Copyright

While the author of this work has made every effort to ensure that the information contained in this book is as accurate and up-to-date as possible at the time of publication, medical and pharmaceutical knowledge is constantly changing and the application of it to particular circumstances depends on many factors. Therefore it is recommended that readers always consult a qualified medical specialist for individual advice. This book should not be used as an alternative to seeking specialist medical advice which should be sought before any action is taken. The author and publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors and omissions that may be found in the text, or any actions that may be taken by a reader as a result of any reliance on the information contained in the text which is taken entirely at the reader’s own risk.

In order to protect privacy, some names, identifying characteristics and details have been changed or reconstructed.

Thorsons

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First published by Thorsons 2020

FIRST EDITION

© Malie Coyne 2020

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Source ISBN: 9780008332990

Ebook Edition: April 2020 ISBN: 9780008308148

Version: 2020-03-27

Note to Readers

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Dedication

To my beautiful girlies, Jessica and Aimée,

you make my heart smile.

And to my Pete xxx

Epigraph

The parent–child connection is the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.

Bessel van der Kolk

Contents

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Note to Readers

5  Dedication

6  Epigraph

7  Contents

8  Epigraph II

9  Foreword

10  Introduction

11  1 What is Compassion?

12  2 What is Anxiety?

13  3 Parents

14  4 Children

15  5 Reflection

16  6 Action

17  Appendices

18  Resources

19  Notes

20  A Word of Thanks

21  Author Biography

22  About the Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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Epigraph II

‘We live in an age of anxiety. This book offers practical and evidence-based strategies to help parents navigate this new world. It is written by a parent for parents. Love In, Love Out: A Compassionate Approach to Parenting Your Anxious Child combines the best of psychological science with heartfelt and practical advice for parents who want to raise resilient children ready for the world.

This is one of those books to keep by the bedside; it’s a go-to resource, a beacon of light and inspiration when the going gets tough as a parent in these anxious times we live in.’

– Dr Paul D’Alton,

Head of Psychology, St Vincent’s University Hospital Dublin

Associate Professor of Psychology, University College Dublin

Fellow and former president, Psychological Society of Ireland

Foreword

Childhood is often referred to as the ‘best years of your life’, and children are often described as not having a care in the world – but that simply isn’t true. Many children experience significant anxiety growing up. Sometimes it’s rooted in their or their family’s circumstances, but often a child’s emotional maturity just isn’t developed enough to process their little fears, be they rational or irrational. And anxiety can consume a child and limit their enjoyment of activities, their participation in school or social events and their quality of life.

Parents can struggle to understand or deal with their children’s anxiety – sometimes allowing their own anxiety about their child’s anxiety to make the situation worse.

Malie has created a road map for parents who are feeling lost or overwhelmed trying to help a child who is anxious. A clinical psychologist and parent who herself suffered with anxiety as a child, Malie has a warm, practical approach to dealing with the issue. She focuses on the use of calmness and compassion, which allow children to reason their way out of anxiety and to develop resilience. Her emphasis is on making an anxious child feel safe, secure and able to express their fear whilst empowering them to overcome it.

Using mindfulness and kindfulness, the benefits of play and cognitive-behaviour therapy this book will demonstrate to children and their parents that struggles in life are normal – and that they are necessary. Learning to master your anxiety and overcome its hold on you helps you to grow up stronger, more resilient and better capable of dealing with other struggles in life.

With simple, clear examples from her personal and professional experience throughout, Love In, Love Out is an invaluable aid to any family wanting their child to move beyond anxiety.

– Dr Ciara Kelly MB

Journalist, radio broadcaster and medical doctor

Introduction

What are your hopes for your children?

I’d like you to take a moment and ask yourself, ‘What three qualities would I like my child to have?’

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

If I only have one hope for my children, it’s that they’ll be compassionate. I’ve come to realise that being compassionate incorporates a lot of the qualities that many of us would wish for. This includes treating ourselves with kindness, having empathy towards others, engaging in meaningful and supportive relationships, showing gratitude, topped off by the icing on the cake commonly known as resilience.

Researchers are increasingly finding that the key to an emotionally healthy life is resilience. Resilience means learning to cope with manageable threats, while having the ability to rebound in the face of difficulties. Ultimately, it’s about accepting life’s colourful rainbow of emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them. The single most important factor that nurtures resilience in children is having a stable and committed relationship with a trusted adult, to whom the child can turn in times of challenge or need.

So, in building a child’s resilience, the two primary ingredients are: facing a manageable threat and a secure child–parent relationship. Food for thought, isn’t it?

As for the three qualities you picked for your children, I expect you came up with three words that match your values, background and current circumstances. There are no right or wrong answers to what you want for your children. But the fact remains that most parents have a rough idea of the qualities they would like to nurture in their kids.

An interesting follow-up question is:

Now think about what percentage of your time you spend intentionally developing these qualities in your children.

Don’t worry – this question is not an attempt to make parents feel bad. Many parents spend much of their day just trying to survive, never mind putting effort into intentionally developing qualities in their children. For what it’s worth, I don’t wake up every morning thinking about the sorts of people I’d like my girlies to grow into, either!

What’s important is learning to use precisely those occasions when you’re trying to survive as a parent. These tough times will provide you with opportunities to help your children to thrive, giving you the chance to show them how to come out the other side when they’re struggling with their worries. It’s about trying to reframe these basic survival moments as times when the most important and most meaningful work of parenting actually takes place. This is called ‘survive and thrive’.1

Any busy, stressed-out or disastrous episode in your week can become an opportunity for connection with your child. It’s by connecting with you – rather than by having a perfect home life – that they can feel soothed, safe and cared for, and can begin to develop ways of soothing themselves. Similarly, every moment you invest in giving yourself time to reflect on your life and what influences you as a parent can become an opportunity for connection with your inner self and with those around you. Human connection heals adversity. It’s as simple as that.

How to use this book

You’ve sought out this book to help you with your anxious child. But first, recognise what a worthy job you’re already doing by being there for them, and how the relationship you’ve nurtured since the day they were born will be your greatest tool to see them through. I refer to ‘parents’ throughout the book, but the strategies presented are for any caregiver, or anyone who works with children. What’s important to remember is that our role is crucial in preparing kids to live as human beings in this world, and managing life’s inevitable highs and lows.

In looking at our role as parents, we’ll kill off a couple of parenting myths. We’ll firmly put to bed the idea of ‘ideal’ parenting – believe me, there ain’t no such thing. Rather than see our kids as miniature versions of ourselves, we’ll find a way of raising them without projecting our own problems and emotional baggage onto them. By doing this we’ll learn to parent them without so much fear. I know it’s a tall ask in this modern day, when fear is palpable all around us, but it’s possible one step at a time.

