I wrote about anxiety not too long ago in a post about stress and its effect on children. But I have been feeling the need to write more about anxiety. PBS just aired 6 hours worth of programming on how we function as human beings called This Emotional Life. The second segment, "Facing Our Fears," contains valuable information on anxiety and coping skills and I would recommend it to all.

But my reason for writing about anxiety is a little closer to home. One of my family members admitted to me that she is experiencing anxiety attacks in these troubled economic times. Since I have had a lot of experience with anxiety, I am "anxious" to find a way to make life easier for her!

One of the things that has been most useful to me in my understanding of anxiety is the following equation: Panic = Increased Perception of Danger divided by Decreased Belief in Coping Skills and Resources

In order to get over panic, first it is essential that you decrease the perception of danger. To do so, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are these symptoms I'm feeling truly dangerous?


2. What is the absolute worst thing that could happen?


3. Am I telling myself anything that is making this worse?


4. What is the most supportive thing I could do for myself right now?

Second, however, you must also increase your belief in your coping skills and resources. Following is a list of helpful hints for beginning that process. I picked this list up somewhere along the way, but can't remember who should be credited.

• Remember that although your feelings and symptoms are frightening, they are neither dangerous nor harmful.


• Understand that what you're experiencing is merely an exaggeration of your normal reactions to stress.


• Don't fight your feelings or try to wish them away. The more willing you are to face them, the less intense they will become. (See my post on Body Talk)


• Don't add to your panic by thinking about what might happen. If you find yourself wondering, "What if?" tell yourself, "So what!"


• Stay in the present. Notice what is happening to you rather than concern yourself with how much worse it might get.


• Label your fear level from zero to 10 and watch it go up and down. Notice that it doesn't stay at a very high level for more than a few seconds.


• When you find yourself thinking about fear, focus on and perform some simple, manageable task. (or wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap yourself to remind yourself to think of something else).


• Notice that when you stop thinking frightening thoughts, your anxiety fades.


• Ground yourself. Touch the floor or some other object.


• When fear comes, accept it; don't fight it. Wait and give it time to pass.


• Be proud of the progress you've made. Think about how good you will feel when the anxiety has passed and you are in total control and at peace.

Finally, rehearse your new behaviors. Write down some of your fears on one side of a 3x5 card and write your coping response on the other side. Begin to take control of your anxiety and watch it disappear!

With one holiday behind us and several more ahead, this might be a good time to talk about stress. This particular year may be an extremely stressful holiday for you and your family with the economy on the skids for more than a year. How do you handle stress in your life and in your relationship? But more particularly, how does the way you handle stress impact the stress level of your children?

When marriage and parenting researcher John Gottman, Ph.D. was studying marriage relationships, he originally assessed parents' stressors by giving them a written test to gauge the level of stress in the family. He learned, however, that measuring the stress hormone levels in the children was a more effective way to quickly get to the truth.

When my oldest son was around five years old, we lived in a place where we often needed to take a ferry. Catching ferries with a couple of little kids in tow was a very stressful time for me, but I didn’t realize how that stress was affecting my son until one day he stated, "Mom, I know how to catch a ferry on time!" "How is that?" I asked. "You just breathe like this!" (whereupon he demonstrated rapidly breathing in and out). I was horrified to realize that my behavior was having such a direct impact on his young psyche. I began to work at slowing down, breathing deeply, leaving home earlier to avoid the stress, and realizing that missing the ferry wasn't the end of the world.

That same son now has a five-year-old of his own and this grandson recently gave me a new story. Sitting at my dining room table, he asked me several times if I was a witch. I was shocked, until I realized that with a slight speech impediment he was really asking me if I was RICH. We had a back and forth conversation at that point and it seemed to me that he was quite concerned about money and what it means to be rich. Since I know his parents are struggling in these economic times, I told them of his comment and we had a good conversation about being open about what was going on, but at the same time, recognizing just how much a 5 year old can take in and process.

Often, in times of stress, a child will act out in some way and parents might miss the fact that this is related to stressors in the family. The child can easily become the "identified patient," when there is actually something deeper going on. In my last post, I talked about how some of the feelings we might have as adults can have roots back in our early childhood. As adults, it is important that we are open to learning about our own stress behaviors so that we don't unnecessarily burden our children. I will discuss emotion coaching in a further post. (Emotion coaching is a way to help children process the emotions that they are having.) But the purpose of this post is to help you, the parent, think about how your own stress impacts your children and begin to find ways to deal with that stress.

One of the most effective ways of lowering your stress level is to practice deep breathing. Here are some steps:

1. Take a deep breath and say something comforting to yourself when you exhale: "It's okay" or "Relax" are good options.


2. Watch your breathing. Allow it to slow down and try to breathe from your diaphragm using your full lung capacity.


3. Enhance your relaxation with a memory or image of a peaceful, serene situation - watching stars from a hilltop, lying on a warm beach, or whatever else works for you.


4. Enhance your relaxation by systematically tensing (for five seconds) and relaxing (for 15 seconds) specific small groups of muscles, one group at a time.


5. Enhance your relaxation by using environmental cues - a favorite chair or wrap, listening to a soothing piece of music, or whatever else might be available to you where you are.

Of course, there are a lot of factors involved in lowering the stress levels in your home. Most often if things are chaotic, it is the adults in the family who have the ability to make changes. In the ferry instance I cited above, one solution would be to work at leaving home earlier and not always being in a rush. Or how about discussing financial issues that are stressful after the children are in bed, keeping the discussion at an age-appropriate level when they're around? If your mornings are stressful, find ways to plan ahead the night before in order to change how your family members start the day. The most important thing to remember is that children do feel our stress, even when we think we are good at hiding it!

