10 Signs Your Child May Be Suffering from Anxiety
Watching your child suffer from anxiety can be devastating as you see parts of their personality gradually change to the point where you may no longer recognise them.
When your child starts to suffer from anxiety it is important to know how to recognise these signs before the symptoms become amplified to the point of being debilitating to the child’s everyday life.
Anxiety is an emotion borne from fear:
Fear of the unknown
Fear of being bullied
Fear of not being in control
Fear of not being accepted
Fear of being different
Fear of being a focal point
Fear of rejection
Fear of success (believe it or not!)
Fear of change, and the list goes on
Some parents refer to anxiety as “going to hell and back”. The point is there are strategies that can be learnt to help minimise the effects of anxiety so that your child can live a more confident life feeling safe and secure in their skin, so “hell’ does not need to be reached.
Anxiety is good when there is a real threat to safety, or a boost of energy is needed; however, when left to its own devices, anxiety can become our enemy.
Everyone is unique. One child might suddenly suffer from anxiety due to a specific event or trauma, whilst with another the symptoms build on themselves and, over time, these behaviours become a habit.
Anxiety is recognised as being a ‘selfish’ condition as the child starts to focus on themselves and slowly implode if a parent(s) does not step in and help. Providing a calm environment where the child feels valued, listened to and safe becomes invaluable to the child’s healthy development.
It is heartbreaking to watch your child go from a happy human being to one that is withdrawn to their bedroom, angry, detached, disinterested, acting out violently, having meltdowns, going from a ‘B’ student to an ‘E’ or not wanting to go to school at all.
Anxiety disorders sadly trap a child in a spiralling negative thought pattern; their brain and, consequently, their body, is on high alert for any perceived danger, which means they are always thinking quickly whilst having repetitive thoughts; their body is full of adrenaline to be ready for ‘action’ and cortisol (a stress hormone), which, quite frankly, is absolutely draining.
It is no wonder a child loses interest in doing extra activities because they are exhausted from just ‘surviving’ their day.
Ten behaviours to look out for in your child which is anxiety-related:
1) Worrying more than usual.
When doing a normal activity, your child might start saying things such as, “What if the car breaks down?” “What if I make a fool of myself and people laugh at me?” “What if I can’t do it?” “What if I end up on my own?” “What if a fire breaks out?”. Instead of just enjoying an event, your child might be thinking of every conceivable threat to safety.
Being in the moment rather than over-analysing is an important practice to gain control over anxiety.
Excessive worry might be brought on by feeling under pressure to achieve or an unexpected event might have occurred which has highlighted the uncertainty in life, for instance, the death of someone close.
2) Choosing to not see friends or do usual activities/clubs.
With anxiety can come mental and physical fatigue.
When being constantly on high alert, it can become tiring, so your child might not feel they have the energy to go out and socialise or something might have happened in the friendship group that makes your child not want to be around people any more than they must.
3) Spending more and more time in their bedroom in isolation.
Your child might find going into busy places overwhelming with them being hypersensitive to potential threats to survival.
Symptoms of anxiety can be mistaken for autism as there are similarities. Anxiety can be likened to walking down a dark unknown alley; all senses are on high alert – the body is being pumped with adrenaline in readiness of needing to sprint from any potential threat.
Imagine constantly being in this state… a quiet bedroom suddenly sounds appealing!
4) Complaining of feeling sick, have stomach cramps and may not want to eat.
When suffering from anxiety, the body is clever at diverting blood flow from non-essential organs such as the digestive system and focuses on essential organs (brain, heart, lungs etc) as well as supplying blood to muscle groups.
There may be the urge to vomit as the body is ridding itself of unwanted food in readiness for the flight/fight response.
Another misdiagnosis can be IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) – when in an anxious state, it is the body’s way of ridding itself of undigested food. Cortisol, a stress hormone, is released into the stomach which also causes a sickly feeling.
It is quite common for your child to not want to eat breakfast as they start to feel sick with anxiety at the thought of what the day might bring… they worry they might be sick at school if they eat.
5) Dressing down rather than their usual choice of clothing.
This behaviour is not definite, so please do not panic if your child decides to wear more hoodies or dull colours when their style is usually brighter.
For some, wearing hoodies might be their way of ‘hiding’ from the world; they are trying to be inconspicuous to others so they can move more easily in the ‘shadows’.
For others, clothing might be hiding self-inflicted wounds such as pinch marks, bruising or, more sadly, cuts.