When we understand our own and our children’s anxiety, we realise that we’re not alone in how we feel, that it’s not our fault, and that it can get better with some help. It’s not that we expect anxiety to go away completely, we just don’t want it to stop us from doing the things we really enjoy doing to enable us to grow into emotionally healthy people.

The ‘Anxiety made simple’ sections throughout the book include answers to some of the questions I’ve been asked the most by children and parents. These provide simple explanations of some of the big questions about anxiety for you to share with your child as starting points for conversation.

Why you should talk to your child about anxiety

If you’ve opened this book because you’re overwhelmed by your child’s anxiety and want some practical ways of understanding and coping with it, that’s exactly what this book is going to give you. But before we talk about the mechanics of anxiety, I need to make the following point loud and clear:

Talking to your child about anxiety will not make them more anxious.

The reason I have a bee in my bonnet about this is that I’ve heard of several occasions in the past year when professional therapists have discouraged parents from broaching the subject of mental health with their teenage children. Some worry that by discussing stress and anxiety – or mental health more broadly – we’ll make a bigger deal out of a small problem. Adults can have a tendency to shrug off children’s concerns as being something they’re picking up from their friends at school, and that by paying any attention to these concerns they might simply be giving them more traction.

A case in point: Teresa

Teresa followed her previous therapist’s advice and did not talk to her anxious teenage daughter, believing that she had caught this ‘mental health’ talk from her friends at school. Teresa was in a sense relieved, as she felt uncomfortable asking her daughter about her feelings. She was also afraid that asking about it might cause her daughter more anxiety and feared that her answer might be ‘not good’. And what would she do then? But Teresa ultimately realised that in not asking the question, she was merely avoiding her own and her daughter’s pain.

When we further explored Teresa’s feelings and outlined the benefits of communicating versus not communicating her concerns, she felt more confident in broaching the issue with her daughter. She was also armed with the knowledge that teenagers are a special breed of people who do not like feeling under pressure to talk face to face. Bringing up concerns with teenagers is best done alone, side by side, in a car or when engaged in an activity, talking through the specifics of what the parent has noticed about the child’s mood or behaviour:

‘I’ve noticed you’ve been feeling sick before going to football the last few times, and that you have some scary thoughts about what might happen there. You also seem a bit frustrated about your school work, which is a new thing. Things seem tough for you at the moment. Is everything OK? Maybe talking would help, when you’re ready. I’m here for you any time.’

By her next session with me, Teresa came in looking like a different woman. It was like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She said that it was only when she asked her daughter directly about her feelings that she had opened up:

‘Unless I’d asked her directly how she was feeling, there’s no way she would have opened up to me like she has this week. I knew there was something bothering her, but I didn’t realise the extent of it. Now we can keep talking and figure out a way forward together.’

Teresa and her daughter still had a way to go from there, but she had made the first crucial step in letting her know that a) she had noticed her distress, that b) she was willing to sit with her daughter’s pain and c) she wanted to help her through it.

Some may think that it’s best to leave it up to the child to bring up how they feel. The problem is that many kids – teenagers included – don’t know how they feel or might not have the words to express it. They also don’t have the benefit of your wisdom in detecting a change in their mood or behaviour, or connecting disparate events over time.

A child could also have caught on to the parent’s reluctance to talk about feelings, and this might be preventing the child from being the first to speak up. Alternatively, a child might think a parent has enough on their plate as it is without them adding on their jumbled-up worries.

Consider this: what’s the worst that can happen if you ask your child how they’re feeling? You either hit the mark (they share what’s going on) or you miss the mark (they tell you everything is fine – perhaps in their own unique way).

Whether it’s a hit or a miss, by gently asking your child about what’s going on inside them, you’re opening up an important channel of communication. Sure, they may not use the opportunity today or even tomorrow, but keeping this channel open is vital for their emotional well-being. I call this ‘speaking the language of feelings’. It can also involve you sharing your own experience of managing difficult feelings, so your child feels less alone with theirs.

I do appreciate that this and many of the ideas in this book will come more easily to some parents than others, but working through the steps in this book should help both you and your child. This book is intended as a source of ideas and encouragement, one that can be dipped into in anxious times, but each section can also be read in turn. By first introducing compassion followed by anxiety I intend to give us a shared understanding of what we’re dealing with. Then, by focusing on parents, I’m acknowledging the importance of parents stepping back, taking a breath and reflecting on themselves and their own stresses. From there, we can then take a look at what your anxious child might be feeling, and move on to real, practical exercises for everyday life with a compassionate and hopeful approach to managing anxiety for both you and your child.

1
What is Compassion?

Love in, love out

My friend Ruth is just like you and me. She loves her kids to bits. Tries her best. Feels overwhelmed by their needs sometimes, reacts in frustration, wishes she hadn’t, feels guilty, tries to learn from it, gets back up again and tries her best all over again. Rinse and repeat.

What I love about Ruth is how she makes me feel OK to be a full of love, imperfect mama. Because that’s what she is and I love her for it. I first met her when we were lying in beds across from each other in the postnatal ward right after having our second babies. There we were, complete strangers struggling with pure exhaustion, rollercoaster emotions, and feeling very vulnerable. Isn’t it amazing how vulnerability opens us up to human connection like that?

Ruth and I often talk about our many parenting challenges and mess-ups. One day she shared this beautiful affirmation with me, which she uses to ground herself during really tough moments with her children. It goes:

Love in (take a deep breath in) …

(pause, hold your breath) …

Love out (deep breath out)

When I first heard her affirmation I was instantly drawn to it. I thought, ‘Well, if Ruth finds it helpful, then maybe I could use it too when I’m having a shit-hard parenting moment.’ Times like these are so overwhelming, surely anything is worth a try!

Inhaling Love in and exhaling Love out makes us press pause. We take a moment to recognise how hard it is to be a parent, before we press play again to respond to our children’s feelings. Being kind to ourselves makes us better able to be kind to those we love the most.

The importance of compassion comes through loud and clear – we need to give ourselves a break, so that we can give our kids a break. Take a moment for ourselves so that we can give our child the warmth and understanding that he or she needs. If we take that step back – remembering that we all experience stressful times with children – we can refocus our attention on being supportive and caring towards them.

Better still, when you accompany the deep breath in and out with a physical gesture of warmth and care, like putting your hands over your heart or over your belly, your bonding hormone (oxytocin) is released with your touch and the toxic stress hormone (cortisol) is reduced.

It struck me that Love in, love out could be an affirmation that any parent could use, especially those struggling to manage their children’s big feelings – and their own.

Of course, that’s not to say that we’ll always have it in us to take a breath, let alone pause and reflect during those really overwhelming moments, but it may just remind us that if a moment is really hard, it will pass – and that we all deserve compassion, most of all from ourselves.

