but so is calm
Harriet Learner
Anxiety is a really important and
normal human experience. Way back when,
when our ancestors were living in caves and foraging for food anxiety was
actually the thing that kept them alive because it alerted them to potential danger. Imagine walking out of your cave to find
dinner and there is a tiger lurking in the trees. What you need in that moment is your brain to
immediately spot the tiger and to prepare your body to either run away to
safety or to fight the tiger. The cavemen who quickly spotted the tiger are the
cavemen who survived (our ancestors) so this skill has been passed on through
the generations. What this means is that
our brains are wired to be on the lookout for possible danger all the time and
once potential danger is spotted a very specific response called the
fight-flight-freeze response is activated and this is what prepares our body to
keep us safe.
So far so good, we see something
dangerous and our body goes into an automatic reaction to keep us safe. However, the part of our brain that notices
and responds to potential danger, the amygdala, is not a thinker it’s a
doer and can be a little bit overprotective.
So, when the amygdala sees something that might be dangerous it
swings into action. When the danger is a
tiger lurking in the trees this is super helpful but when the potential
‘danger’ is the possibility of someone laughing when you have to speak in front
of the class this is not so helpful.
When our amygdala swings into action a number of things happen to get us
ready to protect ourselves from the perceived threat, activating what
scientists call our fight, flight, freeze response.
1. Our body is flooded with what we call
neurochemicals, things like adrenaline and cortisol. These neurochemicals are amazing and can
actually make our bodies stronger, increase our focus and make us much more
alert. So, when we experience our heart
beating faster, our body feeling tense, our mouth feeling dry and even the
butterfly feeling in our tummies remember this is completely normal and incredibly
helpful if we are facing a tiger.
2. When
this happens in our bodies we know from science that our downstairs brain
(where the amygdala lives) has taken over and we no longer have access to the
upstairs part of our brain which is where we do all of our thinking and
planning (psychologists call this our executive function) And this makes sense, if we are in the path
of a tiger we don’t have time to think and contemplate what the best course of
action may be, we need our body to just react and get us to safety.
So, despite the bad press anxiety
gets it is actually the most protective system in our body and in small doses
can be really beneficial in supporting us to be more focused and alert. Things start to get tricky when our amygdala
becomes overprotective and starts to see potential threats everywhere it looks….
will that woman standing next to me try and take my purse, what if the teacher
asks me a question, what if I jump into the water and can’t breathe and so the
list continues. And this is genuinely tricky because when the amygdala triggers
our FFF response and our body is flooded with neurochemicals if we don’t have
something to fight or run away from this can feel really uncomfortable and it’s
hard to manage because remember the upstairs part of our brain, the part that
does all our thinking and planning, is not available when are overwhelmed by
anxiety.
So what can we do to help…
Firstly, as parents we need to
check in with ourselves, are we also feeling overwhelmed with big feeling? This might be anger or frustration because
this is the third time this week that you are late for work because your child
is struggling or it might be that we have literally caught our children’s
anxiety – when our child feels unsafe and distressed these emotions are
incredibly contagious and can often trigger our own FFF response. This is part of the human attachment system
and is perfectly normal but perhaps not overly helpful in some situations. It’s
very hard to support our children in a helpful way when our own upstairs brain
is offline. So …. breath …. I know it’s very hard to have faith in something we
do all day every day but taking slow deliberate deep breaths (in for 4 out for
8) reduces hyperarousal, fact, and the brilliant thing is that you don’t even
have to believe it will work, it is a biological certainty.
Once you feel calmer and more
regulated the most important (and sometimes the most difficult) thing we can do
is connect with our child. This might look
something like “I can see that you are really worried right now and I am
wondering how horrible that must feel for you”. A simple statement like this has two very
important functions. Firstly, you are supporting your child to both recognise
and label what they are experiencing and secondly you are allowing them to feel
seen and understood. When our children feel deeply seen and understood by us,
they have so much more courage to manage the worry and anxiety they are
experiencing. This connection and
renewed sense of safety is like an off switch and will dramatically reduce
their hyperarousal and allow them to bring the thinking part of their brains
back online. And this is important because without access to the thinking part
of the brain it’s almost impossible to move forward.
What’s next …..
Once we have connected with our
children and their amygdala is in a calmer place we can start to think about
the next steps.
One of the ways we all manage
anxiety is through avoidance. And this
makes perfect sense. When something is making
us feel distressed and anxious once we make the decision not to attend or to
leave the situation, we are immediately rewarded with a lovely calming
sensation which lets us know that our amygdala has stood down (at least
temporarily) from its position. The
trouble with this approach is that the next time we are in the same situation
our amygdala remembers what happened last time and will try even harder to get
us to avoid the situation again by increasing the level of anxiety we
experience.
And it’s the same for our
children. Every time we allow them to
avoid the scary stuff, we are actually robbing them of the opportunity to learn
that if they can find their brave and stay in the situation for long enough
their anxiety will ease all by itself, teaching their amygdala that staying in
the scary situation is actually OK.
Sometimes our children can do this in one big step and sometimes they
need to take lots of much smaller steps, and that’s OK the important thing is
that they are moving towards the thing that is making them frightened instead
of away.
Be patient …
Our brains are full of neural
pathways, some of them smooth and fast and some of them bumpy and full of
potholes like a farm track. If your
child has been avoiding scary things for a long time it’s highly possible that
this neural pathway (called avoidance) is very smooth and fast which means the
determination to keep taking this path will be strong. When
we are trying to build or strengthen a new neural pathway (or habit) this
requires lots and lots of deliberate effort because the smooth and fast pathway
is always going to be more attractive and hard to resist. But just remember that by supporting your
child to choose the farm track (staying instead of going) you are not only
turning the farm track into something much smoother and faster (and therefore
making it more likely that your child will start to independently choose this
pathway) you are also sending them a loud clear message that you believe in
them and you believe that they can do hard things.
Lastly ….
This is hard. Anxiety is a normal natural response to
anything our brain perceives as threatening.
An overprotective brain develops over a long time and although the only
way to reduce anxiety is to remove avoidance this doesn’t have to happen
overnight. Small steps will eventually
turn into giant leaps. The direction of
travel is so much more important than the speed.
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