Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Your Anxiety Hurts Your Kids

Transcript

When Your Anxiety Hurts Your Kids · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

0:05
Hello, and welcome to the dr. Psych mom show today.
0:10
I am going to be talking about parental anxiety and how it
0:14
impacts children parents anxiety is a big topic of mine because I
0:22
was raised in a very anxious home and it made me a very
0:27
anxious child. So, when I work with people with
0:31
adults who are very anxious, I know, Innately what that is like
0:36
that experience for their children and it led to a lot of
0:41
anxiety issues and me as a child, most of which were able
0:45
to be hammered out when I was an adult.
0:47
And I very much didn't want to be anxious and I tried to go the
0:52
opposite and do many things that I had been raised to think.
0:56
We're very dangerous and anxiety is all different types, General,
1:02
Social could And be phobias. It can be about health.
1:08
They're all types of anxiety. Now, by the way, just because I
1:14
conquered most of my anxiety does not mean that that you can
1:22
just not worry about the long-term impact of your
1:25
anxiety. While your kid is Young, because
1:28
eventually it's easy for them to just get rid of it.
1:31
No biggie, that's like completely, not true for a
1:36
variety of reasons. I was in a unique situation.
1:38
First of all, I mean, I was studying to become a
1:40
psychologist. So I mean, you don't really need
1:43
your kid to go become a psychologist to fix their own
1:48
childhood shit. I mean, most of us psychologists
1:52
do have quite a lot of childhood issues that made us interested
1:55
in the field but that is not what any of us are going for as
1:59
parents, right? Have your kids have to pick
2:01
their career subconsciously but honestly fairly consciously
2:05
based on their own crap but also Home was so crazy.
2:11
All together that it was very obvious to me to try to reject
2:17
and counter a lot of the narratives that I received at
2:21
home including anxiety. Now many people are not in this
2:27
situation. So if, for example, let's say
2:29
you're an anxious woman, you, and your husband seemed pretty
2:32
normal otherwise, you're pretty happy except that you have
2:36
pretty bad anxiety, which you? And kind of hasn't there except
2:42
you secretly listen to podcasts like this, because you kind of
2:45
do know, it's there which Bravo for you for understanding on
2:48
some level, that it's something to work on.
2:51
So, but let's say that you guys are pretty normal, you know,
2:54
white picket fence, kind of family.
2:56
Well, then your kid doesn't think that you're so crazy that
2:59
he should interrogate. All of your teachings, your kid
3:03
actually learns that your anxiety is normal.
3:06
And the correct way to view the world because otherwise you guys
3:09
are pretty. In the world.
3:11
So I didn't think that. So I interrogated every which
3:15
way that I was raised and that helped me in the long run
3:19
conquer the anxiety but you know it's also not a goal of yours to
3:23
have a house. That's so insane.
3:25
That your child doesn't trust anything that you say that is
3:28
not like the supposed to be the end point for healthy parenting.
3:32
So if you have anxiety and your child really kind of respect and
3:36
trust you in general, they are going to learn, you're anxious.
3:40
Worldview and take it as truth, and it will be much harder for
3:44
them as adults to even know that it's an anxious worldview at
3:48
all. So, let me give you some
3:51
examples. The overarching theme of anxious
3:55
parents when they're talking to their kids, is that the world is
3:57
a dangerous place filled with people who you can trust.
4:01
Now obviously there's a spectrum with everything so some people
4:05
will outright say that and some people will just kind of like
4:09
make little comments. It's, you know.
4:11
Oh, was that really safe? Oh, when you went over there and
4:15
you did that was, you know, did that parent, watch you enough or
4:19
make little comments about how, you know, dangerous or unhealthy
4:26
or unsafe or risky? Various things are out in the
4:29
world. I mean, you can easily inculcate
4:33
an anxiety disorder in your child.
4:35
Just with these little comments, there's a great study so there
4:39
was a Like a glass floor and babies were encouraged to crawl
4:45
across it and they could see down in the lab through the
4:50
floor. So I mean, a baby doesn't have a
4:52
lot of experience with optical illusions.
4:55
It looks like they're going to crawl out in the air.
4:57
And if the parent was on the other side of the floor,
5:00
encouraging them happily and clapping come c'mere.
5:04
The kids went fine, they crawled right across even though to
5:08
them, who's like, Strange scenario where they felt like
5:13
they were in the middle of the air but when parents acted
5:16
anxious because experimenters told them to then the babies
5:20
wouldn't go. So here's a situation that was
5:23
totally safe and you can see that babies changed how they
5:27
acted based upon what the parent acted like.