Our own worst critics

We all have it in ourselves to be very self-critical, especially when things aren’t going well: ‘Why is this happening to us?’; ‘My kid shouldn’t do this’; ‘I ought to be able to handle this.’ Thinking like this – which we all do at times – doesn’t accept the reality of the situation and places unhelpful expectations on everyone. Difficult times do happen. It’s how we deal with them that counts.

So, when we hear that critical voice, we calmly acknowledge its presence and allow a kinder voice to gently break through the surface. Just as we would comfort a close friend going through a tough moment, if we can learn to treat ourselves kindly through our parenting struggles, then everything else becomes a lot easier.

Like a hug from a friend, being kinder to ourselves helps us to combat stress and to release our brain’s feel-good chemical, serotonin. This helps to lift our mood and activate our coping skills, increasing the likelihood that we’ll reach out to others for support.

This ‘self-compassion’ has been dubbed the ‘newest parenting skill’, though in truth there’s nothing very new about it, as it’s based on age-old scientific evidence as to how we, as mammals, react to comfort:

One of the things unique to mammals is that we are programmed to respond to warmth, gentle touch and soft vocalisations. That’s what keeps vulnerable infants close to their mothers and safe from harm. So when we provide that kind of touch and calm reassurance to ourselves, we actually reduce levels of stress hormones and boost the feel-good ones. Then we feel safe, comforted and in the optimal frame of mind to do our best.2

So there you go. Love in, love out – spoken softly with warmth, accompanied by gentle in-and-out breathing and soothing touch – could be our gift of kindness to ourselves. Breathing in and out of the place of frustration, grounding ourselves before choosing our response, is both kind to ourselves and, ultimately, kind to others.3

Self-compassion is helpful for parents when we find ourselves struggling with our children’s emotions because:

 It helps us to face up to what’s happening in the tougher moments and acknowledge that we’re having trouble coping: ‘This is a moment of struggle with my child. This is really hard right now. But it’s OK.’

 It helps us to be kind in how we think about the situation and acknowledge our common experience in facing difficulties: ‘Struggles with our kids are a part of life. Many children have worries. Other parents find it hard to manage, and they feel the same way as I do.’

 We need to treat ourselves with kindness as we would a good friend in the same situation – with gentleness, warmth, patience and encouragement: ‘May I be kind to myself in this moment.’

 With this kindness, we can take action, because compassion is best understood as something that we do in response to a difficult situation: ‘Love in for myself; love out towards my child, and bringing calm and connection to this difficult moment.’4,5

Taking a minute to reset

An alternative meaning to Love in, love out came from one of my writing mentors. He interpreted it as a mantra involving the power of the breath to calm us down by switching our brain’s fight-flight-freeze mode to a gentler, more rational mode. He liked that peaceful, rhythmic quality about it: Love in, love out. Love in, love out. It’s a soothing message of compassion for you – and your child.

Originally derived from Hinduism and Buddhism, a mantra is a word, phrase or sound believed to have a special spiritual power, which is repeated to aid concentration in meditation or prayer and expresses a strong belief. A mantra is a great tool for both parents and children to encourage us to press pause on a difficult situation or to spur us on when we need a good boost.

Because our inner voice has huge power over how we feel about ourselves and how we make sense of and respond to our experiences, compassionate mantras like Love in, love out balance the negative inner voice we often tune into during our hardest moments.

Many of us – and especially parents – are grandmasters at beating ourselves up at every opportunity we get. Being nice to ourselves may feel really alien to some of us. It’s as if we think that being hard on ourselves will keep us ‘in line’ and make us better parents. On the contrary; being self-critical doesn’t prevent bad things from happening, and it can actually make things worse for both us and our kids.

Being self-critical can be really harmful to both our emotional and physical health and is linked to everything from depression to anxiety to high blood pressure to a general sense of dissatisfaction with life. Just like a physical attack sends our brain’s fight-flight-freeze response into overdrive, so does an emotional attack, even if we’re directing it at ourselves.6 At times, modern-day man’s worst predator can be himself.

To add insult to injury, when we engage in self-criticism, not only are we the ‘attacked’ but we’re also the ‘attacker’ – making the process doubly exhausting. With all this going on in our brains, no wonder self-criticism can lead to anxiety. To make matters worse, self-criticism can also arise from anxiety. This is because people with anxiety can feel alone in their pain and powerless to do anything about it, and they criticise themselves for it.

Mantras are in essence the antidote to our brain’s age-old tendency towards negativity and they ensure that self-kindness trumps self-blame. I’m down with that. It’s about being mindful of how you talk to – and about – yourself, because your words are powerful.7 Examples include: ‘Breathe’; ‘It’s OK’; ‘This shall pass’; ‘It is what it is’; ‘Try a hug’; ‘Namaste’; or whichever other positive words float your boat!

Practising being positive about ourselves, to ourselves, is a hell of a lot easier when all is rosy in the family garden, when your kids are getting along and are in a good emotional place. But it’s actually during the most challenging moments, when our kids are highly emotional and are testing our patience, that taking a mindful pause is one of the best tools you can hone. We may not be able to control their out-of-control behaviour, but we can try our best to respond to them in a calmer way.

Compassion ‘in’ and ‘out’ trays

Love in, love out can also be seen as a poignant offering from parents to their children.8

Think of the ‘in’ and ‘out’ trays you’d find in an office. If a parent focuses on putting love in to their child, the child is then enabled to give love out to themselves, their parents, families, friends, teachers and communities. That’s a lot of ‘outs’ for one ‘in’, isn’t it?

This is why the child–parent relationship is so important in making a child feel safe, comfortable in their own skin, able to manage big feelings and show compassion towards others. When we put love in to a child it builds a strong foundation for the child to develop compassion for themselves, to nurture important social and emotional connections, and to grow lifelong resilience.

With all these meanings attached to it, Love in, love out grew into something pretty special for me. That is what I intend to offer you in this book. If I can pour my heart into you and your parenting through sharing my vulnerabilities and the wisdom my clients have gifted me with, then Love in, love out may hopefully become something special for you too.

If you’d like to try a Love in, love out meditation, flip ahead to here.

Why a compassionate approach?

I was a little stressed myself while I was preparing to contribute to a TV documentary exploring our modern-day experience of stress9 – the irony! I was trying to decide which therapeutic approach would be most helpful for father-of-one Jonathan, and was more than a little nervous about my skills in psychology being exposed on camera in front of the whole nation.

I wanted to choose the best approach to help Jonathan to feel less stressed and overwhelmed in his daily life. The goal was for him to focus on what mattered most to him, such as his connection with his family and living more in the moment.

But I needn’t have worried about my performance. Compassion did its thing, and I felt like the privileged messenger.

