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Parenting Anxiety, Explained Simply · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this episode, I'm going to do a preface to the following two, which are about anxiety in parenting.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that it might be a good idea to just introduce this subject in a way that will hopefully be accessible.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why parenting when experiencing anxiety or the anxiety that is produced by parenting and how that transmits itself to the child?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it comes under the broader mental health question that I'm asking, which is the mental health of parents and how they can be both understood and responded to, and of course, the relationship between parental mental health and the health and development of the child.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing I want to say is this anxiety is not just a psychological problem.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Anxiety is a neurobiological problem and has to do with the way in which parts of the brain work together.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the part that I'm talking about particularly is the triune brain system made up of three parts.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go into a bit more detail about that in the next episode.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that I think that is important to understand is that anxiety is rooted in the notion of what if.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: When we experience anxiety, it can be in one of two forms.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It can be quite specific in that it focuses upon particular events, particular outcomes, the anticipation of these things, and what if.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Normally that's underpinned by catastrophic thinking or worst case scenario.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: The thing is, when we do that, our bodies respond as if what if has become what is, because our bodies don't know the difference between real threat and perceived threat, by which I mean that if we are thinking about a what if the body perceives that as threat and goes into one of the three stress responses.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I try and help patients to understand the difference between what if and what is.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: What if is in the future, even if that future is in an hour's time?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: What is is right now.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So a question that I often put to people is are they able to distinguish between the two?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And are they able in those moments when they are feeling anxious and they're locked into what is, are they able to say, but is it happening?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it happening now?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to make that internal shift from being in the what if to stepping back and asking, what is incredibly helpful.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because what it does, even if the voice in your head says, well, maybe it isn't, but it could be, we go back to, but what is happening?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's helpful because it takes us away from the perceived difficulty which triggers all of the responses.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I talk about and have mentioned before in podcasts is the difference between what and why.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we ask ourselves why, why am I feeling this way, why, and so on.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, generally speaking, if we're in an anxious state, we're not very likely to be able to come up with a solution or solution or a tangible answer.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of asking why, how about asking yourself what?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: What am I experiencing?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: What is happening?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And all you simply have to do is name it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just the simple act of naming what you're experiencing, once again introduces that shift from right to left side of the brain and takes us away from the questioning that drives the impulses that create the stress reactions.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday I was in a petrol station and I was noticing a mother and child help, and the child was probably about four or five, and she was sort of dancing around and just generally being delightful.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And at one point she she asked her mother if she could go back to the car.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the mother said, Yes, that's fine, there was somebody in the car.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the moment the child reached the sliding doors to leave, the mother shouted, watch for cars.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I uh would regard that as a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But what struck me was if I look at it from a psychological reactivity point of view, the mother reacted to a perceived threat, and that's perfectly reasonable.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, who doesn't tell their child to look out for cars?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: But her tone of voice and the the way that she expressed it told me that this mother was reacting to perceived anxiety.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, come away from whether or not that's the right thing to do, because that's not what this is about, and I would have done the same thing.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, actually, I was really tempted to go and watch for cars as well.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, because that would have probably been perceived as weird, although I did look through the doors, so I suppose yes, I did watch for cars.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I I that that's a normal human response, but I'm interested here in the mechanisms.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: The mechanism that was triggered by the mother was to do with survival threat.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And at one level, perfectly reasonable from a situational point of view, but what it shows is the existence of those mechanisms.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I also wonder if this mother, just like every other parent, when their child goes out to play or when their child isn't with them, I wonder how many fantasize what if.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Horrible, understandable.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But this has to do with the attachment and the fear of loss, and is entirely understandable.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now there is a second group where anxiety is concerned, and that is where the anxiety seems to find expression through pretty much everything.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And people can be crippled by this, and this is called a generalized anxiety disorder.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And these conditions are pervasive, they affect other members of the family, and they are internalized by the children.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk more about that in the next in the next episode, because I also want to talk about interventions that would help, and certainly my experience of working with patients who have this condition.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, this is this is a primer.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk more about the neurobiology, uh, the neurochemistry, the experience of at the escalation of internal anxiety and the de-escalation methods that can help.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I posted just before this something called the soothe technique, which was a podcast I produced about five years ago.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that will hopefully be very helpful because it walks you through an exercise that you can do every day, whenever you want.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it when you're not anxious, but it is called the soothe technique for a really good reason.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So please do feel welcome to have a look at that, and I'll be back with the other parts shortly.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.