High Anxiety

Okay, honey, I've got a quote I'm going to read to you. Oh, good.

I just read it in a book, like yesterday, and I want to know your first thoughts when you hear it. Okay. The quote is this, if you struggle with anxiety, your child is up to seven times more likely to struggle with it herself. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. That creates anxiety in me. Like that makes me fearful for parents as they hear that, you know, like, Oh, no. But as I listen to that, I also think, wow, this really is happening in our culture today.

And we really need some help in it because I've talked to so many parents, that their daughters, especially and maybe I'm talking to moms that have daughters, but especially their daughters are struggling right now. Well, we actually have the author of that quote sitting in our studio today at Family Life Today. Welcome to Family Life Today, Sissy. Thank you. I'm so honored to be with y'all. Yeah, you have one of the nicest smiles, I think. I wish you all could be with us right now because you'd be wanting to open your entire life to Sissy Goff, who's with us today. Yeah, it's just a warm smile. And Sissy Goff has written a book called Brave, which we're going to dig in today and find out what does that mean. But it's a teen girl's guide to beating worry and anxiety. And it's really interesting to know this, that you're a therapist.

Yes. And you're a Daystar. Counseling ministries. Daystar Counseling Ministries in Nashville. And I heard you say at lunch over 2,000 families.

Are coming currently. That is incredible. I know. Think about that, Sissy, in comparison to the 80s. Yes.

Like what's different? Oh, we just weren't talking about it in the 80s. I mean, when I was growing up, I do not remember ever hearing anybody else say they were in counseling, which they likely were.

Right. And in fact, I remember I was in a sorority in college and I remember three different girls disappearing for a semester and coming back, which obviously something was going on for them emotionally. And no one said a word, which is so tragic to me that we were missing stepping into each other's lives in that way.

But thankfully, we're not anymore. I mean, is that something that got you interested in psychology? No, because I don't think I really thought about it back then either. I should have.

I wish I would have asked them if they were OK. But no. But the classes I was taking at the time, certainly. I mean, it really was one foot in front of the other. Like God opens one door at a time for us.

And that's that's how it happened for me. Well, you've written several books. Yes. No, she's written, what is it, eleven books. She's a prolific author, honey.

That's amazing. We've written two and we're exhausted. Me too. What's been your favorite book? I guess they would all be your favorites in some ways. Well, I think the last three really have been and they all have been about worry and anxiety and and have all been different.

The first one. Well, so my publisher came to me. I love this publisher I'm working with that we were talking about a minute ago at Baker. And he came to me and he said, so I read something in the last book you all did, which was are my kids on track? And I'd written it with two of my co-workers at Daystar. And he said, you read a line about how the average age of onset was eight for girls of anxiety, which it's now six, which we can talk about that some too. But he said, you just drop a little bomb.

No, we got to go there in a minute. But he said, will you ever write a book for girls at that age? And I had never written a book for girls that young. And as a therapist, you can probably guess where I went with this. I said, I'm not writing a book for girls unless I can write one for their parents.

Because of exactly what you were talking about as we opened up the podcast, because it is a family situation. It's not just the child. So I ended up writing Raising Worry Free Girls for parents and Braver, Stronger, Smarter for Little Girls. And then that was, they came out right before the pandemic started and then the pandemic hit. And here I am now, of course, Zoom counseling. And I was watching so many adolescents in particular that I felt like were really struggling.

Whereas before that, it had been elementary age girls. And I just felt like I've got to do something for these kids. And so I wrote Brave in about six weeks.

Wow. Because I just was so worried. And we had a lot of time on our hands.

We were all staying home. And so I think those three books, because it has felt like good grief. I want to give these families and kids something because they're struggling so much. I think the felt need was so significant for me that it really, those books, I felt like, gosh, I'm really getting help in a way that I would never get to reach these families outside the walls of Daystar. Way to go.

So it's been a real gift to me. So as anxiety increased with boys and girls, but especially your writing about adolescent girls. But I'm not just talking about since the pandemic. Before the pandemic and then has the pandemic, you know, intensified that? Yes, yes, yes.

All the things. So we wrote Are My Kids on Track probably now five years ago. And at the time, the statistics were one in eight kids. Right before the pandemic, it jumped, had jumped to one in four. One in four kids what?

Deal with anxiety. Whoa. With girls twice as likely.

And then now we're at one in three. Wow. Kids. Yes. And that it's just wild.

And I mean, when I first started counseling, I think I probably would have said two out of every 20. Yeah. You know, it's just changed so much. Now, of course, you're the expert.

You know, you're you're working with these families and these girls. Why? I mean, the easy answer isn't COVID. Right. That's part of it.

Because it was happening before. Yeah. I mean, technology, which I love that you all have been having conversations about that, because technology is absolutely a part of it. And I was working with a young girl and she, her psychiatrist and I were talking back and forth. And she said to me, just even looking at a screen. And we can talk about social media because that's a huge piece of it, too. But she said just the degree to which we're bombarded with images and all these different things as we're looking at a screen, our brains move into an agitated state that really mimics anxiety. So I think screens are a huge part of it.

