Making DD deal with her anxiety on her own

[folly115]

My 16 yr old DD suffers from anxiety and when she is anxious she feels more comfortable if I am with her to help her through it. As she is getting older and she is up against more situations that make her anxious I can't always be with her to help her through it as I have to be at work and can't take time off to be with her before she does something new everytime.

Tomorrow she has a taster day at 6th form and she is really really anxious but I have to be at work early for a meeting tomorrow she is really scared of catching the bus so we agreed her dad can take her which she isnt happy about,

She says she feels more relaxed if she is anxious with me but if I make sure I am with her everytime she feels anxious am I sort of enabling her anxiety. She says I am really mean not taking her and her anxiety will be 10 times worse if I don't take her.

Is making her deal with it on her own a bad thing?

A lot of it is control. She is using you to control her anxiety like a blanket, and while I can see your point, she also feels let down that your not jumping in to help like you always have. could go out this evening for a drink at a pub or go shopping and take her to see the place while it is quiet?

Yanbu. She's 16 and has to learn. I say that as a mother with a child with severe anxiety and mental health issues.

Have you heard of co-regulating? Basically she's got used to you helping her to regulate her emotional state which isn't a bad thing for children but it's also not a bad thing to work towards her self-regulating more as she gets older IMO. You won't always be able to be there as she gets older and moves into adulthood. Plus she's got her Dad as support so she's not on her own is she?

I don't know if it would work for your DD, but my DD at that age would take something of mine sprayed with my perfume to keep in her bag, and I promised I would be thinking about her all day but I just couldn't be with her as I had to go to work.

What mechanisms is she learning for self-regulating? Is she using any books or online resources?

Check out someone like Dr Julie on tiktok/instagram. Good ideas for handling anxiety.

You're right that you can't be there all the time but you do need to help her to make sure she's learning to cope herself.

Is your dd getting any other help for her anxiety? If not I'd recommend some CBT/counselling if you can afford it. If not a visit to the go (be aware it's a long wait for camhs)

You shouldn't have to support her so much but if she's been relying on you then withdrawing that support without an alternative coping mechanism in place could be messy

Go should be GP

My DD went through this at around the same age, we got her some counselling through MIND. It was CBT counselling and was amazing. She had an online workbook to work through and they gave her coping strategies etc. She found it really helpful and while the anxiety hasn't completely gone away, it is much less severe and she now has excellent coping methods when it reads it's head.

At the time she was also extremely clingy with me. Literally followed me from room to room and needed to be near me. I don't know if it was right or wrong but I allowed it. Didn't try to stop it and just accepted she needed that from me at that moment in time. I still don't know if it was the right thing to do on a "healing" or "helping" level but she seems to have come out the other side unscathed and now I barely see her as she's so busy! I do think it actually brought us closer together though and she is very comfortable now with just saying she's having a bit of an anxious day etc.

She has been prescribed propranolol which she says helps and it got her through GCSE's but she doesn't like to take it all the time because she doesn't want to become reliant on it. She has come along way since this time last year when she was actually being sick with worry before exams or anything new or different - now she is more able to control her fears when she feels sick and isn't actually sick. She avoids alot of stuff because she hates the feeling that comes with it but things like GCSE's and taster days are unavoidable so she has to deal with it.

She had counselling for 6 months which really helped but we just don't have the money to fund any more sessions. I keep getting her to think back to these sessions and use the strategies she was taught.

I think I do need to step back and let her try and deal with it herself. I always seem to step in and save her. For example tomorrow she needs to get herself home after her taster day and she is really scared about how. She is going to have to get the bus or train and work it out for herself, because of her anxiety I think I have stepped in and done too much for her, I have done this because I love her and I want to make sure she is ok but at 16 she needs to start working things out for herself.

(Forgive me if you've covered this as part of her counselling.) When she tells you she's scared about getting the bus or train you could mentally walk her through the most likely scenarios and devise strategies that she can use should something go wrong. For example, having cash in case a card/phone payment fails, knowing the names of the two stops that precede the one she needs to get off, knowing roughly how long the journey takes, etc. Knowledge = confidence.

I suffered anxiety at that age and my mum was my comfort blanket too. However I realised she couldn't be with me every time I felt anxious. She had to work etc. I had to deal with anxiety on my own in a lot of situations then would come home and kind of emotionally collapse when I saw my mum. It must have been such a difficult time for her.