5:30
So this is the same thing. I see a lot of parents who now
5:33
have children who will not leave the nest or who will not engage
5:38
in developmentally appropriate milestone.
5:40
Owns such as wanting to drive or wanting to live on their own,
5:44
wanting to get a job wanting to engage with the opposite or same
5:48
gender sexually or romantically and they don't like this child's
5:54
anxiety anymore, but just a couple of years ago when the
5:58
child was a teenager and certainly for the childhood
6:00
before that they were talking about the frequency of car
6:04
accidents. They were talking about the
6:07
frequency of of bad things. Happening in the world where you
6:11
can't trust people that you date or that you sleep with or that
6:15
you work for or whatever else. So they were acting as though,
6:20
they could protect the child, this is, this is an illusion.
6:24
This is an anxious parents. Favorite illusion is through
6:27
enough research and prep work, you can protect your child from
6:31
anything bad happening to them. So if you're telling your child
6:35
up to like age, 18, implicitly and explicitly that, they just
6:39
have to do it, you'll Oh them and then they'll be fine and
6:41
then you expect them to be independent adult.
6:44
I mean how's that going to work? They are going to still be using
6:48
you as the Touchstone for everything that is dangerous or
6:51
not. But now in a horrible irony,
6:54
when you encourage them, hey I want you go out.
6:57
Why don't you ask somebody out? Why don't you, you know drive to
7:01
New York with your friends? Why don't you whatever, they
7:04
still remember, all that other stuff?
7:06
They kind of don't know why you're encouraging to them to do
7:09
this anxiety. Provoking stuff now to begin
7:12
with. It's usually because at this
7:14
point, the parents finally recognized the impact of all, of
7:19
this anxiety makes the child not want to live their own life, you
7:23
know, and parents find it very hard in this generation to tell
7:27
the child to go out on their own.
7:29
Instead, they try to gently suggest that maybe
7:33
theoretically, they might want at some point to go out on their
7:36
own, which, you know, is not really a lot of force.
7:41
So the child just kind of sticks around endlessly.
7:45
This is nobody's preferred outcome is to have a child that
7:48
is too scared to engage in the normal life activities of
7:51
adulthood. And to be developmentally akin
7:54
to their peers right? So we're all on the same page
7:57
with that that we want functioning independent adults.
8:01
When our children for that to be the children's end goal is
8:05
functioning independent adult. Well in order to do that we
8:08
can't give them the now. Active that the world is scary,
8:12
that it is overwhelming that it is filled with negative things,
8:15
negative people. I always like to talk about what
8:20
if your child died in a car crash, right, I mean everybody
8:24
knows that's a possibility but you don't stop your kid from
8:27
getting into a car because you know how that would constrict
8:31
and constrain your child's life, right?
8:35
You know that there's a possibility of course of your
8:38
child choking on food. You still feed your child,
8:42
everything doesn't come through a straw, hopefully, right?
8:46
So there are these things that we know that we have to do,
8:50
really everything in life, could potentially go badly.
8:53
But you have to have to have to do them because you want your
8:57
child to be normal. Now being normal by the way some
9:02
people are like oh well watching my child just fit in these
9:05
people remember being a child that's like the whole goal
9:09
that's it. I mean, Our a mammal.
9:11
You want to fit into a group of fellow?
9:13
Mammals of your age. This is true for a, I mean
9:17
watch. What natgeo you know, watch that
9:20
meerkat show everybody wants to fit in to be part of a group.
9:24
If you're the only freak that has to take the bus because your
9:28
parents are scared to let you get into a car, you're not going
9:31
to have a really awesome social life, you know, because you're
9:35
not able to do any of the things that the other kids can do,
9:38
you're going to feel terribly embarrassed and ashamed.
9:40
Shape, but it's really no different.
9:42
If for example, everybody wants to go to a party but you are too
9:48
anxious to allow your child to attend this party as a teenager
9:51
because there might be drinking or there might be something
9:54
else. Now of course people understand
9:58
that if their child is begging to go to something, they don't
10:03
let their child go to it that that may lead to a breach and
10:06
their relationship. They may think this is important
10:08
or not based on how anxious they Our.
10:10
But what about the situation where we try increasingly?
10:14
See now where the parents had inculcated the child in this
10:21
belief system, that things are so anxious.
