I am a nanny, and just recently finished working with a very anxious mom.
As a professional you adapt (and maybe gently push mom to try out new things so she can realize that those things aren’t actually as scary or unsafe as her head might tell her it is) but also it’s ROUGH. Her husband (and the rest of the family if I am honest) were definitely fed up with the level of anxiety (they were not all as expressive about it as others but their face/behavior/eyerolls said it all.)
Honestly, even though she actually incredibly accepted likely to give me more freedom than her natural comfort level would have been like (I didn’t ask for it but she was working on a massive work project so had to leave her baby with me 90% of the time so didn’t have much choice but to trust me), the 10% she was there it was incredibly stressful. And sometimes, even almost detrimental to her kid.
It’s a horrible thing to say and she is completely lovely and cares so much about her child, and wasn’t a bad mom at all per se, but her anxiety about all kind of random things (some justified, but most not really) meant that everything was suddenly 100 times harder and more complicated when she was around. She would also ALWAYS talk about worst case scenarios and kind of address a situation starting from her own panicked mind and kind of push it onto the child.
For example, it’s summer time, by default cars are mainly warm when you initially get in them. It’s really not that big of a deal, you just keep the windows down for a bit, wait for AC to cool down the car and nobody will die. Her child never ever had an issue when just with me or with me and his dad, but if mom was there, we weren’t even in the car yet that she was already panicking about how the kid was gonna be hot. And oh my god he is likely over heating “right X (insert kid name) you are hot! Uh it’s too hot! !” So he would just start repeating “Hot!” Even though he is fine and that car would be cooled down within 2 minutes.
if we went down a hill with the stroller she would start panicking that he could roll down the hill, and can I please make sure I am extremely careful (in the meantime I have been up and down the hill with that same kid 20 times that week just fine).
it’s exhausting, even crackers she would give him to eat she would have to preceed with a warning of “careful, that cracker is sharp! oh my god X please chew, it’s dangerous, it’s quite sharp!”
Everything seemed dangerous to her. And she did know she was overtly anxious and said she was trying to get better and did want to get therapy but honestly her anxiety created so much work for everyone and honestly was starting to create completely unnecessary anxiety in her own child who (thankfully was/is naturally chill and not anxious at all about anything). this mom it/was the first to say how bad she felt about being so anxious all the time, and so I tried to encourage her to force herself to seek help and work on her anxiety (ideally with a professional) so as to feel better for herself but also not push her kid to live the same life she has had to live as it’s not healthy.
OP, your anxiety isn’t under control. Yours seems only fine when people follow your instructions to the letter, but that’s not what having your anxiety under control should technically be like. What it should be like is “I know this person isn’t going to try and cause harm to my baby and so I trust them to make reasonable decisions so I am not going to panick if they walk away to the next aisle with her.” And actually do the work of sitting in your own anxiety about them being in the next aisle enough times that it leading to no negative consequences each time help you realize that it’s fine. Soothing your own anxieties by controlling others and their interaction with your child only benefit you, not your child.
Your child shouldn’t be under the impression that you not being near them at all time is a threat, or that being kissed is dangerous for their health or that sitting on the grass is a danger to them. By panicking about those things you are also teaching your kid that your reactions to those things are normal.
Allow your kid to also be in presence (and in the care) of people who have more relaxed approaches to certain aspects of life than you. If you don’t feel comfortable doing certain things yourself. Allow someone who feels confident to do it safely to do it, so your kid can get to experience it. Don’t have your kid miss out on affection, the joys of crawling in the grass or having moments of exploring new things independently from you just because those things scare you. The onus is on you to work on seeing those things differently rather than trying to control it all and trying and stop things that have more benefits than risks from happening.