Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Are You Teaching Your Kids To Fear The World?

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Are You Teaching Your Kids To Fear The World? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the dr.
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  Psych mom show today, I'm going to be talking about whether you
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  are unintentionally training, your children to fear the world
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  and how anxiety can do this. Even if you don't know that
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  you're an anxious person or you don't identify as that before I
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  get into that, please do subscribe.
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  I've close to 80 subscriber only episodes.
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  My next one is going to be next on whether you and your spouse
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  have the same kind of expectations for the empty,
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  nester or Dormant years. And how I've seen a disparity
• 0:38
  between what people think is going to happen and those years
• 0:40
  play out in marital counseling and lead to conflict.
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  All right, so back to the topic at hand, I definitely work with
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  a. Lot of people who struggle with
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  anxiety, some of these people know that it's anxiety, some of
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  them don't I've talked about when you don't, when you can't
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  recognize anxiety in a previous podcast.
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  And that's a lot of people, you know, ranging from young people.
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  To older people, it's just frequently.
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  If you grow up in an anxious house and you don't identify as
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  anxious because you just think that your perfectionism
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  cautiousness, you know, your kind of rules and rigidity.
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  That's just like the way that it goes and that's just like how
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  life is. So if you don't recognize that
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  you're anxious, it would be interesting to listen to that
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  podcast for you. If anybody's ever told you that
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  you're anxious. So, Because frequently Partners
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  will say You're really anxious and the personally, like I'm not
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  anxious, I'm just the only one around here that gives a shit
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  about anything or that cares about parenting or cares about
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  safety or whatever, when it's really anxiety.
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  So, how does kind of undiagnosed or a diagnosed anxiety?
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  Teach children to fear the world.
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  Well, you come at things as a parent when you are anxious, you
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  come at things from a very negative aesthetic.
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  Please Swear your overemphasizing risk and Dee
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  emphasizing reward. So there could be so think about
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  like driving you know like of course there's a risk that
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  you're going to get into a car accident you know whenever you
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  get into the car but only the most anxious people than would
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  not have a car. You know, most people are
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  willing to moderate that risk for the reward of flexibility
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  and being able to go places at a moment's notice without having
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  to plot out public transportation routes.
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  Cetera. So you know, assuming that you
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  live somewhere where most people have cars the it were a plane,
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  right? So people there's a risk to
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  Flying, there's a risk to to you know, any time you get into a
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  plane, but people like to travel anyway, right?
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  Or anything? You know, I mean the literally
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  anything there's a risk to skiing but people will still go
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  skiing because they think that the the fun of it and the
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  pleasure. He's outweighs the possibility
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  that you're going to break your leg.
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  So there are Myriad things here. I mean, germs is a big one.
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  If you feel like the risk of your kids getting sick is higher
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  and more powerful and means more to you than the reward of them
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  having fun in a play place. Then you're never going to take
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  them to a plate place because they could get sick because
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  there's other kids around. So, when you are to waited on
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  the side of the bad things that could happen, this transmits
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  itself to your children and they start to Dead of viewing, the
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  world as a Place full of freedom, and adventure and
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  possibility, which is positive for mental health.
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  Because there's a need to explore a basic human.
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  Need to explore your surroundings.
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  You can see this in all mammals, you know, like we have gerbils
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  like the gerbils like to explore their surroundings.
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  Every every like healthy animal likes to explore its
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  surroundings and to play. But when you are basically
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  telling your kids all the time that things are super dangerous,
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  And I've worked with people who struggle with this, for years
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  and years, and it starts with postpartum anxiety.
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  We're like the so, a lot of women's anxiety starts with
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  postpartum anxiety, and there's more women that are anxious than
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  met. So that's why a lot of my
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  examples are about women. And so, I've seen women who
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  struggle with postpartum anxiety.
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  Now, if you construct a baby from doing various things, like
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  going to play places or swim lessons or like babies, you
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  know, baby swim lessons or like whatever baby doesn't know, you
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  know but it's like I know like you you forget that the baby is
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  growing every single day. Then they're turning into a
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  toddler. The toddler does hear you say
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  stuff. Like well there's a lot of germs
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  in those places so we're going to stay home you know or we
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  don't climb don't climb. No don't climb, you could fall,
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  you could fall like that kind of stuff.
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  So the toddler then does start to understand what's going on
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  and a child certainly does and so does a teenager a lot of
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  people are very disappointed that there Teenagers or then
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  young adults. Don't want to go out and explore
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  and do things and instead want to sit around playing video
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  games. But I see that more that
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  behavior of Failure to Launch and just kind of sitting at
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  home, instead of going out with friends and what have you,
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  that's more common among people with anxious parents because
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  they were already, everything is nature and nurture.
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  So they were already had your genetic loading to be anxious,
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  but then they were raised by you.