10:23
That the child doesn't even ask to go.
10:25
So I mean then is this really a victory?
10:28
This is pretty bad. So the child is innately does
10:31
not want to go to the party, or they don't want to get it, learn
10:36
to drive, or they don't want to Really I mean, I could tell you
10:42
stories of so many things that kids are scared to do socially
10:46
generally because it will like socializing and covid.
10:51
So there's kids that are too scared to socialize even outside
10:54
because they got so scared from all the crazy rhetoric.
10:58
They were hearing at home from anxious parents, that covid made
11:01
even more anxious. So then they won't do a play
11:04
date at the park when they need to do a play date at the park
11:07
because that's a normal social interaction and They get too
11:10
anxious about it and they get too anxious about where their
11:13
mask is and how close they are. And all of those things that
11:16
really a child does not need to be deeply worrying about.
11:20
Okay, so that would be bad for the child's later development
11:25
later, health anxiety, Etc. Social anxiety.
11:28
Parents can pass that on by constantly worrying about what
11:31
other people think by seeming to be consumed with not coming off
11:36
the wrong way. Gee, I wonder what they thought
11:38
about us or the house is, is a mess.
11:41
They must have thought were disgusting, or I felt so awkward
11:45
because we didn't clean up first.
11:47
And what are they thinking about us?
11:49
Those sorts of Of comments can make a child think, boy,
11:52
everybody is out to judge us and by the way, also people who
11:56
think everybody's out to judge, them tend to be very judgmental
12:00
people, so they're just projecting so a lot of anxious
12:02
people. They are also very judgmental.
12:05
So, anxiety is a rigid framework of viewing the world and so is
12:10
being judgmental. So, a lot of people who will
12:12
say, oh my God, I'm so anxious about what those people thought
12:15
about our house will also judge another person's house for being
12:18
very dirty. So you know, It's when you feel
12:23
that the world is a dangerous place and that people aren't
12:26
really very nice and well, intention, you're always trying
12:29
to get out ahead of that and frequently the way to do that is
12:34
by being nasty about other people.
12:36
You may not think that you're being rude, but little comments
12:40
here and there are rude. Wow, did that person really
12:43
think that XYZ was a good idea? Huh.
12:46
I would never do x y z. That is the refrain of the
12:50
ridge. Did minded person.
12:51
I would never do and then insert something that they can't know
12:55
if they would ever do, because they never been that person and
12:58
that situation that did it. So, this is Judge mental illness
13:02
and parents can definitely teach kids to be super close by did
13:05
and judgmental, by the way, I've seen this hit really come full
13:10
circle by people in the ass, when then they are older.
13:14
The child is out of the house. Thankfully, these children did
13:17
get out of the house, they are married.
13:19
They have their own kids. They're massively, judgmental
13:22
and rigid about what the parents are allowed to do, or not do
13:25
with it because they learn this judgmental-ness and rigidity.
13:28
I'd hope so. They're just paying it forward,
13:31
not maliciously, but because they genuinely see the world
13:34
very black-and-white anxiety, leads to very black-and-white
13:39
irrational thinking. So, for example, people that are
13:43
anxious will think my partner is cheating on me, you know, and
13:47
there's no evidence, there's like no evidence, the partner
13:49
never cheated on them, They never cheated on anybody, the
13:52
partner frequently as a tracking device on their phone, but the
13:55
anxiety will not be rational and frequently will lead to the
13:59
dissolution of or a major stressor on the relationship.
14:02
When the person is sick of being told that they're cheating when
14:05
they're not. So that's like one example of
14:07
irrational anxiety. Another example is this?
14:12
This health-related safety-related anxiety.
14:15
So if you think that every time you go to the play place, Your
14:20
kid gets sick and then you stopped going to the play place.
14:24
That's where you're gonna go next.
14:26
Then the pool starts to be not a problem.
14:28
Then this starts to be a problem then having people over starts
14:31
to be problem. We see how this turns into some
14:34
very black and white kind of the only safe place is our home in
14:38
school. Sometimes.
14:39
People even get rid of school, you know?
14:41
I mean it anxiety, snowballs it's irrational and it's very
14:45
black and white and it only hurts children, there are no.
14:50
Downsize, nobody ever said to me in therapy, boy.
14:54
My parents were too positive. They really gave people too much
14:57
of a benefit of the doubt and that really fuck with my head.
