Understanding anxiety (so you don’t make it worse)
Anxiety. Everybody's talking about it. We hear "top tips" for dealing with it. We try to help kids regulate. We get them to take a deep breath. We reassure them there's no such thing as the monsters they think are under the bed. We teach them when they're giving a school presentation to look at the audience and envision everyone in their underwear. Like everything else, we have all these strategies and "best practice," but are they actually helpful? Not always. I want to give you some new ways to think about anxiety, some behaviours that can secretly be expressing anxiety, and some reasons all the “top tips” could actually make things worse for some kids. Then in my next post, we'll talk about some strategies that might better fit what's happening for your child.
When anxiety wears a mask
Here is the first important thing to know: anxiety doesn't always look like a worried face and nervous fidgeting. It shows up in all kinds of surprising and frustrating ways:
Anger That sudden rage explosion when you ask your child to put on their shoes? Could be anxiety in disguise. Some kids are primed to go straight to their "fight" reflex when they feel threatened. See also: rudeness, aggression, and mean words.
Controlling behavior When your child is inflexible, insists on having things just so, needs to know exactly what's happening next, or melts down when plans change—that intense need for control is often anxiety, trying to find some foothold in an uncertain world. See also: bossiness, "he just wants his own way," and the need to wear the same outfit or have everyone in the same seats every day.
Perfectionism Sometimes anxiety wears a mask of perfect behavior. The reasoning: "If I'm perfect, nobody can be mad at me" or "If I do everything exactly right, nothing bad can happen." It's a way of dealing with social anxiety or making a bargain with fate. Sometimes, this turns into an inability to get started for fear of failure or what seems like over-reactive frustration when they make mistakes. Sometimes it means constantly being the best behaved, and being utterly unable to fess up when they aren't.
Paralysis Some anxious kids just shut down; they go straight to their "freeze" response. They might get quiet or become incapable of focusing. Sometimes they can't move, can't speak, can't fight back. This could range from inability to start work to failure to react typically in social contexts to situational mutism. They certainly can't talk about it in the moment, so when adults demand words or apologies, kids might seem obstinate or be incapable of explaining themselves.
Regression When your seven-year-old suddenly starts talking like a toddler or needs to be carried everywhere? That might be anxiety saying, "I need more support right now."
Physical ailments Stomachaches, headaches, mysterious pains—these can be genuine physical experiences of anxiety, not "just in their head." It's important to remember that sometimes kids are not "faking it" even though their discomfort has psychosomatic origins.
Repetitive behaviors Tapping, rocking, humming, counting, checking things repeatedly—these might be ways your child is trying to soothe their anxiety or calm their system.
Trying to tamp down or override big feelings Screaming, big movements like running or jumping, self-harm, demanding excessive screen time, even creating drama—these might be attempts to either dull the anxiety or create bigger sensations that drown it out.
Sleep disruptions Both trouble falling asleep and trouble staying asleep—anxiety loves the quiet dark when there's nothing else to distract from worries. And consistently high levels of stress can cause early wakening; kids with high cortisol levels might wake up early and jump out of bed, their bodies already telling them to go, go, go.
The sad thing about many of these expressions of anxiety is that they are counterproductive to kids getting the support they need. A child whose perfectionism means they are terrified of disrupting class may slip under the radar, while a child who goes straight to "fight" when anxious gets yelled at instead of understood.
What kind of anxiety is it?
The important question is: What kind of anxiety is your child experiencing?
When anxiety is definitely the problem, and the child knows it. Sometimes, anxiety is definitely the problem, and we all know it. I give presentations for schools and other organizations. Sometimes, these are big crowds or, gulp, big crowds of teenage camp counselors. It's nerve-wracking. I get anxious. But in this situation, my anxiety is the problem. There's no actual danger. I've given these talks many times and I'm unlikely to get a bad response. The problem is that I'm nervous.
In those situations, all the "best practices" can work well. I take some deep breaths. I ask myself, what's the worst thing that can happen here? I reassure myself I've done this a ton. I calm down, I give my talk, all good.
Maybe your child is headed to a new camp tomorrow, or in five minutes, and they're nervous. That is a great context for those typical strategies for anxiety: breathing, calming activities, reassurance, putting things in perspective.
When anxiety is NOT the main problem. Now, say I was going to give my presentation in a tank of hungry sharks. My anxiety is warranted in this situation; it's protective. The problem is that I am going into this terrifying situation, not that I am worried about it.
If your child gets bullied at school or yelled at by teachers, if the school bus is a sensory nightmare, if every day ends in a meltdown and seclusion or shaming, and they have anxiety about going to school, the anxiety is NOT the main problem. The main problem is that school is legitimately terrible or at least hard for them. I would be anxious to step onto a playground where I knew other kids were going to laugh at me every single day.
Sometimes, the context seems fine to adults, but is legitimately awful for kids. For example, some kids hate the subway. Why? It's just a subway, we say. But, I would be anxious to ride the subway if the noise hurt my ears, the heat felt like needles, and the crowd felt like it would crush me every time. Anxiety can be not the problem even if we adults can't empathize with what is.
When anxiety is the problem, but the child doesn't know it. Sometimes we adults know that a child's anxiety is overblown or unwarranted. Sometimes, they are super worked up about something super unlikely or not even logical. This can be panic or monsters, anything where a child is convinced something awful is going to happen, and it feels utterly real to them, but we adults know it’s not real or can’t see it.
As one friend of The Huddle for Families with OCD described it, it's the difference between being nervous about flying, and believing, truly and often for no reason, that the plane is about to explode. If I really believed that, I'd panic. I'd get really bossy or start screaming, "Everybody get out!" Kids might even know the plane is unlikely to blow up, but every ounce of their being promises it is, their body is flooded with "get moving!" hormones, and they feel like they have to respond accordingly to stay alive.
[Read more about how to handle a panic attack on a plane in part 3 of this series, coming soon.]
In these situations where anxiety truly isn't or doesn't seem to the child to be the main problem, "best practice for anxiety" is potentially useless and can make things so much worse. If I were headed into the shark tank, and you suggested I take some deep breaths and picture the sharks in their underwear, I would think you'd lost your mind. This mismatch makes kids feel like we don't understand what's going on, like we are trying to deny their reality. It’s frustrating, not helpful, and it can make kids feel even more awful or force them to escalate.
General or undirected anxiety Sometimes a child has the physical sensations of anxiety (racing heart, upset stomach) or cognitive ones (racing brain) or emotional ones (we feel anxious), but these things are general, not being caused by a specific context or person. They usually won't stay general, though—our brains love to make connections, so if we are feeling anxious-like feelings, our anxiety will often find a place to "land."
This happens when we are “hangry.” Our bodies, sensing hunger, flood with “get up and hunt something” energy, but we often interpret it as anger or anxiety. Then it sort of floats around until it finds something to blame. This makes it hard to figure out what the anxiety is really about: kids might give an answer to "what are you worried about?" but that specific thing might not really be the problem, even if they think it is. We end up addressing the specifics, but to no avail, because we’re going to be hangry until we eat.
So, what do I do about it?
Given all these different kinds of anxiety—and why the usual approaches sometimes fail spectacularly—we need to talk about what might actually work. In Part 2, I share practical strategies that can make a difference for your anxious child.
But here's the truth at the heart of it: figuring out what your child is experiencing is half the battle. Their behaviour makes sense. There's a reason for it, even if that reason is hidden or seems illogical. And when we start from that place — "Your feelings make sense, and I want to understand" — everything gets a little easier.
Continue to Part 2: How to help your real life anxious child in the real life moment
Or, skip to Part 3: How to help during a panic attack
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