Parents don’t cause anxiety.
We’re all born with the amygdala that will help us stay protected and keep us out of danger. It’s there before you even begin to think about how you’re going to mess up you kid or not mess up your kid. The most important thing for you to understand is that your child’s capacity to feel anxiety and register threat in their environment is already there before you even enter the equation.
Parents are a strong part of the solution to the problem of anxiety. This is an important one for you to understand because this is how you help and how you get your kid to understand what’s going on when anxiety arises. If you and your kid can understand the mechanics of anxiety, then there is an ability to step back.
When your kid was little, they would run away and then afterwards make sure mom and dad were still there. That circle of safety is what helps your kid understand that they’re safe without you and are able to be brave by expanding the circle of safety and looking back and making sure you’re still there.
In one situation, we can have a kid that runs away and then turns back to wave, and feels safe to come back.
In another situation, we can have kids expand that circle of safety and have mom and dad run after them and ask them to come back which can create a little more difficulty in that situation.
What I’m trying to help you understand is that the circle of safety and your kid expanding that circle of safety is a very normal experience for both kid and adult. It’s quite nerve-wracking for both of you and it’s supposed to be because you’re trying to establish whether the choice they’ve made is a healthy risk or not. As you encourage your kid to be brave and make those choices, you have to be brave at the same time.
It’s really important that you remember that you do not cause anxiety in your kid, you are a strong part of the solution of helping your kid learn what anxiety is and learn how to control it when they think that there’s a threat but really there isn’t. What you’re doing in that moment is thinking that it’s scary to have id be brave, but it’s actually not because you know you can manage it too.
