Living with Anxious Children
The challenges of modern day living and working are many and varied. Most of us are juggling multiple, demanding, roles in our daily lives: mother/daughter, partner/son, employer/aunty. The roles we play are complex and often experienced in conflict with each other. Life can be difficult.
One of the biggest challenges I’ve experienced as a mother/therapist is living with the constant awareness and needs of my children, two of whom suffer from anxiety.
Their anxiety has at times been a constant white noise in my head. A wallpaper that wraps around my life, colouring my view.
It’s also what drives me to be well informed and educated, it provides me with excellent tools in my working life, and brings a very fine point to the types of self-care and modelling that I do as a parent.
In Australia, Beyond Blue reports that half of all lifelong mental health problems begin before the age of 14, and that one in seven young people (aged 4 to 17) experience a mental health condition.
These facts, and while suicide continues to be the biggest killer of young Australians, make me determined to support my children and to show them that in spite of their anxiety, the they can live fully and richly.
This is a constant challenge: how do we foster a fearless desire for a big, whole and rewarding life, and support our children to build the risk muscles that life requires, one day and one experience at a time?
In this I am definitely not alone. In my work as a coach, I meet many professionals who are challenged daily by the anxiety experienced by their children.
Concern for those in our care is not something you can leave at home, but it needs to be tempered, and the dial of our own anxiety turned down, so that we can function productively in our work and in the world.
The impact of a difficult child, or a difficult home circumstance, arises frequently when I work with people in the leadership development space. As a process oriented coach I welcome tackling these difficulties with open arms.
Anxiety is a result of many factors including personal temperament, biological inheritance, modelled behaviour and traumatic life events. Early intervention is most fruitful. Sometimes medication is beneficial and should not be discounted when considering best practice management.
Our rushed, chaotic, information rich lifestyles are certainly part of the issue. Many parents struggle to find ways to cope in a new technological age and to soothe and calm themselves, thereby missing key opportunities to model appropriate behaviours for their children.
But teaching children a capability and a language to deal with their fears and insecurities is important work. It is ongoing work and it is life-changing work.
One of the many behavioural solutions to managing anxiety is to make the effects of anxiety positive, to view the angst as useful and beneficial, as we learn to flex and grow and accommodate our challenges.
Tuning the creative, intentional, mind to a future of possibilities, is at the very heart of coaching, as is drawing on the benefits of our varied life experiences in an integrated way.
As parents, carers and as professionals we need to protect our capacity to focus, to be productive, and to enjoy our capabilities, in spite of our dependants’ difficulties. This capacity can be enhanced by a number of support services including including professional coaching.
If you identify with Clair’s lived experience and views, and would like to work with her in a coaching capacity contact her on clair@clairturner.com.au.