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  Somebody who's anxious, right? So, That.
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  So they were like hyper attuned to all of the comments that you
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  made about things being, you know, risky and dangerous.
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  So they listen can't blame them, you know?
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  I mean, they listen they know nothing bad's gonna happen when
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  they sit at home playing video games and they haven't been
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  taught to think that that is something bad.
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  Not going out, not going to a party, not driving, not
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  traveling. Not wanting to live on your own.
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  You know, and parents. Get smacked in the face with
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  this. When it's like You know, after
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  an entire childhood of telling a child, be careful, be careful,
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  you can get hurt, you could fail, you could this, you can
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  that. And speaking of failure, you
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  know, there's an interesting book, The Gift of failure that
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  you could read that, I recommend, but it children of
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  anxious parents are frequently, prevented from any kind of
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  failure because of the child gets a bad grade than the
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  Teacher Calls. The, you know, the parent calls
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  the teacher. If the kid is benched at his
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  little soccer game, when he's five years old then, You know,
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  instead of him being upset, which makes the anxious parent.
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  Even more anxious, they go to the coach and they say no put
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  him into the game. So, you know, there's a lot of
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  different ways that anxious parents, stop children, from
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  incrementally, getting exposure to you.
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  No fear and just being like, kind of not in control and ain't
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  like Not anxiety, but like anticipation.
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  You know, there's like all of these different emotions
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  negative emotions that anxious Parents try to prevent their
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  kids from having, like, all of these different warnings before,
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  you know, they have to do anything like that's really
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  prevalent. Now like this whole warning
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  system, here's your 20-minute warning, here's your 10-minute
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  warning, here's your five minute warning.
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  If kids have been always getting a million warnings before they
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  do something. So small as leaving the
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  playground, then it's really hard for them in the moment.
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  Meant to roll with anything that is remotely unpredictable,
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  because their childhood experience has been curated so
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  much, and it's usually parents who have anxiety themselves that
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  engage in multiple Warning Systems because they become very
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  anxious themselves. When the child gets upset.
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  They don't like seeing the child upset.
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  It's the child cries. It's unpredictable.
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  It's loud. They don't know how to stop it.
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  So they kind of get into this anxious Behavior.
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  Savior of trying to keep the child calm at all times, but
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  keeping your child calm at all times.
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  It may be good for you as a parent.
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  That's ideal because they're quiet and tractable, but for the
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  child, think about what they are experiencing they're
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  experiencing an extremely curated overly controlled
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  environment, which does not in any way, replicate what's going
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  to happen in the real world at all, you know?
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  And so then if they are let's say There were seven years old
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  or something. They always get all these
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  warnings about like when things are coming up.
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  But this time they go over to a friend's house and the friend's
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  mother is like well actually we're just not going to do video
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  games. Now, we're going to go outside
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  because you know, let's let's all play basketball.
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  Well the kid who always gets 15 warnings before having to stop
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  their video, game is going to be thrown for a loop and May
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  respond very poorly and may even you know, tantrum or cry or feel
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  dysregulated. Adore something because they
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  feel that this new environment is so unpredictable that could
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  have been obviated had the home environment been even a little
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  bit unpredictable. Life is unpredictable.
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  So there are many ways that when you are overly controlled and
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  anxious, this passes itself onto a child and stops them from
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  experiencing life in all of its you know, messiness and it is no
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  wonder then that Child would choose to remain in the nest and
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  stay home. Instead of going living on your
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  own with living with roommates, going to college doing whatever
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  because it's so unpredictable. When you're dealing with other
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  people who are focused, not solely on, providing you with a
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  common experience, there's a lot of school refusal.
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  Now there's increasing rates of school refusal and you know, I
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  read an article about this and the treatment for school refusal
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  is exactly what I'm saying. Happy.
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  I'm strong boundaries and not allowing the child.
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  Let's say to have this fun day at home when they refused
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  school. So if they refuse School, the
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  article said, I forgot where I read it.
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  Maybe the times was so a lot of parents that kid refuses school
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  but then goes on video games all day.
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  Well, I'm eating that man. Who's not going to refuse
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  school, that and why would the parent do this because they
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  don't want the child to be upset, so ancient, and then, of
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  course, the kid refused to school more and more because
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  they get The video games of this article is saying, know if they
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  won't go to school, then they have to at least do school work
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  all day on the same routine as school.
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  And if they are bored and decided to divide and it's
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  basically like School except there's no friends, then they
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  may choose school again, which is a good point, right?
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  But a lot of people struggle with that, if their entire
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  parenting conception before that was do not make the child upset,
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  you know? And so there's two things you
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  teach your child to fear the world when you Transmit your own
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  fears. And also you teach them to be
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  afraid, not only of the world, but of their own negative
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  emotion, because of a parent is so upset by the child's negative
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  emotion, then the child figures that their negative emotion must
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  just be the worst thing in the world and not bearable, not
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  tolerable. It's kind of like similar.
