Things I want my kids to know

This is a question I get asked a lot.

First of all, let’s get out on the table that all worries are based in reality, really. We are very rarely worried about something that we know for certain could never ever happen. Even something like a child worrying about monsters under the bed: the fear is about being scared or being harmed. Of course that is a possibility, even if it is unlikely. It is very unlikely that the first ever discovery of a new species of child-eating animal is going to happen in your bedroom, but we can’t say that it is never ever going to be a possibility.

However, sometimes the things we are worried about are perhaps more rooted in our concrete reality. If your child is being bullied and you are worried about whether they are OK, if you have some financial difficulty and you are worried about whether you will be able to pay the bills, or if you are waiting for some test results that have the possibility of bad news in there.

Sometimes when we are anxious but we can see that we are getting ahead of ourselves, then we can deal with the anxiety by recognising that and saying “It is probably going to be OK, really” and that can help (sometimes). However, when it is something “real” then that just isn’t an option. So, what are we supposed to do instead?

For me, the first thing is acknowledging that it is perfectly reasonable to be worried. Asking yourself how you would expect someone else to feel in your shoes is a good way of doing this. If you can see that perhaps it is reasonable to be worried, then instead of asking “How can I stop feeling worried about this?” Maybe you can ask instead “If I accept that I am probably going to be worried about this, how would I like to respond to that today?”

Some of that will be about taking care of yourself. Recognising that if the anxiety is going to be there, that is draining and exhausting, so maybe right now it would be helpful to work with that. Cutting yourself some slack if you don’t have the energy for some things. Looking after your physical health including eating and rest.

Other aspects of it will be to do with being honest with yourself about what helps and what doesn’t. When we are worried about something, we tend to want to spend our time checking or seeking reassurance - with illness it might be checking symptoms, Googling things and asking other people for their opinion, for example – or we want to do things that make it all disappear for a while. That might be avoiding people, keeping busy, scrolling, whatever it might be. Sometimes those things will be helpful and just what we need, but sometimes they go too far and become unhelpful. You can only check so many times in a day before it starts to become counter-productive. Avoiding people might be what you need some days, but if you avoid them all the time you might start to feel worse.

The final thing is about mindfulness. If you can’t stop the worries being there, you can work on not getting completely sucked into them. If you are out and about trying to have a nice day but the worries are interfering, practice gently bringing yourself back into the present moment. That is a hard thing to do sometimes, but using your senses is a really good way of helping yourself with it. Focus of the feeling of your feet on the floor, the cold in the air, the sounds of the people around you. The colours you can see, textures you can feel. Move your body, feel what that is like.

It doesn’t make the anxiety go away, but that is kind of the point: maybe that wasn’t really possible in the first place. Instead of fighting that, sometimes accepting it is a more helpful way to go.

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Thanks for reading. Until next week,

Ted

P.S. I am covering this in a webinar for Breast Cancer Now on the topic of “Anxiety after breast cancer treatment” on Tuesday 18th November at 12:00. Please click here if that might be helpful for you or anyone you know.