Debra Kissen - Overcoming Parental Anxiety: Rewire Your Brain to Worry Less and Enjoy Parenting More

Overcoming Parental Anxiety is a book that should be given to every parent! It provides essential information to help you understand why parenting is so often anxiety-provoking. More importantly, it provides really helpful ways to get unhooked from anxiety and accept the realities of being an imperfect parent. This book will help you get back to enjoying being a parent.

Kimberly Morrow, LCSW , co-owner of Anxiety Training, and coauthor of CBT for Anxiety

Parenting in the modern age can be perilous, but it need not be ridden with anxiety. This formative text, which provides practical guidance based on current evidence, is a must-read for anxious parents!

David H. Rosmarin, PhD, ABPP , founder of the Center for Anxiety, and associate professor at Harvard Medical School

Timely and practical, Overcoming Parental Anxiety is truly essential for all parents. This book will show you how to tame the anxiety that is so often present in parenting, and instead find joy, compassion, and connection with your child. Well written and full of useful tools, the authors use a brain-based approach to teach you to rewire your brain to be a calmer, more present, and more effective parent. Highly recommended!

Kevin L. Gyoerkoe, PsyD , director of The Anxiety and OCD Treatment Center in Charlotte, NC; and coauthor of 10 Simple Solutions to Worry and The Pregnancy and Postpartum Anxiety Workbook

This is the perfect book for the anxious family. Helping your children manage their own anxiety begins with you learning how to deal with yours. This book not only offers tools and strategies to reduce your own worries, but it gives practical advice to help you parent your anxious children. The guidance is easy to follow and is based on research for the best treatment for anxiety.

Ken Goodman, LCSW , member of the board of directors for the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, and author of The Anxiety Solution Series and The Emetophobia Manual

Overcoming Parental Anxiety provides parents with practical tools for coping with childrens anxiety. It also addresses the critical issue of helping parents manage their own anxiety. Parents are helped to reduce unrealistic expectations and identify unproductive catastrophic and perfectionistic thinking. Ultimately, the book guides parents toward more flexible, resilient, and relaxed parenting. This book will become a treasured resource for parents yearning to create a better emotional climate for their families.

Judith Davis, PhD , retired clinical psychologist with forty years experience treating families

The guidebook todays stressed parents need to transform themselves and their families. Based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and grounded in research, this book will give you step-by-step instructions so you can rewire your brain as you become confident parents and enjoy your children and your life.

Elizabeth DuPont Spencer, LCSW-C , clinical social worker, and coauthor of CBT for Anxiety

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

NEW HARBINGER PUBLICATIONS is a registered trademark of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

New Harbinger Publications is an employee-owned company.

Copyright 2022 by Debra Kissen, Micah Ioffe, Hannah Romain
New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
5674 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
www.newharbinger.com

All Rights Reserved

Cover design by Sara Christian; Acquired by Jennye Garibaldi; Edited by Kristi Hein

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kissen, Debra, author. | Ioffe, Micah, author. | Romain, Hannah, author.

Title: Overcoming parental anxiety : rewire your brain to worry less and enjoy parenting more / Debra Kissen, PhD, MHSA, Micah Ioffe, PhD, Hannah Romain, LCSW.

Description: Oakland, CA : New Harbinger Publications, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022026215 | ISBN 9781648480300 (trade paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Parenting--Psychological aspects. | Parent and child--Psychological aspects. | Mindfulness (Psychology) | Cognitive therapy. | Acceptance and commitment therapy. | BISAC: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / General | PSYCHOLOGY / Neuropsychology

Classification: LCC BF723.P25 K57 2022 | DDC 155.9/24--dc23/eng/20220810

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026215

Contents

Foreword

Parenting an anxious child can be a daunting task. Your childs anxiety can make them not just anxious but also demanding, irritable, and needy. Your child wants you to do something now to get rid of the anxiety fast. If you dare to research information about anxiety and kids, you likely will encounter some concerning information about how overparenting and overaccommodation makes anxiety worse. You might encounter contradictory information: one article tells you to prioritize your childs emotional attachment because failure to build a healthy attachment leads to anxiety; the next article says to ignore your childs anxious tantrum and push them to practice the thing they fear. If you are like most parents, you feel confused, pressured to get it right, and worried about your childs future. You then accidentally end up running in the same hamster wheel of worry and anxiety your child experiences. You end up feeling just as distressed as your child when you know you are supposed to be the adult who can skillfully lead them through the situation.

Overcoming Parental Anxiety is your practical and scientific guide for managing the problem that all parents of anxious children face: learning to manage their own anxiety while having to simultaneously teach their child how to manage their childs own anxiety. Each chapter describes key areas that challenge all parents of anxious children and provides easy-to-digest nuggets of information and effective tools that can radically improve your parenting. The authors address the problems of anxiety-reinforcing beliefs, unhelpful thought patterns, the negative effect of significant painful past experiences, and inaccurate beliefs about parenting. Youll discover a lucid explanation of how the brains preference for attending to frightening and negative information predisposes both you and your child to choose thought patterns and behaviors that unintentionally worsen anxiety. This book also explains how practicing new thoughts and behaviors can rewire the parent brain , making you a more effective parent, better able to raise a more effective child. You will learn how easily your emotional reaction to your childs anxiety can either exacerbate fear or promote improved coping, based on your demeanor and words. In short, this book is your codebook to help yourself step out of self-criticism and blame for your childs anxiety and step into a calm, centered, effective parenting style that shows you know what you are doing and why.

The exercises in this book will help you become the kind of parent you admireconfident in yourself and your strategies for handling your and your childs anxiety, even when things go awry. As you set up your Training Journal and practice the exercises, youll feel less stressed, more in control, and less burdened by the task of parenting an anxious child. Youll learn you can parent according to your highest values, no longer worrying about what other parents are doing and how your child is acting compared to others. You can let go of the parenting behaviors you feel secretly ashamed ofwriting most of your teens school paper, screaming at them because they just reneged on their promise to go to school for the forty thousandth time, or letting your ten-year-old sleep with you while your partner sleeps in the childs bed. Lastly, you will become a good role model for your child. This is especially important, because children learn much more from our actions than from our words.