After an episode of overwhelming anxiety or worry, here are some things you can try to connect with your child and allow them the space to talk about their worries with you, in order that they feel heard, not judged and are able to connect with you about their fears. Parents who are able to emotion coach their children through worrying times, are able to empathise with their child or teenager and therefore set the foundations of being able to move forward with problem solving.
Remember when your child is emotionally overwhelmed, angry, acting out or withdrawing from you, empathise rather than discipline them. When they’ve calmed down and are ready to connect again – these strategies are proven to help:
Empathise firstly – try in your own words phrases such as ‘I know how I feel when I’m anxious or worried about things, but I’d really like to understand what if feels like for you, when you’re worried? Can you teach me?’
Empower them – let them know they’re the experts of their anxiety. At the heart of emotional intelligence is being able to accurately identify a feeling when it happens. The more children are able to verbalise their emotions, the more capacity they have to identify emotions and act accordingly to resolve overwhelming ones.
Connect – You don’t have to do this by yourself. Is there something I can do to help you feel less alone? Or if you find it hard to ask for solutions right now, lets think about, ‘If you saw someone going through what you go through, what would you say to support them?’ This invites a different perspective and can give you some insight into what they need to hear when they are going through it themselves.
Future thinking. For older children you can pose the question – ‘What if you could do anything in the world when you feel like this to feel better? What would it be?’
Be available and mean it! ‘I’m here to listen to you if you like to talk about it? There’s absolutely nothing you can say that would be the wrong thing.’ Don’t push children to open up, your offer to talk with them may be taken up later that day, or week. The point is to let them know you’re available, or if you’re not the right person they’d like to talk to, is there another adult who is? Extended family, teachers, coaches, family friends etc. Research has shown that empathic parents raise empathetic children.
Space – Give them plenty of space to talk about what’s happening, but don’t try to change it or fix it at that point. Even with younger children, who may have irrational fears such as monsters in their room or the house crashing down in a storm, need to feel that their emotions are not dismissed by you. To them their fears are very real. The more you can validate what they’re feeling, and give them permission to feel it, the more they can move past it and experiment with ways to deal with it.
Psycho-education. Most children and teens are taught ways to deal with anxiety but not why they work. They may be taught mindfulness, or use of breath but not the positive impact that has on their bodies and therefore the lessening of any physiological impacts of anxiety. They need to know that.. ‘Brains change. At the moment, your brain is on full alert, we need to teach it how to switch down and calm down and there are ways to do this. Every time you breathe through your anxious feeling, you’re helping to change and strengthen your brain. It’s like a muscle, the more you flex and strengthen it, the better you’ll get at managing overwhelming emotions when they happen.
Right brain and left brain lessons – Imagine that in your brain are two important parts – a ‘feelings’ part that feels everything that happens to you and that means you’ll feel emotions in your body, and a ‘thinking’ part that thinks about everything that happens to you and helps you decide how to behave. When we are overwhelmed by emotions, our right brain takes over, making it very hard for us to think or use words. Often parents, friends or teachers want answers at that point, but that’s often too hard for that person to rationalise or talk about what’s happening/happened to them. So we need to bring the left brain, the thinking brain back “online” and we do this by first calming the right hand side of the brain. We do this through breathing exercises, relaxation techniques, things such as listening to music, going for a run, patting a pet, having a drink we like or just sitting with someone for connection and support. Then we can bring the left brain into the picture and look at the events that led up to the worry, anger etc and work through ways to deal with these strong emotions next time they appear. Dan Siegel, the neuroscientist calls this “name it to tame it”. Name the emotion, to tame the emotion. Parents can use emotion coaching techniques to allow their child/teen to talk or start to open up, and individuals can use creative therapy, narrative therapy to talk about their emotions with some responding well to cognitive behavioural therapy programs which allow them to challenge old patterns of thinking and practice new ways.