15:00
And now I need massive therapy. No, nobody's ever said that to
15:03
me. I don't even see those people in
15:06
therapy because they are inoculated against it by this
15:09
positive mindset. So if you want to really think
15:13
deeply about how much positivity you show your kids, you know,
15:17
you may have a difficult For flexion ahead of you, if you're
15:22
an anxious person, there may be very few things that you say
15:26
that indicate. Trust in the world, the world is
15:29
good. Good things will happen, you
15:32
know. It may be more of protect your
15:34
good. You may tell your kid you're
15:35
good. So protect yourself and kind of
15:39
be wary of other people. Now, a lot of people by the way
15:43
who had very different upbringings than their children,
15:46
or who had Parents with very different upbringings are really
15:49
just subconsciously. Leslie teaching the child things
15:51
from their own childhood or even their parents childhood that are
15:55
no longer relevant. So if your parents were very
15:57
poor immigrants to this country and they lived in a crime-ridden
16:01
area and they got taken advantage of a lot because they
16:05
were in a different generation. They didn't know the language or
16:08
if this was your grandparents story then yeah they are
16:10
teaching you as well as they can to like not.
16:14
Take a Wooden Nickel you know and to watch your ass and people
16:17
are out to get you there that was their Reality.
16:21
It's like Holocaust Survivors. You know will teach their
16:24
children to be very anxious about a lot of things.
16:29
I mean no, shit, look what happened.
16:31
But then the problem comes when this generation, just holy
16:35
swallows their parents experience and teaching without
16:39
reflecting on whether their children.
16:42
Now have the same experience which they often are ensconced
16:46
in a Tony suburb and have really no.
16:50
Biases toward them from anyone. They go to a great school,
16:53
everybody seems friendly. There's like neighborhood
16:57
Halloween parades and stuff. And really nobody is out to get
17:01
you in any sort of visceral way, that was relevant for either
17:06
your parents or you as a child. So you have to understand the
17:11
differences and the fact that what you are teaching your child
17:15
may be completely irrelevant, it would be the same as teaching
17:20
them, To be prejudiced against another race because that's what
17:24
you grew up thinking. Yeah, you grew up thinking that
17:27
because the world wasn't where it is.
17:29
Now in terms of understanding how bad that is and how
17:33
backwards that is. So you are then passing on an
17:38
outdated, harmful belief system, not intentionally.
17:44
But I mean, everybody grew up hearing racial and gender.
17:50
He slurs right? But you don't tell your kids to
17:53
do that. Now yet you still may be say,
17:56
don't trust anyone when that is a relic of how you or even your
18:00
parents grew up, that is no longer relevant to your child.
18:04
And also we now know the psychological effect of doing
18:08
that and we know that they're bad, your parents didn't know
18:11
that saying, don't trust anyone would fuck with your head
18:14
forever now. Even if you didn't know it
18:17
before this minute, I'm telling you that you tel.
18:20
Telling that to your kid is going to increase their risk of
18:23
an anxiety disorder and of rigid black and white Thinking by like
18:27
a million percent. So what do you do with this
18:32
information? You might ask.
18:35
Well, if you recognize, this - istic worldview, kind of a
18:40
slightly paranoid worldview where, anything bad could happen
18:45
at any time. It is likely that you were
18:47
raised with this world view. Yourself and therapy can really
18:51
help you understand what went on in your own upbringing, how your
18:56
parents worldview shaped yours and what is no.
19:00
No longer useful and is in fact, unhealthy and it's being passed
19:04
on to your own children. So if you are always told, don't
19:08
climb, don't climb high, you're going to fall and then you find
19:11
yourself always telling your kids, be careful, be careful and
19:15
you are seeing that they do less things than other kids.
19:20
Well then that's something to explore.
19:22
You're noticing it. It's bad.
19:23
It is then your obligation to try to remedy it and fix it.
19:27
You want your child to live a full?
19:30
Happy life. There's really no point to live
19:33
a life in a bubble. Other people that your child
19:36
sees will feel not constricted, feel free, they run around, they
19:41
talk to other people, they assume things are going to go.
19:44
Well, this is the kind of childhood that you want for your
19:47
kids. Now, this doesn't mean of course
19:50
that you can never tell them, you know, put on your helmet,
19:55
but it does mean that you don't say, if you don't put on your
19:58
helmet, then a cars. Is going to hit you and then
20:01
you're going to die or you were going to be paralyzed.
