Many of my clients who experience anxiety are parents. And many of those parents feel deeply concerned about passing their anxiety on to their kids. This fear can lead parents to deny, minimize, or try to conceal their anxiety from their children.
No parent wants their child to suffer, so this instinct is completely understandable to me. However, I think we actually do children a disservice when we try to pretend like our anxiety doesn’t exist. Not acknowledging it rarely means that our kids don’t feel it in the air, and it means we lose the opportunity to model healthy ways of being human for them.
The Benefits of Letting Your Kids See Your Anxiety
When we show our kids our full selves, anxiety included, it can help them:
Cultivate self-trust. Children are expert readers of their parents' emotional states and can almost always sense when something is off. If you tell your kids that you are good and everything is fine when their bodies are telling them otherwise, what they learn is that their perceptions of the world around them are faulty or inaccurate. Conversely, if you are honest with your children in age-appropriate ways, they learn that their instincts are trustworthy and merit listening to.
Gain realistic expectations around emotions. No human will be happy all the time. When we are candid with our children about our own big or hard feelings, it normalizes experiencing emotions of all varieties. Showing kids that all feelings are okay will help them accept, like, and validate themselves not only when things are good but also when they are hard.
Learn healthy ways of coping with difficult emotions. Emotional regulation is a skill, and it is a gift to children to teach them that skill. Letting kids see our anxiety also gives us the chance to show them what it can look like to respond to anxiety in effective ways.
How to Be Authentic Without Scaring Your Kids
I’m not suggesting that we have no boundaries whatsoever between our emotions and our children. If your anxiety is very high or you feel panicky, it’s a good idea to take space to calm down. Seeing a parent in an acute state of overwhelm can make a child feel unsafe.
It is also not appropriate to use your child as a support system for your anxiety. Speaking in detail about what is making you anxious or looking to your child for reassurance or comfort will be unsettling for them and can create an unhealthy sense of responsibility within your child for your wellbeing.
So how do you be real in child-appropriate ways? Explain to them what anxiety is in simple terms, like “anxious is when your brain thinks of bad things that could happen” or “anxious is when your body feels tight and scared.” For older kids, you can talk about how anxiety is like a danger detector that alerts us to something bad that is happening or could happen so that our bodies prepare to protect us. Explain that sometimes the danger detector is too sensitive and thinks that you’re not okay even when you are.
Be honest with your child if they notice something is off and ask you what’s wrong. Tell them that they are right to notice that you’re not totally yourself at that moment. Let them know that you are feeling anxious and consider describing some of what the experience of anxiety is like for you. Examples could include:
My brain is moving really fast
My tummy feels funny
I have lot of worry thoughts right now
My body feels jittery
My chest feels heavy and tight
Model empowering self-talk and healthy coping skills. You can say things like, “I’m reminding myself that I’m safe, that right now everything is okay, that I can get through hard feelings, that this will pass.” Demonstrate calming strategies like taking slow, deep breaths, stretching or wiggling your body, taking a drink of water, naming things you see around you, or going outside to feel the sun on your skin. If you participate in anxiety therapy, tell your kids that too to normalize asking for and receiving help.
Be Kind to Yourself
This isn’t easy to do. Many of us aren’t used to talking about our feelings openly. Further, for a lot of parents, it brings up guilt and shame to own their anxiety knowing there’s a chance that their kids might run anxious too. You are doing brave and cycle-breaking work. And if you need support in this work, I’m here to help.
Please note: This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a licensed mental health provider or other healthcare professional for guidance related to your specific mental health or medical concerns.
