Most of us feel like we are not “enough” some of the time, but for some, it is a thought that consumes our life and our world. Does your child, teen or young adult think they are not enough? Do you?
Sometimes the anticipation of doing something can create even more anxiety than the event itself. Many of our anxious kids have anticipatory anxiety. Anticipatory anxiety can immobilize our kids and create a tsunami of anxious feelings. Unfortunately anticipatory anxiety can grow anxiety to such a height that it becomes insurmountable when the day finally arrives. So how can we take the wind out of anticipatory anxiety’s sails? It is key to learn how to catch those spirals before our kids spin out of control. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I discuss how anticipatory anxiety can show up as well as approaches you can use to reduce its impact on your child’s mental health.
If you have a child with anxiety or OCD they are bombarded daily with horrible, upsetting thoughts. This sea of overwhelming images and ideas can drown kids and pull them into a dark abyss. It can be hard to cope with anxiety or OCD when you are constantly fighting these thoughts.
Kids will often ask what they can do to get some relief from these thoughts, images and ideas. One of the best weapons I have used in my practice is teaching kids to create a “world.”
One of the most common anxiety themes is the fear of choking. Kids with this fear often hyperfocus on what they eat and how they eat. At its worst they can avoid all sorts of foods that they feel are “unsafe.” This can limit their diet and cause nutritional issues. In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore the many ways a choking fear can show up, how the fear grows and strategies to help your child move through the fear.
There are many times when the actual theme of our child’s anxiety or OCD can undermine their ability to get help. How are we supposed to help our kids (or clients/patients) when the very nature of helping is triggering their anxiety or OCD? In this week’s AT Parenting Survival Podcast I explore the most common ways anxiety and OCD themes get in the way of helping and what parents and therapists can do when it happens.
Raising Multiple Kids with Anxiety or OCD It’s hard enough having one child with anxiety or OCD, but what if you have more than one? What if even your partner or you also struggle? It can be daunting to realize you have a packed house full of anxiety or OCD. Trust me, I get it! But even though we can’t control if this happens, we […]
Do You Blame Yourself for Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD? It’s hard not to focus on what we have done or haven’t done to help our child’s anxiety or OCD. It is a slippery slope and many of us fall into the black abyss of self-blame. In this episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast, I talk about why parents shouldn’t blame themselves for their […]
What to Do When Your Partner Triggers your Child’s Anxiety or OCD It can be overwhelming when your partner triggers your child’s anxiety or OCD. In the latest episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about how our partner’s can trigger our kids, why that sometimes happens and most importantly…what to do about it! Click here to listen: Subscribe and Listen Later: […]
This Might be Making Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD Worse None of us want our child’s anxiety or OCD to get any worse than it already is. And yet, we often inadvertently help our kids grow it by feeding into resistance. “What we resist will persist” and that is true for anxiety and OCD as well. In this week’s Youtube video I talk to kids […]
How to Help Teens Overcome a Fear of Driving “I’ll do it tomorrow.” That’s what many of us hear when we are trying to coax our teens to start practicing driving. And who can blame them, even teens without anxiety are scared to drive! But avoidance will only grow the fear over time. In this week’s Youtube video, I talk to teens about their fear […]
The Power of Helping Your Child’s Anxiety by Working on Your Own Anxiety and OCD doesn’t live in a bubble, it lives in our house. As parents we have to walk the walk and talk the talk. But what does that mean? It means tapping into our own fears, regardless of whether we have anxiety or OCD ourselves. It means knowing ourselves and the human […]
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