The notion of anxiety is something we can all have a battle with from time to time. You might have got yourself into a groove of parenting, where you had it all figured out, but then your child surprises you by maturing and entering into a whole other world of problems that you’ve got to figure out. We can worry about our children, but it can get to the point where we are paralyzed by full-blown anxiety. What are the things we can do about this common issue?
Understand Your Physical Symptoms
Anxiety stems from certain thoughts in your mind, conscious or unconscious, but the other aspect is the physical side of it. When you experience specific symptoms of anxiety and you begin to notice the triggers, you can understand when you are going down a certain path. There are so many different ways to calm the physical symptoms of anxiety. A lot of people now use CBD in the form of tinctures, brands like Delta 8 Gummies, and even coconut oil. When you understand your physical symptoms you will know when they are creeping up, so you can stop them before they get worse.
Accept Your Anxieties
Nobody likes to accept that they are anxious. But it can help by acknowledging that you are fearful because you can then learn the facts of why you’re feeling like this. If you are worried about your child getting bullied, you need to do your own digging to find out if this is actually commonplace in the school. Because if bullying is not a problem, it’s very unlikely that it is going to be a problem for your child. Because when you start to worry about things, you can use facts as the real weapon.
If you are experiencing a number of fears about your child, there is research to suggest that exposing yourself to specific fears can be effective at managing anxieties. As a parent, it may be beneficial to ensure that your child has specific tools so that they can get by in life. For example, if you’re worried about your child walking to school by themselves, break this down into another component that you are concerned about. For example, encountering strangers crossing the road and so forth. When you start teaching them solutions to each of your concerns, this is going to reduce your anxieties and will give them a far better grounding in life.
Get Help
Help is a very important part of conquering anxiety. A lot of people use medication like antidepressants as a way to treat anxiety, however, talking therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can have a very positive impact, even more so than on medication. If you think it is necessary, talking therapy can do a lot. But of course, it’s just as important for you to understand if anxieties are having an impact on your abilities to function.
As a parent, we can be worried that our children are not in our sight, so therefore we become anxious about what they may get into. This is why seeking out the facts is always important but also realizing that feeling like this constantly is not good for your health. Therefore, having the foresight to get professional help is going to give you more tools to deal with this.
Exercise Can Help
It’s something that we constantly hear about, but exercise is a fantastic way for you to deal with anxiety. A lot of people have anxieties about different aspects of life, not just parenting and many have found that exercise is incredibly beneficial for anxiety. The question is how much is actually enough? The consensus is that generally 30-minutes or more exercise a day for between 3 and 5 days a week can improve anxiety symptoms.
However, smaller amounts can also make a difference to you, but you’ve got to get the balance right in making sure that you’re not doing too much exercise that it’s impacting your abilities to recover. If you’re feeling your anxiety is getting to the point where it’s impacting your ability to sleep, exercise can boost your mood in the form of endorphins but if you are doing too much, overtraining is a very real thing and can actually stop you from sleeping properly.
Focus on Prevention
A lot of people feel anxious because they aren’t in control of a situation. Part of the reason we can feel like this is that our children are separate from us and, therefore, we have deep fears about our children that we’re not able to protect them. When you start to focus on prevention, you are taking the fear out of the equation. It may also help you to realize that what you have been doing in the past has been to the detriment of your child.
For example, you may find that if you’ve been overprotective, you are showing the signs that you are a helicopter parent and have been for some time. Being a helicopter parent, where you are not letting your children expose themselves to risks because of your anxieties about them, is not going to set them up for a life where they can effectively problem solve and deal with issues by themselves.
Speak to Your Partner
Naturally, if you have concerns about your parenting anxieties, you may want to see how this is reflected in your partner. Talking openly about your fears can help to demystify the entire process. Sometimes, talking to our partner can give us a different perspective of events.
However, it’s important to realize that if you are anxious, this can mean that your children become anxious as well. Talking to your partner and going through it all and potentially coming out with an action plan so you can either reduce your anxieties or become a more effective parent in other ways can do a lot.
Parenting is not easy, and you could have anxieties in so many different ways, but if you can start to replace the anxiety with more positivity, you are taking steps in the right direction.
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