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?

One of the comments I received on my "I Statement" post had to do with the feelings involved when you are actually confronted with someone else's I statement about your own behavior. This brings me to another helpful exercise that I have used with clients throughout the years, but more importantly, one I use on myself.

In the early years of my marriage, I often got my feelings hurt by exchanges with my husband or other family members and would sometimes take several days before I was ready or willing to move on. The pain of rejection or of just being “wrong” was more than I could bear emotionally. I would get an extremely uncomfortable “knot in my stomach” at these times that kept me from functioning at a very high level.

What I have learned over time, however, is that often there are deeper feelings underlying my present thoughts, feelings, or reactions. It is important to start to recognize those other issues and find a way to confront them.

A word of warning: This exercise has the power to pull up very strong memories or images from your past. If what you bring up is more than you expected, or you are aware of abuse or trauma in your background, you need to consider doing some work with a therapist to help you walk through the issues that have perhaps been ignored from your past. More often, however, the particular image that you are able to evoke comes from a time in your early childhood when you experienced a similar feeling or fear and might seem minor to you as an adult.

Body Talk

The theory behind this exercise is that you developed a coping skill in your past that was necessary to your survival or your understanding of the world, usually at a very young age. As an adult, however, that same coping skill is now the culprit, leading you to act in ways that aren’t using your full maturity and potential. Paying attention to the body message helps you begin to regain that control and act differently. I’ll describe the exercise and then give you an example of my own to illustrate its use.
I am not sure where credit belongs for this exercise. I learned it from a fellow therapist and have expanded it on my own.

1. Contact

Put an open palm on that part of your body where you are feeling something. Concentrate on the feeling. See how it “looks” as in what color, size, shape; does it move around, or stay in one place? Size of a grape? Or a football field? Make any sounds? Use your imagination. The better you describe the feeling, the more successful the exercise can be. Be sure you can feel the warmth of your palm on that body part, using the gentleness you would with a newborn infant.

2. Thank You

Say out loud to your gut – even if it feels stupid: “Thank you for sending me a message that I have something to pay attention to!”

The guiding principles are twofold:

• All my feelings are my friends/on my team. They are acting in my best interest in sending me this feeling. (I suspect you usually try to make this gut feeling go away, right?)


• Feelings are messengers, not the message. Greet them as you would any messenger: with warmth and curiosity.

3. Invitation

Say this: “I am willing to understand and change the pattern in me which is leading to this feeling.” (Are you willing?) Then invite your subconscious mind, inner child, or God (depending on what your belief system is about these things) to send you a hint, picture or memory about what is behind the messenger.

A response can take five seconds, or it can take five months, of repeated invitations. Don’t reject anything that comes. Lots of times clients will have a picture of themselves as child, and say, “Oh, I was sure that wasn’t what you meant...” Take whatever comes to you.

When you get a response, follow it until you can complete the following:

• Can you see that you were doing the best, given the circumstances? Think this one through. What could you have possibly done at that time to change things? If a child, would you have been able to take control of the adults in the picture? If a teen, how much real power did you have to change your world?


• Do you have other better ways of responding now? Name them. Be creative again. There are lots of things one can do differently as an adult than they could have as a child or younger person.


• Would it be all right to give up that old way of responding?

4. Affirmation

Say: “This is an old feeling that belongs to back then. I can let it go!” The theory is that your gut is reacting as it learned as a younger person, not as you today would actually act, given all your resources. Your body’s natural healing response that helped you survive as a younger person is now automatically reacting to situations where you don’t really need to feel it in your gut.

Say: “This is his/her feeling, not mine. I can let it be!” To be used when your reactions are really you feeling something someone else should be feeling and taking care of!

5. Thanks Again

Say: "Thank you again for sending me a message. I am going to do whatever is necessary so that you won’t have to work so hard on my behalf.” This is you, making a promise to your gut.

From here out, you should begin to notice every time your stomach takes over for you and try to find those different ways of responding, rather than the old reaction. Then you begin to keep shorter accounts. If I feel my gut go off, for example, I know that there is something I need to take care of, and I immediately do so. Example: When your gut goes off, first you put your hand on your stomach and send yourself the thanks again message; then maybe you need to go and talk to someone or write a letter or just wait and see if you can let go of the anger, frustration, or whatever feeling it is.

If you don’t get a picture in exercise above, then begin to notice every time your gut goes off and ask again for the picture, until you have one. Or, you will find that just paying attention makes change start to happen.

The great debate

Body Talk has done significant things both for myself and for clients I have worked with. Here’s an example from my own past.

My son was competing for a state title in debate when he was in high school. I attended the final competition and was sitting in a chair with such a knot in my stomach I could not see how I could stay in the room and watch. Instead, I went through the above exercise.

I received an immediate response to my request. I saw a picture of myself at five or six years old, sitting on my father’s lap, looking out a window and waiting for my mother to return. She had gone to watch a fire in town - a hobby she would probably be arrested for today if she were found attending fires just for the excitement! But this particular time, I knew that my mother had gone to see a very large fire and my stomach was in knots. As I ran through this exercise in my head and thanked my gut for giving me a message to attend to, I was able to realize that the anxiety of the moment had its roots in the past. I made the statement in this instance that “This is an old feeling that belongs back there; I can let it go.” The statement, “This is his feeling, not mine; I can let it be,” also applied. I was able to release the anxiety and fully enjoy the challenge my son had undertaken. By the way, he came in second, but should have been first in state! [Aw, thanks Mom. – Ed.]

Even if you only begin to do the first part of this exercise – the part about noticing and thanking your body for reminding you to pay attention – I hope you will begin to see changes in yourself and how you act in relationships.

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?