Parenting kids with anxiety -
the question "How do you inoculate a child against future anguish? What do you do if your child already seems overwhelmed in the here and now?" is one a. I think about with respect to being a highly anxious child b. I think about with respect to parenting, where surely the world will be increasingly anguishing and c. I think about with respect to working with kids, where most of my jobs in schools have been mitigating anxiety/stress/general overwhelm.
the "Anxiety disorders are well worth preventing, but anxiety itself is not something to be warded off. It is a universal and necessary response to stress and uncertainty" is an interesting piece of that, but I think so much about how "anxiety disorders" will adapt as the world gets more and more stressful and uncertain. It feels like there is just exponentially mounting stress between the climate apocalypse, global pandemic, mass shootings, police violence, teen suicide epidemic, etc. etc. etc. with no solution in sight. How do you deal with a response that is paralyzing, but warranted? How do you help your kid who is scared to death of drowning when they're in the middle of the ocean and have been treading water for 12 hours? What do I say to my students who come to me every week saying how afraid they are to walk to school because they might get shot if I'm also worried about that?
I do think the DBT distress tolerance concept in this article IS useful, and I do love the mention of SPACE (which I told my supervisor about and she immediately had a family she wanted to refer). I will note though, that although I agree with the thing about anxiety disorders and gender being a how parents respond thing, I also think there's more to the story than that. Women in adulthood DO literally have more to be anxious about. Being a woman in the world IS more dangerous. Also the ways we socialize femininity are designed to make women dependent, so of course there's a higher prevalence of anxiety disorders if we aren't telling them to suck it up.