How To Heal Your Child's Anxiety
The best way to heal your children is to heal yourself.
Children often become containers for parent’s emotional pain. This is not done on purpose or consciously. It happens beneath our awareness and helps us maintain a facade security and peace. It doesn’t mean we should “blame our parents.” But it shows us how emotional pain can be transferred from person to person without us even noticing.
Family Projection Process is about the projection of anxiety from parent to child. Anxious parents will often focus a high level of attention on a child. This is usually done out of love, fear, or a need for security.
Unfortunately, this projection of the parent’s fears onto the child often reinforces the perceived issue with the child. The child becomes more anxious. The problem continues to grow.
This also prevents the parents from fixing their own relationship.
Instead of looking inside, they move the problem to the external. The child becomes a container, it’s “the situation with the child. not us.” This temporarily alleviates problems in the marriage, often until children leave the nest or a child gets better.
The best thing you can do is focus on your own behavior. When we change personal behavior, the environment in and the child will change.
Do you notice any parental anxieties or emotions that have been passed down to you? What are you doing to work through those projections?