It being television, the production team would have preferred me to come up with a therapeutic process that was more visual: daring him to jump off a diving board, for instance, or taking a relaxing walk through a beautiful meadow. Instead, Jonathan’s journey of self-discovery took its natural course when we began to focus on compassion.

The healing properties of compassion have been celebrated for centuries. Compassion has always been considered a vital quality by both Western and Eastern philosophies and religions, and now even has its own therapy called ‘compassion-focused therapy’, which is gaining a following among psychologists, psychiatrists and other medical professionals.

To find out more about compassionate parenting in action, flip ahead to here.

The origin of the word ‘compassion’ reveals its powerful meaning and significance. Compati in Latin is ‘suffer with’, so ‘compassion’ is, by definition, relational; that is, it requires a relationship with the people around us. Compassion requires sharing in the experience of suffering – and if we accept that there is suffering to be had, we’re recognising that the human experience – life – is imperfect.

Compassion is the realisation that all human beings make mistakes, have regrets, and struggle with feelings of inadequacy and disappointment – and that we’re all in the same boat together. Knowing this somehow brings comfort:

The pain I feel in difficult times is the same pain you feel in difficult times. The triggers are different, the circumstances are different, the degree of pain is different, but the process is the same. You can’t always get what you want. This is true for everyone, even the Rolling Stones.10

To have compassion for others, you must first notice that they’re suffering, then be moved by their suffering, and feel warmth and caring and a desire to help them. When they make mistakes, you offer understanding and kindness, rather than judgement.

Compassion not only involves a sensitivity to our own and other people’s distress, but a motivation to prevent or alleviate it.11 Being compassionate means that someone else’s pain becomes your pain, and that crucially, you take steps to do something about it.

Having compassion for yourself during hard moments – like when you’re raising your children – means watching out for how you’re feeling, and treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding you’d give others. It also means seeing failures as part of the human condition, and having a balanced awareness of painful thoughts and emotions.

Self-compassion is just as important in improving our overall health as having compassion for others, with multiple studies showing that greater self-compassion is linked to less anxiety and depression.12 One of the reasons for this is that self-compassionate people are more likely to accept their emotions without judgement and are less likely to worry than those who lack self-compassion.13

Accepting our imperfections with kindness appears to break the cycle of negativity and deactivates the body’s fight-flight-freeze response.

Compassion is a foundation for sharing our aliveness and building a more humane world.14

Like the ripple created by throwing a pebble in a pond, one act of compassion can have an effect that may reach around the world.15 If one single act of compassion can have such an impact, imagine the potential impact of parents being compassionate towards themselves on a regular basis. As they witness their parents emerging calmer and more confident, the ripple will affect these children’s own relationships with themselves and others.

Many parents I meet are stuck in patterns of self-blame and feel powerless to help their children who are struggling with their big feelings, be they anxiety, grief, anger, sadness, guilt or shame. The truth is that parents are often struggling with big feelings of their own. Big feelings meeting big feelings is not an easy combination!

If we could somehow bring compassion into common parenting struggles we might shift how parents and children view their problems and how well they think they can cope. Because it’s not about our actual ability to cope, is it? It’s usually more about how we think we’ll cope in any given situation, which then affects our feelings and our responses. Not only does anxiety narrow our focus and make us overestimate the size of the problem at hand, it leads us to underestimate our ability to cope with that problem.

Naturally, parents who come into my clinic are looking for my perspective on what is happening with their child and suggestions on how to best help them. I find that teasing out how the parents feel in response to their child’s big feelings is usually the best first step.

Listening and being compassionate, parent to parent, is the best gift I can offer them. Naturally, I’ll have my opinion on their difficulties and have tools in my toolbox to share with parents, but the most important thing is to build a relationship so they feel more comfortable with the journey we’re embarking on together.

And that is why I’m using the compassionate approach as a foundation for supporting you in helping your anxious child. It provides the scaffolding needed to support you and your child to feel safe, connected and empowered.

Compassion-focused therapy and the Three Circles

Compassion reduces our fear, boosts our confidence, and opens us to inner strength. By reducing distrust, it opens us to others and brings us a sense of connections with them and a sense of purpose and meaning in life.

Dalai Lama

Compassion-focused therapy (CFT)16 pays particular attention to how our early childhood experiences have affected the types of emotions we have as adults. It’s especially useful for people who are particularly critical of themselves or who have high levels of shame, as well as people who have difficulty feeling warmth towards, and being kind to, themselves or others. For adults and children alike, these problems are often rooted in a difficult childhood in which the child may not have felt safe, loved or valued as much as they needed.

CFT deals with the ways that we learn to manage our emotions from childhood onwards. Research in neuroscience shows that humans have evolved at least three types of emotional regulation system – or Three Circles, as they’re known – that work together to control and maintain our emotions. These Three Circles help us to navigate and understand our emotional world and that of our children. Looking at these is helpful for both parents and children because they help to explain the guiding forces behind our reactions to the daily challenges we face.

If you look at the diagram,17 the three systems are:

 The Threat system – helps us to detect and respond to threats in our lives. If the Threat system had a motto, it would be ‘better safe than sorry’. It’s commonly associated with anger, fear, anxiety, guilt, disgust and our inner self-critic.

 The Drive system – enables us to go out and get what we need, and to take pleasure in doing it. It’s what helps to get you out of bed in the mornings, and is connected with desire, the thrill of the chase, achievement and excitement.

 The Soothing system – helps to calm and nurture us and to balance the other two systems. It gives us positive feelings of peaceful well-being, safety, connection and contentment.

The diagram of the Three Circles shows how one system can dominate over another, with Threat often taking over while Soothing goes undernourished. Both the Threat and Soothing circles can feed into the Drive circle. The diagram helps you to understand which aspects of your life typically fit into each of the circles:

Threat: any major pressure in any area of your life – be it at work, in your relationships, among your family. Anything that threatens your sense of worth and safety.

Drive: anything that motivates you to get up in the morning, whether positive or negative.

Soothing: what you enjoy doing; passions; positive relationships; hobbies; what you do in your downtime. Whatever makes you feel safe.

By paying particular attention to whichever system is less active, we can learn to manage each system more effectively. Nurturing the underactive circle reduces symptoms such as low mood, anxiety and stress, and helps us to respond to everyday situations in an emotionally healthier way.

CFT focuses on the link between our thoughts, how we live our lives and our Three Circles. Through activities like attention training and mindfulness, compassionate skills are cultivated to help clients notice how their minds can be taken over by negative emotions and to nurture their relationship with themselves and with others.

