Anxious Parenting

When my daughter was younger I was anxious. I didn’t have full-blown anxiety attacks, as some do. I had an almost constant anxiety motoring within me. It was mixed with dread.

Sometimes, it lasted days. Other times weeks. It would come and go.  It always returned. When it did, it was hard to read, concentrate or focus. It was hard to eat or sleep or work.

It was hard to parent.

How I felt in my body scared me and I wanted to be someone else.

Anxious time moved slowly. An hour felt like a month and a day felt like a year. Watching the clock, I’d try to will it to pass. It was the opposite of being present. I was trying to be absent of anxiety, which felt like a way of being and not a symptom or a feeling.

Getting through the day was my biggest goal, the high bar I hoped to reach. At those times it took all I had to rise to that challenge and, in my role as a mother, not fall flat on my face.

It all felt bad but being unable to enjoy or attend to my daughter the way she deserved was the worst part.

She was too young to complain. But she felt it. Read more.