body. So when we do those things, we're way more efficient, rather than just being bored, because boredom can create that place where I don't know what to do. I know I don't know what to do with my own emotions. But when you've created your own stress and you know how to come back out of it, you're like, oh, I'm resilient. I can do this. I can do hard things. We want our children to learn to do hard for their mental health and their wellbeing.

That's really interesting because I think of when a child is bored, oftentimes they'll want to go to technology. I think that's one of the greatest difficulties in modern day parenting, is trying to keep kids engaged in good things and not saying that all technology is bad. There's still gonna be great things on there. Um, but oftentimes, especially as kids turn from children to adolescents, they're on technology. They're looking and surrounding themselves with other people. Social media, we're all aware that comparison is inevitable. And they see things that maybe they may not be able to compete with. And I think what's interesting about this is I've seen it all around that when you see someone participating in something and they could be doing something great, like they're in their cello concert and you're thinking, they play the cello. I didn't know they played cello. I'm the horse. I don't do anything. And it causes them to spiral down to this fixed mindset where there's more anxiety and more an ability to shy away from trying new things, to be a part of something, because they're not a professional at it. They don't feel like they have some prodigious ability to just be above and beyond. What's the normal natural level of trying something new? So it reminds me of this, like, fixed mindset versus growth mindset that we get into this place. A fixed mindset breeds this anxiety where we're thinking all the time, I have to be really good at something. And if I'm not good the first time I might as well not try versus this growth mindset. Like, I'm working towards something that I'm creating this really healthy stress. Like, I may not be running a marathon, but I'm running four miles. Okay, this is me talking from my experience. But that's good stress. You know, that's good stress. And even though I don't have anything to post about or boast about, but there's still something there that's being done to me that's healthy, that I'm choosing to do something healthy rather than not participate. Because what's the point? I'm not the best. I don't know if that made any sense.

It does. One of the things Cardi, you were talking about, fixed versus a growth mindset. I think we could do a whole podcast just on Carol Dweck's work on how to teach our children to have a growth mindset in contrast with a fixed mindset. So real quick, definition. A fixed mindset. If I'm a student, you give me a hard math question and I don't know how to do it. If I have a fixed mindset, I. I just, I'm not smart. I don't get mad. That's a fixed mindset statement. In contrast, a growth mindset in that situation is, yeah, I might have got it wrong, but I'll figure it out. If I just work at it, I'll find a solution. So we want our children to realize that even in our communication, that as parents, the way we communicate with them. You know what? You worked hard to get that A. I'm really impressed with the effort you put in now. If my child got an A and didn't put in the effort, I would still want to know, what did you learn and what effort did you put in to get? Because success in life is that we are growing. When we don't know how to do something, we find a solution as human beings. When we have a problem, we have innovative people who've said, I'll find a solution. And that's the message we want our children to have is, we might not know the answer today, but let's go figure it out. Let's learn, let's study, let's put two pieces together and see what we come up with. That kind of mindset. Is that really what I'm saying there? Going back to what I said earlier, do the hard thing. A fixed mindset, I just can't. I'm not smart enough. Listen to the language. I'm not good enough. I'm not as smart as Other people. And that fixed mindset is much more prone to have.

I mean, we could say it all day long to our kids, but if they're not seeing us operate in that kind of a mindset, they'll inherently receive what we've given them of whether we think we can try new things, do hard things, whatever, or shy away from hard things. Which, again, is a scary thought that so much of it relies on our own behavior and our own ability to think in this way, which I feel like this is all new. I think we're becoming so much better as a human species. I think we are evolving into something better. I think the generations before us probably didn't have as much information as we do. They didn't on mental health. And even like you said, in the last 10, 15 years, we've come so far. I think, that being said, there's a lot of pressure on us, but there's so much that can change. And I think you talked about this before when I was saying to you, I'm worried about this. I've already ruined my kids. My kids are beyond the ages where I can actually have a huge impact. And do you want to share what you shared with me? Because it helped me a lot.

I'll let you add to what I said. But my general concept when I hear that kind of a statement is we're. It's never over. Everything that we know about the human brain is what we refer to as neuroplasticity. In fact, they have found that people, hours before they die, are learning new things. Their body's learning what. What people say, I can't influence the outcome or my child won't listen to me anymore. Every time I hear that, I'm like, there is absolutely no evidence that suggests that anything is fixed in our human race, in our human beings, us, human. When I hear that, I'm like, we always can change. For example, if my child's cold, distant, and hates me, I could even role play. And I could actually tell my child that I don't like them and probably draw them closer to me. Do you think that's possible? Your child comes home late, you've been frustrated, you've been in a fight for a few days, and they come home, they're being disobedient. They come home late, 30 minutes late, 45 minutes late. And they come in and you say, you're late. And they say, why do you care? You don't love me anyway. And imagine that you said, you know what? Lately, you're right. I've really had a hard time, like. But you also need to know that I love you beyond anything. I did two things there. I was true to my emotion, which is great teaching, but I also expressed my love for them. See, the message there is we're fighting, we're arguing, but in that context, I'm authentic. I have had a hard time feeling love for you lately because of the fighting, but you have no idea how much I just love you now. If I did that, would you, if you were the child there, would you go, oh, you probably would. And that's the underlying part of this dynamic. It's never fixed. So if we think we've messed up our children, if we think we've got what I refer to as parental shame, I've screwed em up, I've done it wrong, it's too late, whatever. You know what? You start applying some of the things that we've talked about today and just try it out, Just listen, pay attention, give some guidance on how to reduce anxiety, be do it with your child, do the VU exercise or the basic exercise and talk how it goes. All of these things combined give you hopefully as a parent, more tools that will help you and your children.