CFT is a wonderful therapy for managing many mental health and emotional issues. This is particularly true for stress and anxiety, which occur when the body’s Threat and Drive systems are going hell for leather at the expense of an underactive Soothing system. Indeed the modern-world experience of toxic stress may have its origins in not feeling good enough in childhood, which manifests in later life as a greatly reduced Soothing circle, triggering a Threat reaction related to the fear of rejection or abandonment.18>

CFT helps people to develop the resources to deal with difficult emotions. The beauty of it is that it enables them to disclose deeper feelings, such as unworthiness and shame, which other psychological therapies can have a hard time targeting. Handling such feelings productively prevents us from compensating with behaviours such as working, eating or exercising to excess, or resorting to drugs or alcohol.

The three qualities of self-compassion

We have already caught glimpses of how useful self-compassion can be in approaching anxiety in children and adults. Derived from pioneering psychological research,19 the three central qualities of self-compassion are self-kindness, our shared human experience and mindfulness, which combine and interact to improve our state of mind. Below is a list that compares these three qualities to their opposites, showing how much more useful self-compassion is for helping us and our children with the challenges we all face:

 Self-kindness versus self-judgement: Working on being kind to yourself and less judgemental is easier said than done, isn’t it? In building our emotional reserves as parents, we need to be more accepting of our own limits, and learn to step away from negative feelings about ourselves. In being a little kinder to ourselves, we’ll be calmer, more balanced and better able to care for ourselves and our children.

 Common humanity versus isolation: If we feel that we’re the only person struggling with a particular problem, we’ll end up feeling isolated. But if we recognise that suffering, relationship troubles and mistakes are part of being human, we’re far more likely to open ourselves up to connecting with other people, to forgive ourselves and others, and to get back up and try again!

 Mindfulness versus over-identification: Those who suffer with anxiety often focus on the past and the future, and feel both weighing heavily upon them. Mindfulness is a powerful tool for both children and their parents in navigating the storms of anxiety. When we accept our emotions rather than judge ourselves for being emotional, our emotions tend to run their natural and relatively short-lived course.20

The healing balm of self-compassion

When we soothe our painful feelings with the healing balm of self-compassion, not only are we changing our mental and emotional experience, we’re also changing our body chemistry.21

By tapping into our body’s self-healing Soothing system we trigger the release of oxytocin. Known as ‘the hormone of love’, and particularly associated with first cuddles between parents and newborns, this chemical helps us to feel safe, calm and securely connected with others. Oxytocin is responsible for fine-tuning our brain’s social instincts and making us do things to strengthen close relationships.

Oxytocin is released in a variety of social situations, from when a baby is first held, to when parents joyfully interact with their children, to when someone you really love gives you a hug – when released it makes you more likely to feel warmth and compassion for yourself and empathy towards others.

Because thoughts and emotions have the same impact on our bodies irrespective of whether they’re directed towards ourselves or others, self-compassion is a powerful trigger for the release of oxytocin.22

But wait for it: our dear friend oxytocin is actually a stress hormone that your pituitary gland pumps out as part of your biological stress response. Just as the stress hormone cortisol is released to spur you into immediate action and adrenaline is released to make your heart pound, oxytocin is released in response to a perceived threat so you notice when someone close is struggling or to motivate you to seek support and be surrounded by those who care about you. Amazing isn’t it?

In her groundbreaking book The Upside of Stress and her TED talk ‘How to make stress your friend’,23 health psychologist Kelly McGonigal talks about the impact of our beliefs about stress on our overall health. According to McGonigal, our bodies have a built-in mechanism to help us cope with stress: the human connection.

Stress gives us access to our hearts. The compassionate heart that finds joy and meaning in connecting with others, and yes, your pounding physical heart, working so hard to give you strength and energy, and when you choose to view stress in this way, you’re not just getting better at stress, you’re actually making a pretty profound statement. You’re saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges, and you’re remembering that you don’t have to face them alone.

McGonigal supports the idea that the quality and power of our Soothing systems are strongly associated with the bonds we form with others from early childhood onwards, a concept that’s also central to attachment theory.24 In human beings, the first and most powerful bond an infant is programmed to make is usually with their mother or father. This attachment serves to improve the baby’s chance of survival (think food, comfort and our most basic needs) when faced with a threat, brings a sense of mutual connection and well-being, and builds the foundation for virtually every aspect of the child’s development.

Talking about attachment and childhood can trigger painful memories and thoughts for many parents, myself included. Please be mindful of this as you read this book and gain support from close loved ones – or a professional – if you’re struggling. You may not have expected to go so deep, but as my own counsellor told me after a tough session, ‘Once you hit the bottom of the pool, you can only bounce back up.’

Galway City Early Years Committee and the Galway Parent Network ran a poster campaign that was based on this idea called ‘How to build a happy baby’ as part of an infant mental health initiative. We don’t often think of the mental health of babies, but it refers to a child’s social and emotional development from birth to age three within the context of their relationship with the most important person in their lives.

Based on the UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) Baby Friendly Health Initiative,25 we created four posters containing simple, positively framed, evidence-based messages emphasising the innate abilities of human beings to look after their babies. The purpose of the posters was to promote the importance of the child–parent attachment and to dispel common parenting myths.26 One read:

New babies have a strong need to be close to their parents, as this helps them to feel secure and loved, like they matter in the world.

Myth: Babies become spoilt and demanding if they’re given too much attention.

Truth: When babies’ needs for love and comfort are met, they’ll be calmer and grow up to be more confident.

Evidence: Close skin-to-skin body contact, postnatally and beyond, significantly improves the physical and mental health and well-being for both mother and baby. When babies feel secure, they release a hormone called oxytocin, which acts like a fertiliser for their growing brain, helping them to be happier and more confident as they grow older. Holding, smiling and talking to your baby also releases oxytocin in you, which also has a soothing effect.27

Crucially, the child–parent attachment bond that we all see in babies remains strong for child and parent as they grow older. The first three years of life, when a child’s brain develops the fastest, are a critical window of opportunity for establishing a healthy stress response, although it’s never too late to help your child to manage their distress.

Soothing your child during their stressful or anxious moments releases oxytocin in both of you, giving child and parent a sense of security and helping you to become more resilient, knowing that your bond with each other is strong. When you tune in to your child’s feelings and help them to calm down, you also play a significant role in easing their fears and their fight-flight-freeze cortisol levels.

A parent’s compassionate response to their child during their anxious moments has the power to deactivate their Threat system and activate their Soothing system. The calmer and safer a child feels, the more open and flexible they’ll be in response to their environments and the more likely they’ll be able to use the tools to evaluate and manage future threats.

Relationships like the one you share with your child work to transform ‘stress and anxiety into catalysts for courage and connection’.28 While anxiety is certainly not a pleasant experience for anyone, it might help to know that your child has a naturally strong desire to connect with you during their most anxious moments, even though it may not always appear that way.

2
What is Anxiety?

In this age of ever-growing anxiety, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the average parent to know what is a healthy level of anxiety in their children, and what is something to be more concerned about. Our kids face a multitude of challenges at all stages of their development: from toddlers with nightmares, to primary school children with separation anxiety and tummy pains, to self-conscious adolescents who find social situations terrifying.

