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 […]
Helping Anxious Kids Through the Summer Summer is supposed to be relaxing and fun. But anxiety and OCD do not take a break just because it’s summer. In this episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about ways to set up routine and structure to help reduce anxiety. I also talk about other possible struggles and how to deal with them as we […]
When You Hit Compassion Fatigue with Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD None of us signed up to raise a child with anxiety or OCD. It wasn’t what we dreamed of when we poured over all the pregnancy and parenting books. And yet, here we all are, trying to not only survive, but thrive with our kids and their struggles. What happens when compassion runs dry? […]
How to Help When Anxiety Teams Up with Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) Often kids will talk about FOMO, the fear of missing out. It is usually a casual term that means you worry you might be missing out on something good. Unfortunately anxiety can glum onto this and make FOMO a truly debilitating struggle. In this week’s Youtube video, I talk to kids and […]
How Understanding Anxiety & OCD Themes Can Help Your Child Anxiety and OCD come in many flavors. Often we even name these flavors with various titles like symmetry OCD, Harm OCD, Separation Anxiety, Emetophobia etc. Does it really matter what theme of anxiety or OCD my child has? Yes and no. There are pitfalls to wearing blinders and only focusing on your child’s anxiety or […]
How Avoidance Grows Our child’s Anxiety or OCD Most parents don’t see avoidance as an integral part of their child’s anxiety or OCD. They often don’t realize that avoidance is one of the fastest ways to grow anxiety. It is also one of the most common types of compulsions in OCD. In this week’s Youtube video for kids and teens, I discuss how avoidance grows […]
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