The genetics are a big part of it. I have never sat with as many kids who will say things like, I was so bummed that I got a 98 on that test as I have in the last probably 16 months. I think there is a pressure that girls particularly feel today that that I don't think we felt. I worked with a group of high school girls as a small group probably seven years ago. So they're all high schoolers, really active in all different sports in school. The school that they were going to is a high school that was pretty demanding academically.

And as we would sit, probably I think there were seven girls. I felt overwhelmed for them by the things that they were feeling. I'm thinking about back in high school, like, man, I loved high school. So fun, you know, there was some homework, but it wasn't too bad.

But I was so active. These girls felt so overwhelmed by the workload of school. Then they felt overwhelmed by their athletic, what they were doing athletically or artistically in music or band. But the pressure they felt for their grades, I'm thinking, what's happening? Like, I could feel it in the room every time they talked.

And then we'd say, hey, when can we get together next week? They didn't even have time because their workload was so overwhelming and their calendars were booked. Is that part of it? Are these kids feeling so much pressure?

Absolutely. And at all ages, I think they're feeling it. I remember I think she was an 11-year-old girl who said to me, she was seeing me because of anxiety, and she said to me, I had to ask my mom to stop scheduling so many activities for me. It was too much. Which, you know, as grown-ups, we're supposed to be the gatekeepers for them. And sometimes we're just doing so much that our whole family is living in this anxious place. So, yes, I think there's way too much, and that's part of it, too. Yeah, and we started the program talking about parents feeling anxiety. Is that because parents are overextended? I mean, what's going on there? Because, again, when I first read the quote, and I knew Ann was going to say the same thing, I didn't tell her I was going to bring that up, but it made me feel anxiety, thinking, wow, I'm a parent that waits on me, especially if I still have kids in my home. I would get anxious about that. So help us out.

What's a parent to do? Well, so I want everyone to hear me say this very graciously, because I mean that in every sense of the word. I want this to feel gracious when I say this. But, so the seven times is, I think part of it is because we as grownups today, I think are really the first generation of people who are pursuing mental health in a great way. You know, I think we're probably around the same age group, and our parents weren't in counseling. Hey, she just said we're young, honey. I like it, I like it. Keep going, sissy. We're around the same age group.

Yes, I like it. That's like a 40-year span. But other than that- No, no, no, you're right. Our parents were not talking about any of this. No, we weren't passing around a feelings chart around the dinner table.

You know, we just weren't doing any of that. And so what I'm seeing in my office is this beautiful shift in parents who are saying we really want to pursue mental health. And when I was, well, let me tell you a story that probably illustrates this better than anything I can think of. So if you were to bring your child to Daystar, we have a computer program called Therabil that tells us why people are coming before they come for the first time. And like I was saying to y'all at lunch, the Daystar office is a house.

It's this cute yellow house with a white picket fence and a front porch and a swing in the yard and the offices look like living rooms. And so when a family comes to Daystar- Wait, you forgot something. You forgot about the animals.

I did. So we have five dogs on staff, which is one of my favorite parts of what I get to do. They're on staff. They're paid staff. I wish.

I keep trying to hit my boss up for that and it hasn't worked yet, but I love that idea. So I knew this little girl that was coming in for the first time who was eight and had anxiety. I knew Daystar was going to have already done some of the work of just setting her at ease. And so I saw on Therabil that she was coming in and I'm in the upstairs of our Daystar house and I came down the stairs and I saw her. And as you- I mean, I have this enormous smile. And so I smiled at her across the lobby and waved at her and she smiled really big back at me. And I walked over and I won't say her name, but I introduced myself to her and said, hey, I'm Sissy.

I'm so excited that you're at Daystar. I'm going to give you a tour of the Daystar house and then we're going to go upstairs and meet my little dog, Lucy, who's going to be so excited to meet you. And I mean, this little girl was so cute. And she popped up to follow me and her mom grabbed her arm and said, do you feel comfortable with that? And it had never occurred to this little girl not to feel comfortable for following me until her mom said, do you feel comfortable with that? And her very kind, very well-intentioned mom followed us on the whole tour and then sat across from my office the entire time we had a conversation. And so as I do always, I mean, I sent the little girl out and I brought the mom in at the end of the session and said- I want to hear this conversation. So I said, tell me about your family history.

Do you have any family history for anxiety or anything else? And this mom said, well, yeah, I had anxiety growing up and my parents never understood what was going on with me. And so now that was her whole goal was I'm going to understand my daughter, which she did a fantastic job with. But in the book, I have it broken down into understanding, help and hope.

