Parental Anxiety = Child Anxiety?

Anxiety is a common mental health problem. Around 31% of adults in the United States have an anxiety disorder at some stage. Accordingly, parental anxiety is the term for anxiety related to being a parent or caregiver. Basically, it can involve worrying about the child’s health and well-being, milestones, performance at school, and social life.

Signs that a person has parental anxiety include:

for example, avoiding putting a child in relatively safe situations they perceive as harmful
vocalizing feelings of worry or stress to other people, including a child
having persistent thoughts that something bad could happen to a child
lastly, spending excessive time worrying over small details relating to a child

Coupled with, common signs that a child has an anxiety disorder include:

for example, being afraid when they are away from their parents
having extreme fear about certain situations or things, such as dogs, insects, or visiting the doctor
being afraid of school and other places where there are large numbers of people
feeling worried about the future and fearing that bad things may happen
lastly, being reluctant to try new things or take risks

Also, a child with anxiety may also experience repeated episodes of sudden, intense fear.

Social Anxiety Caused by Parents

Hence, overprotective parents show guarding behavior that is excessive. Considering the child’s developmental stage and the actual risk level in their environment. Even if, overprotective parents’ single-minded focus is to keep their children safe, not only physically but also emotionally. These parents obsess with their children’s physical safety, even though they usually live in a relatively safe environment. Therefore, the levels of protection exceed the much lower level of actual risk. They are also preoccupied with preserving their kids’ emotional wellness. They’re helping them remove all obstacles and cushion the blow of everyday life.

Equally important, some parents are overprotective because they want to do everything within their power to safeguard their children from harm and to help them succeed in life. Due to this intensive parenting approach is often chosen by parents in a loving but misguided attempt to improve their child’s outcome.

Even more, parents are instinctively protective. By and large, they want to protect their kids’ well-being by preventing illnesses, hurtful feelings, and failure. But when a mom or dad helps a little too much, steps in to save the day every time something goes slightly awry or shields the child from all the negativities of the world, they become overprotective parents.

Controlling Parents and Anxiety

Nonetheless, do your parents still meddle in your daily life? Perhaps your mum’s always showing her disapproval – chiming in on what you should or shouldn’t wear. Or possibly who you should be spending your time with… Or maybe your dad’s the controlling one. Particularly, he’s sure that you chose the wrong career and hellbent on reminding you every time you see him. He makes it clear you’ll never be able to live up to his successes…

Overall, controlling parenting – otherwise known as authoritarian parenting – is a style of parenting in which one (sometimes both) parents keep close tabs on their children’s lives. They over-involving themselves where they can.

Parents like this tend to be overly focused on their own needs rather than the needs of the child. And while some parents may get over this behaviour as the child grows up, some never “drop the rope”. It becomes a pattern of behaviour that continues well into adulthood.

My Parents Don’t Understand My Anxiety

Here is a letter I found online. It’s from the perspective of a man’s anxiety talking to his parents.

My Parents Trigger My Anxiety

Some kids experience physical symptoms like stomachaches, racing heartbeats and headaches. Others exhibit emotional responses like increased tantrums or clinginess. Still, others become withdrawn and stop participating in activities or engaging with peers.

Even if you do not intend to create anxiety, some common behaviors and comments from parents can make kids feel anxious.

Social Anxiety, Living With Parents

In addition, it’s extremely difficult on a child to grow up with an anxious parent, and even harder if both parents, and sometimes extended family as well, is anxious. In particular, anxiety is a disorder characterized by constriction — it keeps people from living full and free lives, and often encourages “worst case scenario” thinking. Hence, here are some of the things that parents with anxiety may teach their kids, implicitly and explicitly:

In the first place, the world is dangerous.
Other people are not to be trusted. (This may also manifest itself as unfounded prejudices—e.g. men/women/people who are a different ethnicity are not to be trusted.)
Unpredictability is something to be feared.
You need to try to control everything so that you don’t get hurt.
It is easiest just to stay home and not interact with anyone.
In conclusion, don’t take any risks, because it would be worse to fail than not to try.

Surely, these implicit lessons, and others, explain why so many individuals who grew up with anxious parents often end up in therapy, trying to work out their own mental health challenges. In other words, imagine trying to approach a romantic interest when you’ve learned from a socially anxious parent that all people are judgmental and self-centered.

Avoiding Parental Anxiety

In short, people who have parental anxiety can try the following ways to manage their symptoms and avoid passing on their anxiety to others.

Plan ahead.
Specifically, a person can try to plan ahead about how to deal with triggering situations when they arise. For example, listing situations in a journal and coping strategies to employ, such as getting some fresh air, making a drink, listening to a favorite song, or deep breathing.

Practice coping skills.
In general, individuals can find and practice ways to tolerate stress. When children see that a caregiver uses strategies to cope with stress, they will learn how to cope with stress themselves. In other words, try to adopt a calm demeanor in front of the child and be aware of facial expressions and word choice.

Be open.
Adults can be open with children about coping with anxiety. For example, if a caregiver shouts at a child during a stressful moment, they can later explain how they felt at that moment, and that shouting was their reaction. In the same fashion, they could then discuss other ways they could have reacted and how they could react in the future.

Avoid sending the wrong messages.
In time, an anxious caregiver might unintentionally teach a child that certain situations are to be feared because they fear them themselves. For example, if a parent is fearful of swimming or being in the water, they may panic when their child is near water and transmit their fear to them.

Conclusion

In truth, if you are the anxious child of anxious parents, do your best not to dwell in the past, resenting your parents for their issues or wondering what it would be like to have grown up differently.

In the meantime, try to focus on your own journey to be more positive and less constricted by fear. Some people try to speak to their parents openly about the links between their upbringing and their current anxiety, but this may not go well. After all, it’s hard to convince someone that they are anxious when they don’t identify as such. Which is why it can be upsetting and demoralizing to confront a parent about the anxiety with which they raised you.