BY KELLY HAGEN
Q. I struggle with anxiety and am starting to see signs that my children are dealing with the same issues as I am. How can I help them when I can’t help myself?
A. Heavy.
This is an issue that I deal with, personally, as do a whole lot of us. I recently watched a Netflix documentary about our brains, “The Mind, Explained,” that said possibly one in three Americans suffers from an anxiety disorder. Look around you right now. It’s incredibly likely that someone who is dealing with anxiety is in the room with you. If you don’t see anyone else in the room with you, trust me, they’re there. Hiding behind the curtains, probably.
And now you’re the one with anxiety. Sorry.
That’s OK. Everyone feels anxiety; it’s perfectly natural. Animals feel anxiety. This is a part of their survival instinct. When an animal in the wild sees a predator, its body and mind tenses up and prepares to either fight or flee. Either response requires an adrenaline rush, increased heartrate and erratic thought patterns. They’re on edge, and rightly so because their life is on the line.
Humans experience a similar reaction in their minds over things like bills that need to be paid, phone calls that need to be made, going out into social situations, learning to swim, etc., etc., etc.
Personally, I have dealt with social anxiety my entire adult life. I put an unduly amount of weight into what others think of me, to the point that, whenever I’m out in public, my brain is engrossed with an obsession with what strangers are thinking about me.
Very little of it is conscious. I know full well that other people aren’t thinking about me or what I look like. They’re thinking about themselves or what they look like. The same way I consciously know that commercial airplanes barely ever crash, and turbulence does not cause a plane to plummet from the sky, but my subconscious still panics every time we experience any little bump in the air.
Any other mode of travel, if the entire vehicle starts shaking, everyone loses their minds. It happens 30,000 feet in the air, though, and no one even looks up from their Kindles. That’s so weird to me.
And I can see these same behaviors in my kids. I know their fears, too, are largely subconscious. But they don’t know what a subconscious is. I barely do, and I’m 41.
So, I can preach logic to them, over and over, that the other kids aren’t judging them, the worst they can say is, “No, I’m too busy to play with you. Try again later.”
Yes, I know kids can be cruel and say way worse things than that. But bear with me, here. I’m trying to reach their psyche they don’t even know they have.
You want my honest advice? Do as I have done. Seek help. For you, first. That’s going to sound selfish to us dwellers of These Great Plains, because we don’t want to trouble anyone else with our own problems. But just like how you need to secure the oxygen mask over your own mouth before helping others around you during a plane crash (I think about airplanes a lot, sorry), you’re not much help to others if you’re passed out and unconscious.
Seek help. Talk to someone, a loved one or a professional counselor or therapist. It’s actually a sign of strength to ask for help, not of weakness. Your kids are very intuitive, and if you are projecting anxiety, they’re going to feel insecure, too. When you’re calm and collected, they sense that, too. And they learn how to deal with life’s anxieties the same way that mom and dad do.
I’m not a trained professional, to be clear. So, reading this column doesn’t count as seeking help. Go talk to someone, then talk to your kids, and we’ll all get through this together.
Kelly Hagen is a writer and communications professional. He lives in Bismarck, ND, with his wife, Annette, and their two young children. If you have a question you’d like to Ask A Dad, send an e-mail to kelly.hagen@gmail.com.
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