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  So when anxious parents have a child who can't sleep, for
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  example, like there's child is anxious course, they're anxious,
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  even anxious parent, they're genetically anxious, they can't
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  sleep. There's a myriad approaches when
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  a child can sleep, but the best one is to just be like, oh yeah,
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  sometimes we don't sleep. Gotta stay in your room, though.
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  You know, I gotta sleep family has to sleep, so just stay in
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  your room, you know, I guess you could read or something quiet,
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  but if you should really be, you know, just hanging out and
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  waiting to go to sleep or doing a quiet activity that doesn't
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  disturb anybody, you know. But there are some parents who
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  are like, oh my God, oh my God, we gotta get out the Melatonin.
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  We got to do this. We got to do that and Why it's
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  also the child doesn't experience a negative emotion or
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  negative feeling either anxiety about not being able to sleep in
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  the moment, or tired, the next day.
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  So like, there's a lot of I work with young adults who are like
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  just terrified of being tired, the next day, you know, and this
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  is not, this is so easily reframed, right?
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  Because what if you were, let's say how like up late talking to
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  your boyfriend, or girlfriend, or your your love interest on
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  the phone. But, uh, Get up at like, 8:00
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  a.m. to go to school. You would be so happy to talk to
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  them until 2 a.m. or until 5 a.m., you know, if this was your
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  big Crush. So I mean even just a simple
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  reframe like that can sometimes really change how a person
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  thinks about it. Like wow, if this was a good
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  thing then I wouldn't worry about me being tired.
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  Tomorrow it would be considered an adventure you know.
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  This would be great. I had been talking to my crush
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  all night and now I'm tired at school.
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  Oh well, que sera. But if it's something where
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  Yeah, I think of it as I have insomnia and this is always
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  something that has plagued me and my parents bought me all
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  these melatonin gummies. And all of these, you know, took
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  me to a child therapists like all this stuff just cause I
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  couldn't sleep sometimes. Then they think about it as oh
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  my god, there must have been a real reason for all that
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  hysteria about it, which is that it's literally the worst thing
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  in the world for me to be tired. The next day, which it's not,
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  it's not the worst thing in the world, for the kid to be tired.
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  The next day, there are many, many children.
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  Were tired, you know, and it's not a it's not a, I mean of
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  course like yeah sure you want them to have a full night's
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  sleep but if they miss one. Oh, well like that needs to be
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  kind of the general Mantra. Oh, well, you know, like, it's
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  not that bad things aren't really that bad.
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  And this goes into the kind of over validation culture where
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  parents are scared. Now to say that something isn't
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  that bad? But yet your child is looking to
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  you to tell them to really as a reality check are things that
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  bad and like you ought to say, no, No, you know cuz like
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  nobody's gonna die if your child is tired the next day.
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  So you are not just there to validate your child's emotions.
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  You're there to provide reality testing and to say, most things
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  are not that bad and you are strong and you can power through
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  them. Yes, you are resilient.
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  Yes, you didn't get a lot of sleep, but you'll be fine
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  tomorrow versus, oh my God, I know, it's terrible.
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  You're so anxious man. They already know that, you
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  know, they they know that they're anxious.
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  They're trying to figure out how bad this is.
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  And a lot of parents with the best of intentions if they
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  struggle with their own anxiety, will instead promote an anxious
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  feeling like, oh my God, this is bad.
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  And the kid will be like, oh my God, this is even worse than I
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  thought. Look how upset mom / dad is
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  about this. So, anyway, the the point here,
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  is, if you recognize yourself in this podcast, therapy is very
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  very helpful for anxiety. Anxious people are good therapy
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  students. They like to, you know, do their
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  work and they and and it's very, very responsive to CBT
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  cognitive. - behavioral therapy where you try different ways of
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  thinking about things and different ways of Behaving to
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  test out different less anxious response styles that do a lot
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  better in the daily work of parenting, so that you can
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  ensure that you're not teaching your child.
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  Either to fear the world or to fear their own feelings or to
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  fear their own bodily, Sensations or what have you.
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  And it's probably what you wish would have happened with you as
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  a child, that you would have been in an environment that was
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  less fraught and Tents and like frightened, you know, with
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  parents being frightened of the world.
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  All right, so if this spoke to you, I am glad and hopefully can
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  spur you. I have a therapy practice
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  myself. If you were in any of the states
• 15:48
  that my therapist can work in, that's best life Behavioral
• 15:51
  Health. I have a lot of people who work
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  with anxiety and I will talk to everybody soon.
• 15:56
  Have a great day.