Anxieties are common in childhood, and are often part and parcel of growing up. Everyone experiences anxiety, which is a product of our ‘tricky’ survival brains29 trying to cope with life’s constantly changing demands. A useful way of looking at anxiety is as a simple formula: add up all the things that cause our children stress, and then subtract their beliefs about their ability to cope. The net result is their anxiety level.30 So it’s how a child copes with their anxiety that marks the difference between them thriving in their daily lives or having real difficulty meeting new experiences with open arms.

Your response to your child’s anxiety is a crucial factor in how your child will cope. With their supportive guidance, parents like you hold the key to anchoring their children with safety and connection. From this strong foundation, you and your child can work on problem-solving strategies together to help alleviate their anxiety.

That is why it’s so important for you to be able to recognise when anxiety is beginning to affect your child’s daily life and their ability to function.

Anxiety made simple

Question: What is anxiety, and is it normal?

Answer: Everyone feels anxious sometimes. It’s normal to feel a bit anxious when you’re meeting someone new, when you’ve just got on a rollercoaster, when you’ve been asked to speak in class or are waiting just before a test. Just like adults, some kids feel it only a bit, while others feel it a lot more.

When anxiety comes, you’ll know that something doesn’t feel quite right, but you may not have the words to explain what’s happening to you. This is particularly true for children and teenagers. You may feel like something bad might happen to you or to someone you care about. You might also be angry or sad and want to avoid doing things, or simply wish to stay at home.

Anxiety is the body’s alarm system that has always helped human beings to survive. It works so well that it kicks in even when it’s not needed, like when we believe there is danger when there is none, or when we start to ask ourselves ‘What if’ something terrible happens.

People who are feeling anxious are scanning for danger, and are mega alert to the body’s alarm signals. That’s why anxiety can feel so exhausting!

Anxiety is not a sign of anything being wrong or of being weak. It’s a sign that your strong, healthy brain is doing exactly what it’s meant to do to protect you from danger. Anxiety doesn’t care if the threat is real or imagined, because our brain would rather keep us safe than be sorry.

Sometimes our brain goes overboard in trying to protect us. When this happens, it sets off a chain reaction of nasty feelings in our bodies. Feeling bad makes us think anxious thoughts, which makes us even more anxious, like a vicious circle. It’s as if we’re ready for action, but there’s no enemy, so tension builds up in our bodies without having a chance to be let out!

Anxiety as a problem

Anxiety becomes a problem when it affects a child’s sense of who they are, their relationships and their engagement with school and other activities. Anxiety becomes a problem when a child’s worries – whether their thoughts, feelings or physical sensations – are making them avoid situations, which in turn restricts their learning and enjoyment of life.

Distinguishing anxiety from normal fears is important. Throughout childhood, we all naturally experience transient fears that arise in line with our ability to recognise and understand potential dangers in our environment.

When a child is young, fears seem to be immediate and tangible, like separation from a loved one or a fear of strangers. As the child gets older, fears seem to become more abstract, centring on thoughts that anticipate problems (‘what if?’) and focusing on the less tangible (bad dreams, someone getting hurt, or struggling at school).31 Children are expected to ‘grow out of’ many of these fears as they develop.

Sadly, this is more difficult for some children than for others, which is why it’s important to focus on what is happening in your child’s world. If you feel that anxiety is having a significant impact on your child’s daily life and ability to function, then it may be time to seek some professional support in guiding you and your child forward.

Basic symptoms of anxiety

Many children have the problems listed below at some point, but if your child has been struggling with one or more of these symptoms more days than not for the past six months, it may be time to talk to your GP.

Your GP can advise you about reputable local support services. These might include a psychologist, psychotherapist, play therapist or counsellor.

 Excessive anxiety and worry about a number of events or activities

 Worry that is hard to control

 Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge

 Becoming easily fatigued

 Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank

 Irritability

 Muscle tension

 Sleep problems: difficulty falling or staying asleep, restlessness, or unsatisfying sleep

 Difficulties in school, in social settings, dealing with others32

Your doctor will also want to rule out other potential causes of anxiety, including medical conditions, the side-effects of medication, drug or alcohol use, and any other mental health concerns.

Adrenaline and our bodies33

There are very real reasons why your body feels the way it does when you’re anxious. When there’s nothing to fight or run away from, there’s nothing to burn up the fight-flight-freeze fuel – adrenaline – that’s rushing through your body.

Adrenaline is a stress hormone whose job it is to get you up and moving, often for positive reasons, like excitement, meeting a deadline or running a race. This big boost of energy helps us to do our best. But adrenaline also rushes into our bodies when we’re feeling anxious, worried or threatened, when there’s no deadline to meet or race to run, so there’s nowhere for it to go.

Here are some of the things you might feel when adrenaline builds up and why you might feel them when you’re anxious:

1. Shallow and fast breath

What’s happening? Your brain tells your body to stop wasting oxygen – instead of using it on strong, deep breaths, your body is told to send it to the muscles so they can fight or run away.

How you might feel. Your breathing changes from strong, slow, deep breaths to fast, little breaths. You might feel puffed or a bit breathless. Your cheeks might blush red and your face might feel warm.

2. Dizzy head

What’s happening? If you don’t fight or run away, levels of oxygen build up in your body and carbon dioxide levels drop from all that fast breathing.

How you might feel. Dizzy, confused or sick.

3. Hijacked brain

What’s happening? When you have an anxious adrenaline rush, other feelings such as anger or sadness might turn up to high volume as well. When your thoughts are racing, it’s hard to think clearly with the logical, calming part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex.

How you might feel. Angry or sad, as though you want to burst into tears, sometimes for no reason at all. Your ‘wise leader’ – the prefrontal cortex – shuts down.

4. Body sweats

What’s happening? Your body cools itself down by sweating so it doesn’t overheat if you have to fight or run away.

How you might feel. Clammy or sweaty, even if it’s cold out.

5. Heart beats faster

What’s happening? Your heart beats faster and your pulse rises to get the oxygen around your body, especially to the arms and legs, allowing you to run away or attack.

How you might feel. Your heart can feel like it’s racing and you might also feel sick. This can feel scary, like a heart attack. It’s OK, though – you’re perfectly safe.

6. Jelly arms and legs

What’s happening? Fuel gets sent to your bigger muscles in the arms (in case you need to fight) and the legs (in case you need to run away).

How you might feel. Your arms and legs might feel tight or wobbly.

7. Need to pee … again

What’s happening? Adrenaline can make you want to pee. We know it happens, but we don’t really know why.

How you might feel. As if your bladder’s full and you want to empty it.