Wow, that's really beautiful. I really love this. That as we try to change and change with our children, this malleable part of our brain, or all our brain, it becomes a united effort and we're getting better together, which I feel like creates stronger connection. That it's not an authoritative, you need to do this or you need to do this, but that we are learning together to how to be more emotionally intelligent, less anxious, more regulated. And yeah, definitely relieves some of that parental shame that especially that I was feeling. I mean, when you said that it's not fixed, that our brains are malleable, that they can easily adapt and change. That is a very helpful message. So thank you.

Hopefully it reduces the anxiety.

Thank you. Yes. And we wanted to point out to anybody who's viewing that we are wearing black and white and that black and white thinking is not helpful for anxiety. Thank you.

That's exactly right. Now, one final thought that I would have today, just from my perspective, Carly, is anxiety is our body's way of giving us a message. And in essence, the anxiety is saying, I don't feel safe, I don't feel something's off. So if we can take it and reframe that and say your body's trying to teach you something. Let's learn what your body's trying to teach you.

Let's.

That's all we're trying to do. So anxiety can be an educator if we are willing to buffalo up and face this.

Wow, I really like that. I do have one more question. I don't know if we'll end up.

All right, let's do it. One more question.

I don't know if we'll end up using this, but I'm just thinking through this. Say that your child is in. Is acting anxious and you can't understand why and they're not open to talking about it. I think this is every parent's field. But maybe there is something in their life that is actually harmful that you don't know about. Maybe there's a family relationship that has caused them pain, whether it's physical or sexual or emotional abuse. How can you be in tune with your children to know or to get them to speak to you in a way? Because I think I just don't want. I don't want anyone here who is listening thinking, what if my child really is experiencing something? And we say, no, you can't, you should go, you should go to this. It's not a big deal. And really there may be something actually harmful and that the anxiety is that this is baffling you.

So three or four parts here and I'll try to get to them. The first part is if a child says they don't want to go, probably one of the better things that we can do is help them express their why. Help me understand what you're concerned about and help me understand why. So I never want to push my child to an environment that I myself may not even know. But in some situations I want to help them express. And now let's say the child says, I don't know why. Then let's play a game where you say that you don't want to go. Let tell me where you feel that in your body. Which part of your body doesn't want to go. It's amazing when we actually go to body parts, my stomach. Okay, so your stomach is saying, I don't feel that. So let's now talk to your stomach. What's your stomach trying to say? So now I'm helping them. Again, give a voice to that feeling. Now again, there's no specific way you can do this other than you're asking questions and you're helping them attune to their body, which is exactly what I want them to learn to do in the first place. Now if they don't have a language for it, I don't know, I just don't want to go. Are you scared? Are you afraid that emotions will. That feelings will. That you mentioned earlier, you might go to that and say, of these, which ones are you feeling? So I understand right now you don't have a voice for it. That's okay. You don't know what exactly what it means. But we'll sit here and we'll go through some of these. How about this one? How about that one? All right, so you're feeling a little bit scared. Have you felt this kind of fear before? Have you felt scared before? Ah, so now they're talking about that. Yeah, I felt that way when I went there last time. Oh, okay. Did something happen there last time? Well, yeah, I was being bullied. Oh, did you tell me about that? Did I not hear that? Oh, can you. What. What happened? And it's just this simple dialogue going back and forth. Notice I'm just asking questions. Our goal is to get them to open up so they can share with their experiences. And so those are a few thoughts I would have on how to help a child. When they're saying, I don't want to go, go get more data. That's. You're gonna hear me say that over and over on this podcast. If you don't know the answer, go get more data. It's just how we get the information so we can make informed decisions as parents and help our children learn how to make informed decisions.

Well, and I do feel like the quality of our relationship really will determine if they're willing to open up. And so it's not just a one time communication or experience with your child where you're having this conversation, but it's all the small moments built up over time amassed into this relationship where they feel comfortable with you, which I know that you're so passionate about talking about. It's always about the relationship. It always goes back to the relationship. And so really striving to have the type of relationship to where they feel comfortable speaking truth to you. So thank you for answering that. That was really, yeah. Elucidative, enlightening, and really helpful. So thank you.

One more thought there real quick before we end. The goal is to create a safe environment, human connections. The first principle of all human connection is safety. Anxiety doesn't feel safe. So our goal as parents is to create an environment where our children feel. That's where social bonding and human connection occurs. Human connection does not occur. Even if I feel anxious, I might not want to connect with you because I don't know what safe. So safety is the foundation of all human connection.

Wow. This has been a really good session. I'm really so grateful that we've had it. I'm actually really excited to go back and listen again to all of the tips and just beautiful points that I think everyone listening will have learned something new from. So thank you. If there's anything more you'd like to add, please do so now.

No, I think I'm out today. I think that's Forrest Gump style. I think that's all I got.

That's so good. Okay. You've been listening to Finding Noble. I'm Carly Redd. Follow Finding Noble on all available podcast directories and find out more on our website, findingnobel.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 parentguidance.org that is parentguidance.org brought to you by the Cook center for Human Connection.