News from the College Counsellors

Anxiety and Avoidance

We talk to a lot of the students we see about avoiding the avoidance trap that anxiety likes so much. Parents can also fall into this trap and often ask how they can help and what they can do when anxiety becomes unmanageable and causes so much distress in the home and in the family.

Most feelings of anxiety last for only a short time – a few hours or a day. An anxiety problem or an anxiety disorder is when anxious feelings are consistently very intense and severe, go on for weeks, months or even longer and are so distressing that they interfere with a young person’s learning, socialising and ability to do everyday things.

Anxiety comes from a strong, healthy brain that is a little overprotective. The amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for keeping us safe) will fire up at the first sign of possible threat. Separation from a loved one, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, unfamiliarity, exclusion, missing out on something important – all count as a ‘possible threat’ to a protective brain. 

When our children feel unsafe, their distress will alert us – a bigger, stronger adult, to a possible threat and need for protection. The human response to threat is the fight or flight response (anxiety). Therefore anxiety in our children is likely to trigger anxiety in us. This is the way parent-child attachment is meant to work. As loving, committed parents, when our children are distressed, our own powerful, instinctive fight or flight response will motivate us to take action to keep them safe. 

Their anxiety brings out our own, as it is meant to. It’s primitive and it’s powerful, and we’ve been doing it this way for a very long time. What happens next is up to us. We can send back anxiety or we can short-circuit their anxiety by sending back calm. We can lead by co-regulation or follow in co-dysregulation.

If we calm our own nervous system, it will eventually calm theirs. This doesn’t mean we cause anxiety. We don’t. It means we feel the anxiety that is in them first, as we are meant to. 

Anxiety can inadvertently be encouraged by behaviours such as supporting avoidance of uncomfortable places, people or experiences, over-reassuring, changing the environment to avoid anything that might fuel anxiety, or accommodating obsessive-compulsive behaviours (either by joining in or making way for them). 

Avoidance takes away the opportunity for the amygdala to learn that there is another way to feel calm, and that is to stay with the situation for long enough for anxiety to ease on its own. When we lift our children out of the way of anxiety by supporting their avoidance, we take away the opportunity for them to learn that anxiety is temporary, and will always ease on its own eventually. 

What are we protecting our children from? 

The answer most often is fear. When the situation is actually safe, we are not protecting them from harm, but from them experiencing the fear of harm. Protecting them when they don’t need protection is over-protection. This is usually done with the most loving intent but it can also shrink their world as it is just on the other side of fear that our children learn what they are capable of. It’s how they stretch their boundaries and start to discover their potential. When they move through fear, they learn that what feels scary most often isn’t, that they can be anxious and brave at the same time, and that they can do hard things and survive. When our children respond to anxiety with avoidance, rather than moving through this, they lose the opportunity to learn these important lessons. They will stay safe in that moment, but they won’t realise they are capable of bigger, braver things. 

For further reading and help on this topic go to Hey Sigmund 

Always seek guidance and advice from your doctor if you are concerned about a young person’s persistent anxiety or low mood. 

If you would like to discuss these or other issues, please contact your daughter’s House Coordinator or the College Counsellors on 02 9816 2041 or email Carly.boaler@syd.catholic.edu.au and Louise.scuderi@syd.catholic.edu.au

This article on College life meets The Archbishop’s Charter for Catholic Schools – Charter #2, #6 & #8