20:04
So you don't have to say that kids pick things up from the
20:07
environment. They know if a car hits, you,
20:09
you die. You don't have to be the one to
20:11
perseverate on that. Another thing that, by the way,
20:13
anxious parents do is say things multiple times that they only
20:17
have to say once. So, yes, once you would say to
20:20
your child, when they're like, you know, three don't run into
20:25
the street, you could get hit by a car.
20:27
All right. Well, they remember, you know, I
20:30
mean like they may still try to run into the street because they
20:33
haven't developed Milan ization of their neurons.
20:36
Yet they can't control themselves but they remember
20:39
that. You said that they you get hit
20:40
by a car. It's kind of hard to forget same
20:43
with your kid if you say you got to study for tests.
20:46
Oh cool. They remember.
20:48
That's a fact. Are they going to decide to do
20:50
it? You know, it's based on the kid,
20:53
but do they know that that is something they're supposed to do
20:55
is study for tests? Yes, you don't have to keep on
20:57
hammering it home and hammering it home.
21:00
Whoa, once is enough. So let other people kind of
21:06
model. This sort of behavior that are
21:08
less anxious. So, if you have less anxious
21:10
really, hopefully not anxious friends or family, although your
21:15
family's probably anxious. If you're anxious and forget
21:17
them friends. You'll hear that, they don't
21:21
like if you listen, you actually observe them talking to their
21:24
kids, don't say stuff over and over and over.
21:28
They say it one time or They don't say it because they've
21:31
said at a different time that you weren't around for now.
21:33
They don't say it anymore and things still go fine.
21:36
So people don't need repeated, you know, reminders of things.
21:41
This is an anxious person thing, the repeated reminders, of how
21:45
to be safe and what to do, right and how to be good.
21:49
Okay, so that's another thing. So now what you ought to do, if
21:52
this podcast, resonates with you, as go into treatment for
21:55
your anxiety, anxiety is super responsive to therapy to
21:59
cognitive. General techniques of reframing
22:02
and of exposure. Exposure therapy is sitting with
22:06
your anxious thoughts until they Peak and they decrease.
22:10
I have a lot that I write about this.
22:12
I can link you to it in the comments about the effectiveness
22:14
of exposure for anxiety. So you, you can go to a
22:19
therapist, you can work on your anxiety.
22:21
And in that case, your kid, probably will not even need
22:24
their own therapist for anxiety. Later on everything is nature
22:28
and nurture my It's study that I talk about all the time.
22:32
They had these monkeys that were created to be anxious because
22:36
they were bred to to you know, to anxious monkeys have a baby
22:39
monkey, guess what? It's going to be anxious.
22:41
So then they adopted them away to different mother monkeys.
22:44
Some of them were very anxious, some were not anxious, just kind
22:49
of neutral and some are like really not anxious like super
22:53
laid back. Well, the baby monkeys that were
22:56
genetically wired to be anxious were anxious.
22:58
Obviously, when they were raised, And by an anxious mother
23:02
monkey, then also when they were raised by one that just was you
23:05
know average they were still anxious because of their
23:08
genetics but then when they were raised by his super laid back
23:11
hyper you know nurturing not anxious mother monkey, they were
23:18
not anxious. They were indistinguishable from
23:20
controls so it can be done. You can get to be so laid back
23:27
that you are no longer. Kind of activate, your child's
23:32
genes for anxiety. People have genes but they can
23:35
be expressed or not expressed based on their environment, your
23:38
job. If you're an anxious person,
23:40
you've already given your child, some genes for anxiety.
23:43
Now, you got to overcompensate by really addressing your
23:47
anxiety such that you do not come off anxious anymore.
23:50
That is the best thing you can do in terms of preventing your
23:54
child from thinking that the world is a dangerous - place in
23:58
which they have to constantly be on guard.
24:00
Guard, which is a real shit way to live.
24:02
It is really really not what they deserve, wasn't what you
24:05
deserved and moving forward. Not only would you address your
24:09
anxiety for your child but for yourself, you do not deserve to
24:13
have a knot in the pit of your stomach all the time.
24:16
About what you need to do, what you did in, do what you forgot
24:18
to do, what all the potential negative ramifications are of
24:21
what you did do, you know, this is not a way to live, there are
24:25
other ways and I will link you to a post.
24:27
I rode also called what does it feel like to cure your Anxiety.
24:31
So, I hope you enjoyed this podcast and found it useful, and
24:36
please keep listening, and subscribe and I will talk to you
24:39
guys soon. Have a good day.