A response to anxiety can be numbness and self-harming is their way of trying to feel something or release internal pressure. It cannot be stressed enough to not panic as a parent's behaviour will only compound a child’s anxiety.
In most cases, shame is attached to self-harm and what is needed is a loving, gentle approach that validates the child’s feelings.
6) Lashing out at parent(s) or sibling(s).
When a child’s body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, they need a release from the pent-up tension they are feeling and, for some, this comes in the form of hitting out.
Your child is acting out without any thought of consequence, and this is normal… it takes until humans are 25 years of age to develop the part of the brain (pre-frontal cortex) that reasons, makes better decisions and realises consequences to actions.
An anxious child will be acting from amplified emotion driven by the need to survive. Your child will not be considering they might hurt someone or themselves, or that whatever they break will be costly to replace.
In ‘that’ moment they are consumed with the need to release all their frustrations and anxious feelings to feel better and more in control of their environment.
7) Trying to get out of going to school.
Avoiding school is a common behavioural symptom of anxiety. There can be several reasons for not wanting to go to school which can include experiencing bullying, feeling left out of the friendship group, worrying about falling behind in studies and generally feeling the school environment is overwhelming.
Sadly, more of the population finds the school experience to be challenging, especially when entering comprehensive school years.
There are more pressures to fit in, keep up with the Joneses and do well in all subjects. The environment is usually far larger than Junior school, so a great many fears can surface when entering, what is a significant stage in a child’s learning life.
There will be all kinds of personalities to deal with which can be extremely overwhelming for a sensitive child.
When we start our working career, few of us work for a company that employs at least 1,500 staff on the same site – this is school!
8) Disturbed sleep pattern.
With anxiety comes racing thoughts; the brain is looking for danger and will search until it finds it.
Generally speaking, only in prehistoric times was the threat to life real; however, we have the same response in our bodies whether the threat to survival is real or not.
When trying to sleep, racing thoughts are the last thing we need. Some children will have difficulty falling asleep due to being unable to switch off their minds, or they may regularly wake up or have nightmares (the subconscious is working through fears during sleep).
Racing thoughts are not conducive to falling asleep or having a restful night’s sleep. Think about when you were taking an important exam… you may not have had a good night's sleep prior to the exam due to worrying and going over what the questions might be – this is your child’s brain constantly working overtime, especially when feeling anxious.
9) Obsessively putting toys in order.
Children can feel they do not have much control over their life, especially when school is a must, bedtimes are insisted upon (with good intention) and routines may be provided for them. Choice is restricted for a child.
One area a child may feel they have some control over is their bedroom and where their toys go. They may like to keep their room very tidy and their toys facing forward.
A child can decide who plays with their toys. Order becomes important to a child when they feel they do not have any say in what goes on around them.
10) Crying more than usual (feeling overwhelmed).
Anxiety brings oversensitivity. Anxiety causes the child to focus on the negative as a part of the brain, the part that stores memories shrinks and is tricked into believing negative thoughts are safe and positive ones become forgotten.
Recollection will be more on what is perceived as being negative or critical, for instance, a comment might be, “If you tidy your room, we will go out for an ice cream”.
The response might be, “Are you saying my room is untidy?” And so, the conversation can spiral when perhaps all that was meant was actually, “Can you please tidy your clothes away that are on the floor?”!
All of the above are behaviours associated with the Flight - Fight - Freeze response (FFFr), which is born from the brain/body chemical chain reaction to survive, coming from a place of fear:
Flight - meaning to panic, worry, dread, avoid, retreat, run away.
Fight - meaning to hit out, feel anger and rage, be violent and agitated, needing to control.
Freeze – meaning to shut down, go numb, zone out, be tired, disconnected and, in some cases, depressed.
An exercise to assess the level of anxiety being experienced by your child is to complete the GAD-7 (General Anxiety Disorder) questionnaire.
The sufferer is asked to think back over the last two weeks and answer seven questions relating to how they have been feeling over several days, over half the days and nearly every day.
Obviously, the more often nervousness, being on edge, not being able to stop worrying, trouble relaxing, being irritable and/or annoyed, and feeling afraid that something awful might happen is experienced, the higher the score, indicating anxiety is higher than is healthy.
The good news is no one needs to suffer in silence with anxiety; there are techniques that can be learnt by both child and parent(s) to help reduce the effects of anxiety so that your child relearns to make healthy choices and feel safe and secure.
Anxiety can tear a family apart and it can be an opportunity to bring a family closer together than ever by learning what works to reduce an emotion based on fear.
Click below to take our free anxiety test to find out how serious your child’s anxiety is.