8. Sore tummy

What’s happening? The digestive system shuts down so the fuel it was using to digest food can be used by your arms and legs in case you have to fight or run away.

How you might feel. As if there are butterflies in your tummy. You might also feel sick, as if you’re going to vomit – and your mouth might feel a bit dry.

With all these things happening in your body, no wonder you might feel exhausted, shaky and weak after the adrenaline has died down!

The causes of anxiety

Finding the causes of a child’s problematic anxiety can be complicated. They can often assume the form of an interweaving web that might take quite some time to untangle. Sometimes the root causes of anxiety aren’t as clear as we’d like them to be, but that doesn’t mean that an anxious child won’t benefit hugely from our compassion, anchoring support and the approaches outlined in this book.

Common reasons for difficulty coping with anxiety range from a child’s unique temperament or personality, to what a child has gleaned from observing their parents and key adults, the presence of any traumatic events or ‘anxiety triggers’ in their lives, all the way to being vulnerable to the impact of the wider society in which they live.

All these interacting factors at play can make it extremely difficult for children to share their anxious feelings, for parents to navigate the best way forward, for teachers to respond appropriately, and for doctors, therapists and others to support children and their families.

Many of the parents I meet are hugely eager to find a reason for their child’s anxiety so that they can begin to make helpful changes to their environment and identify the most appropriate ways to support them.

Of course it can certainly help to know what triggers your child’s anxiety and what eases it, so you can better equip them with the tools to identify and manage it. But a vital precursor to introducing these problem-solving tools into your child’s life is the role you as a parent play in anchoring them back to safety during their wobbly moments, which crucially involves you feeling calm and nurtured in the first instance.

However, I would urge you not to fixate on trying to find a reason for your child’s anxiety, as it may not always be clear. What’s more important is to take each day as it comes, and to respond calmly to your child’s emotions with empathy and compassion in the moment.

Regardless of the specific reason or reasons for your child’s anxiety, the experience of anxiety itself is quite similar in everyone. This is simply because as human beings we all share the same survival response to threatening situations, which negatively impacts our thoughts, feelings, body sensations and behaviour. Whilst the intensity of this response can vary between humans, the feeling of anxiety is universal.

For that reason the techniques I introduce in this book apply to any child of any age, irrespective of the reasons why they may be anxious.

Although the experience of anxiety is much the same for everyone, we’re now experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety throughout our lives. Why is that, and how can we reduce the impact of negative social factors on children’s well-being?

The Age of Anxiety

We had the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, the Industrial Age and the Technological Age. Now we have the Age of Anxiety. Why do I say that? We are bombarded with messages from the world about all the things that are dangerous, could be dangerous or will be dangerous.34

Anxiety is rife among children today, and I’ve seen a massive increase in the number of children being referred to me with this condition in recent years. Even though anxiety is the most common mental health issue facing children in the Western world today35 and the most prevalent psychological disorder in schoolchildren, it has been described as a ‘silent epidemic’ as it can often go undetected and untreated.

Because children who suffer from anxiety don’t necessarily draw attention to themselves and often present as well behaved, they can frequently be left to suffer in silence as they’re overlooked or mistaken for being shy. Some children might act out angrily in an effort to cope with their hidden anxious feelings, which may also lead to misunderstanding, while others hide their anxiety behind a veil of perfectionism, petrified of doing anything wrong or of making the tiniest mistake.

Anxiety hides behind many masks, which cover up a multitude of scary thoughts. A child hiding their anxiety can be really lonely, as they continue to suffer while concealing their real self from the world. A child’s real self can be itching to get out – if only they knew how or had the courage to let it happen. Being isolated like this also means that the child is alone with their own thoughts, usually preoccupied with something that happened in the past or that might happen in the future, which makes it hard for them to live in the moment.

Although we have a better standard of living than previous generations, and have come on leaps and bounds in terms of our health care, we still have a very long way to go. The irony is that the world we now live in is actually contributing to anxiety for both parents and children. The demands of the world are increasing, which makes us feel threatened and shakes our faith in our ability to cope.

Deciding what’s important: different kinds of goals

One of the ways in which the world we live in makes us anxious can be related to the kinds of goals we choose to pursue. Some goals are bigger-picture; others are very specific.

An intrinsic goal is one very much related to the activity that achieves it, where the enjoyment comes from the journey as opposed to the end result. Intrinsic goals include spending quality time with loved ones, living life according to one’s values, pursuing a dream, or anything that gives life meaning.

On the other hand, an extrinsic goal is distantly related to the activities that achieve them which are often seen as imposed by the outside world. Examples include achieving high marks in school, winning sports games, achieving high status and looking a certain way.

There has been a continual shift away from intrinsic goals in our pressurised modern world in favour of extrinsic goals. This is to our detriment, as the pursuit of extrinsic at the expense of intrinsic goals has been linked to increased rates of anxiety and depression. This makes sense, as what we do to pursue extrinsic goals is often less satisfying than when we follow our intrinsic goals. What’s more, we often have less control over how successfully we meet our extrinsic goals for the simple reason that they rely on external forces. An over-emphasis on extrinsic goals is linked to an overactive Threat system feeding our Drive system; on the other hand, enjoying the process of meeting our intrinsic goals nurtures our Soothing system, leading to more positive Drive in our lives.

Our Drive system is frequently over-stimulated because we live in a society that encourages us to want more, to have more and to be more.36 This ‘scarcity culture’ occurs when everyone is hyper-aware of what they lack:

Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want and don’t have and how much everyone else has, needs and wants.37

Our caveman brains and the negativity bias

Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!38

Our brains haven’t changed much if at all since the human race began, but the kinds of threats we face have. Back in the days of the caveman, when human beings were presented with many more physical dangers, it was our brains that helped us to survive basic and very tangible threats, such as predators.

Our brains have always tricked us by overestimating threats and comparing us unfavourably to others – they do this to keep us safe. If we think things are worse than they are – and that we’re at greater risk than we are – we’ll be more careful and have a better chance of survival.

Part of the reason that we’re still afraid of what might happen to us, and hyper-aware of what we lack, is because of this age-old trick that our brains play on us in order to protect us. This also includes our inner critical voice, ever present to give its opinion at the drop of a hat.

Incredibly, for every negative thing that happens, we need five positives to balance it out! This is where making a conscious effort to be kind to ourselves and others comes into play.

But why does this kind of negative focus have so much staying power? The negativity bias – our natural tendency to attend to and respond more readily to negative information – is a very real force determining how we behave, and has been found in babies as young as three months old. Our collective negativity bias arises from both innate predispositions and our learned experience: nature and nurture combined.

