Anxiety is the feeling of worry, nervousness, or fear of perceived threats and stressful situations. These threats or stressors can trigger sweating, fast heartbeat, trembling, shakiness, headaches, and even panic attacks.
Anxiety is a natural response to specific events or perceived threats can also occur without any particular trigger. In some cases, anxiety, however, can become excessive and uncontrollable, significantly interfering with daily life and functioning. It can disrupt a person's ability to study, work, socialize, or perform everyday activities.
Even for adults, managing anxiety can be difficult, but it becomes even more challenging when it involves adolescents and children who are navigating profound physical and emotional transitions. It can be even more challenging for them to cope and manage without help from parents.
So, how can parents help? Let's find out.
Parenting Adolescents: Strategies for Navigating Anxiety Together:
Puberty, evolving peer relationships, exploring identities, increasing academic pressures – adolescents navigate through multiple transitions and changes. This transition period creates an ideal breeding ground for uncertainty and self-doubt that heightens stress levels and exacerbates anxiety.
Adolescents lack the coping skills and experience needed to manage anxiety effectively. They also may struggle to communicate their emotions and issues to seek appropriate support. On top of this, the prevailing stigma around mental health issues may further deter them from opening up about their struggles.
Here's how parents can help adolescents navigate through these challenges and develop the necessary coping skills to manage anxiety effectively:
Listen with an Open Mind:
For a parent, it is essential to see the world like their children do to understand them better. So when they talk or confide in you, listening with an open mind without judgment or jumping in to give advice is essential. This validation of their opinions and feelings helps children feel heard, builds trust, and alleviates feelings of isolation and anxiety. If you ask questions, ensure they are open-ended to help them express themselves fully. This practice helps them explore their thoughts and feelings more deeply, helping them gain insight into their concerns and find solutions on their own.
Listening with an open mind creates a safe and supportive environment where children feel comfortable expressing themselves. This can reduce anxiety as children feel more understood, supported, and capable of managing their emotions.
Promote Healthy Sleep Hygiene:
The relationship between unhealthy sleep hygiene and anxiety, problems have long been studied, and confirmed. Unhealthy sleep habits disrupt the brain's emotional regulation systems, making it harder to manage anxiety triggers. Furthermore, lack of healthy sleep increases stress hormones like cortisol, which can amplify anxiety symptoms. Unregulated social media or mobile usage robs children of sleep, triggering unhealthy sleep routines that further reduce their ability to combat stressors. Establishing a consistent sleep schedule can significantly help manage their anxiety levels.
Parents can achieve this by setting a consistent bedtime and wake-up time, limiting overall screen time, cutting down stimulating activities before bed, and creating a sleep-conducive environment. However, the most critical aspect of building a sleep routine is to involve the children in creating the routine. By letting them choose their bedtime routine and sleep environment, you can make it comfortable and consistent, increasing their buy-in.
Keep Calm at Home with Relaxation & Meditation Techniques:
When anxiety sets in, children often find their minds cluttered with worrying thoughts, making it challenging for them to concentrate on schoolwork and engage in social activities. In severe cases, they can even trigger sleep disturbances, headaches, and reduced self-esteem, leading to strained relationships and social withdrawal.
Mindfulness and meditation help individuals step back from their worries, giving them a clearer view of their thoughts instead of getting all tangled up. By creating a distance between the troublesome thoughts, meditation enables clarity while relaxing the body to ease the stress that comes with anxiety.
Anxiety can lead to shallow and fast breathing, which can amplify the anxiety further. Conversely, deep belly breathing promotes relaxation, easing stress responses by slowing heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and relieving muscle tension.
By implementing a few deep breathing and meditation exercises with your child, you can go a long way in helping them relax, gain clarity, and cope with stress. It is essential not to make this quiet time an assignment. Consistently practicing and adhering to the quiet time with your child is vital—practicing together is the key.
Seek Qualified Help: Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services to the Rescue
We've discussed promoting a healthy and supportive environment at home, enabling a healthy sleep routine for physical relaxation, and teaching meditation and deep breathing techniques for mental relaxation. We've covered the inner and outer aspects of what a parent can do. However, sometimes, these measures may not be enough to solve the anxiety challenges faced by the child.
Anxiety disorders can significantly impact an adolescent's life, interfering with school, relationships, and social activities. However, the good news is they are treatable with the right help.
Adolescent anxiety treatment in Boston: You are neither alone nor without help
Seeking help does not indicate failure. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness among adolescents, affecting approximately 1 in every three adolescents. Every year, millions of adolescents around the world seek help and successfully overcome their anxiety.
The statistics indicate that you are not alone and there are better and more effective options available that can work for your child.
If you feel that your child's anxiety has become a barrier to their success, we advise you to talk to a school counselor or a child or adult psychiatrist for counseling and treatment options.
At Psych Boston, our team of child and adolescent psychiatrists provides the most comprehensive treatment and care available for anxiety disorders. We carefully review neuropsychological evaluations and collect information from various sources, including teachers, therapists, and social workers. Understanding aspects such as upbringing, parenting styles, exposure to bullying, trauma, and other relevant factors helps us craft a tailored treatment approach for anxiety disorders in children.
Learn more about our approach here: https://www.psychboston.com/children-adolescents
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