Our negativity bias plays a significant role in our views about ourselves, our emotions, our ability to take in information and our decision-making. Left unchecked, it can become a serious impediment to good mental health, as it has been found to be synonymous with anxiety and depression.39

Modern technology meets tricky brain

Our contemporary epidemic of anxiety arises from trying to cope with today’s challenges (including a huge increase in the availability and power of technology) with yesterday’s tools (our caveman brain). When the pressures of modern life meet the ancient circuitry of our brains, anxiety happens. I call this ‘the perfect storm’, except there’s nothing perfect about it.

In our caveman days, our brains convinced us that we were weaker and slower than our predators in an effort to protect us; today, our brains still gauge our social and personal worth based on how we feel we stack up against others. As a result, we constantly make comparisons between ourselves and those around us across a variety of domains, like attractiveness, wealth, intelligence and success. This is ‘Social Comparison Theory.’40

With the advent and almost universal use of social media, people have even more ways to compare themselves to others, 24 hours a day. All of this makes for an awful lot of pressure on a daily basis. Constant exposure to what everyone else is doing can make us hyper-aware of what we’re not doing, which in turn can lead to FOMO (fear of missing out), particularly for younger people. Add to that the constant stream of everyone else’s ‘highlight reels’ (i.e. the best bits of their lives that people choose to portray on social media), and it’s easy to feel like you don’t quite measure up. If that’s so often true for us adults, imagine how your developing and impressionable child might feel!

Once children reach middle childhood they develop an increased awareness of the world beyond their family and close friends. This is when the pressures of comparing themselves to others and conforming to peers becomes apparent. In addition, children now realise that their performance in school must really matter, and that’s why the grown-ups keep harping on about it …

It’s also around this stage in a child’s development that bullying can become an inescapable problem, which relates to how children judge themselves against others. Bullying has been around forever, but it’s now relentless because of social media. Where once a bullied child got to recover in the evening at home with their family, now the bullying follows them online after school; they can carry it around in their pocket and check in at any time. Whilst there are many advantages to the advent of the smartphone and social media, for children, especially those prone to anxiety, being ‘on’ all the time keeps their Threat system on high alert, which takes away from their precious downtime.

The burden of great expectations

Dr Colman Noctor, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, puts it this way41:

Happiness = Expectations – Reality42

With a constant stream of the ‘best bits’ of everyone else’s lives in our pockets – best hair days, school reports, amazing holidays, you name it – we now live in a world that drives our expectations up, up, up. As a result, we’ve ended up with a situation in which our expectations often far exceed our capacity to meet them.

Children often have high expectations for themselves based on both internal and external pressures – expectations that don’t look all that unlike our own: ‘If I win, then I’ll be happy’; ‘If I can look this way, then I’ll be happy.’

If children were rewarded more for showing kindness to themselves and others, they’d be much happier and less anxious. They wouldn’t care as much about getting medals or the newest haircut. They wouldn’t be struggling for the impossible. Instead they’d be encouraged to look inside and find something with much greater meaning.

It’s up to us, step by step and little by little, to go back to the basics of the more important things in life if we feel that external pressures are significantly impacting on our kids. Naturally, we live in the society that we live in, and our power to change it is limited. But the culture that we create within our homes and within our schools is one that we can have a real influence over.

Managing our own expectations of our children is an important part of helping them to manage their expectations, as is trying not to live our lives through them – although this is easier said than done. Children have a right to make their own mistakes and to follow their own paths. Remember that supporting them unconditionally through the jungle of life is something they won’t get from anyone else. You are their everything in this regard, even though that may be hard to believe sometimes, especially if you’re the parent of a teenager!

Doing it for the kids: checking our motivations as parents

Your role as your child’s support system is absolutely crucial. When pressure is coming from everywhere else, you’re their stable base; you can remind them who they really are, and what really matters.

Having gone through the ups and downs of life yourself, you also have gained perspective, but you must exercise it with caution. Helping your child to realise that their feelings and thoughts are transient, and that there is light at the end of the dark tunnel is one good use of this skill. Nagging children excessively about studying or talking them into doing an activity everyone else is doing is not as good, because it’s not necessarily in their best interest.

It’s good to encourage children and show them how much you believe in them and in their ability to follow their own star.

But first, remember to ask yourself: ‘Am I doing this for me, for someone else or for them?’ If it’s mostly for them, then you’re onto a winner.

If your child is feeling anxious about their performance in something, talking about the equation

Happiness = Expectations – Reality

together might help them to see that their expectations can be very different to what reality brings them. Many things are simply not within our control, so helping anxious kids to see that can be really helpful.

You could also give them an example of a difficulty you encountered as a young person and what that was like for you. Normalising their struggles makes them feel less alone.

Disappointment and not getting what we want are part and parcel of being human, and children need practice in how to manage their hurt feelings, with us standing by their side. We are all human at the end of the day, and resilience comes from facing threats and being able to bounce back with the support of a loved one.

A case in point: Mary

A teenage client, Mary, was taking some important exams. Her father asked me whether he should be urging her to revise at every opportunity. I knew his daughter was quite stressed already and would almost certainly do herself justice in her exams. I was also aware that her school had a huge focus on achieving high marks. So this is what I said to him:

‘I think Mary is under a huge amount of pressure already. She really wants to do well in her exams and is doing the best that she can. Every time she goes into school, all she hears is “Exams, exams, exams,” and “You’ll never get another chance.”

‘What you can do at home to most nurture Mary is to feed her good brain food and to make sure she gets enough rest and takes breaks between periods of studying. You can also encourage her to do something she enjoys. Help her to get some exercise to refresh her brain, and agree on how much screen time she’s getting. Ask her if there’s anything more you can do to support her. Be there for her, but try not to add more pressure. Try just to get back to the basics of parenting: love, food, sleep, play.’

Mary’s father was relieved by my advice that he didn’t have to push his daughter along and that he could focus more on her practical and emotional needs. I also asked him to monitor whether she was experiencing a ‘normal’ amount of stress or whether her revision seemed to be tipping over into overload, in which case she had the option to come back to see me or for me to visit her at home for a cuppa.

You might be thinking this is all well and good if a child like Mary is focused enough to study, but it’s useful to consider what if a child was not so motivated to study, or if something else was going on? In such situations, what is a parent’s added pressure going to achieve? Young people have so much going on inside their heads already (e.g. ‘Will I get a job?’; ‘Will I manage on my own?’; ‘Will I make them proud?’) that going home should be their respite away from all the noise.

Mary ended up doing well enough in her exams that she could move on to the next level, but most importantly she maintained her mental health as she navigated this life challenge. This also provided another perfect ‘survive-and-thrive’ moment for her father, who gauged the difficulty, sought help and supported Mary with love and solidarity.

Exams don’t measure your true intelligence, creativity and future success, and are not a measure of you as a human being. They are part of the ‘game’ of life that you have to get through, and then you have your whole life to figure out what your passion is and to carve out your own path.43

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