She stopped at the understanding and she wasn't helping her work through the anxiety. And I think that's a big part of the problem is that when we, of course, as a parent, when you see your child in distress, what would you want to do but step in and help? And so the two most common parenting strategies in light of anxiety are escape and avoidance. So it's easy to step in and rescue them from the situation instead of helping them work through it. And every person who works with anybody about anxiety would say to work through the fear, you have to do the scary thing. And so I think that's part of it, too, is parents are stepping in and rescuing rather than helping their kids work through it. And that's I think that's part of where the statistics are. And if you're listening and you're a parent, there is absolutely help and we can do something different. Yeah.

So that story is the quote we started with. This little girl is picking up the anxiety of her mom, who's had her whole life, and it's transferred down. And often, I mean, the older I get and the longer I do this work, I don't know if either of you all would fit this, but I think every person, I hate to say every at my age, but I think really probably every person who's type A or a one on the Enneagram, if you're an Enneagram people, has some degree of anxiety. And what we learn to use as our primary coping strategy is productivity. And so especially as a type A person, the most natural thing is for you to try and fix it and step in and kind of correct and pave the road in a lot of ways for your kids. And so I think for those periods, it's even harder sometimes. And I mean, I'm this personality type. I want to do everything right. And so I'm just trying so hard that it's harder to right the ship sometimes if I'm not heading the right direction.

And it's well-intentioned, too. Take us back to, as we talked earlier about, now we're seeing the onset of anxiety starting at the age of six. What does that look like? How would parents know that their child is struggling with anxiety? I love that you asked that question because it's different because at six, they're not going to say, when you change my schedule at the last minute, it made me feel really anxious. They're just going to melt down coming home from school or they're going to get really angry.

And it's so fascinating to sit with parents because I think the two most common words parents use for girls at that age when I sit with them, and this is boys, too. Girls are just leading the statistics on anxiety, but they'll talk about control and manipulation. And they'll say things like, they're so explosive with their anger and it's really when they don't get what they want. So I'll try and kind of dig underneath that a little bit, obviously, as a therapist and say, okay, tell me some of those scenarios.

When exactly is that happening? And it is often things like, well, we picked her up from school and she thought this was what was going to happen. And then we told her we had to run five errands first. Or it's when I say to her, no, I need you to go brush your teeth right now and there's no lead time. So it literally is when she has to be really flexible, when the schedule is changing at the last minute, there's no predictability and they feel out of control. And, you know, I don't know if y'all feel this way, but if somebody at 3 p.m. told me that my day was going to look totally different than I had thought and I had no control, I'd get anxious and maybe a little mad.

I might try and control it, but they can't at that age. And so their emotions, y'all probably have heard this, but psychologists will say that anger is a secondary emotion and there's often something else underneath it. And so for most girls that I see, that's what's at the root of their anger is that it's anxiety. Or it will often look to like kids who get tummy aches, headaches that are recurring that you notice on Sunday nights before school starts on Monday or certain situations. And I think those girls often are a little bit more perfectionistic and so they don't want to talk about the emotion because they feel like it's wrong maybe. They're the kids who want to be agreeable and want to please you so much.

And so they stuff it and so it comes out sideways. So I'm imagining a lot of moms or dads listening to that right now and then thinking, check, check, check. And now that causes them to be a little more introspective, like maybe that is happening in my home. And I thought it was just that she was being overly dramatic.

And I think that's what we can do. Like, oh, my goodness, it's not that big of a deal. You know, stop being so dramatic. Minimize it. Yes.

I think that, gosh, I'm imagining, I think I did that sometimes as a mom. Like, it's not that big of a deal, man. Chill out. You know, and so but you're saying. And that was the Enneagram 7 coming out. Are you a 7? With an 8.

So that 8 can come in there, too. But with that, as parents are hearing that, like guide them now with that. Like, should they start really kind of tracking a little bit more what their kids or their daughters are feeling?

Yes, I do think it's really important. I mean, I joke with parents a lot about, you know, if you do marriage counseling for the first time and there's that whole thing that you learn that's really called reflective listening. Like what I hear you saying is that feels so silly when they first explain it to you. Yeah, it works.

It makes such a difference. And so even saying back to your child, I can tell you're really sad or I can tell that makes you worried or I can tell you're really frustrated. Let's talk a little bit more about that. You know, that we just start with empathizing with them. I think really in anything parenting wise to start with empathizing is really important.

And then I typically have a first three go-tos that I do with kids. So are you ready? Yeah, I'm writing it down.

Okay. So a little brain chemistry 101. What happens for us when we get anxious? Well, when we're not anxious, we have blood flowing all throughout our brain, including going to the prefrontal cortex, which helps us think rationally and manage our emotions. When we get anxious, every one of us, or when we get angry too, our blood vessels in our brain constrict and it shifts the blood flow away from the prefrontal cortex into the amygdala. And y'all know the amygdala is the fight or flight part of our brain. And so when I sit with parents, they will say so often she is acting like a crazy person, which exactly because the rational part of their brain is not even getting blood.

It's just completely offline. So literally it's making her crazy, right? Yeah, it's it's literally and until we can calm her body down or his body down and this is these are the tools we would use with boys too. So until we can get them calmed down, the calming is what dilates the blood vessels of the brain again, and it shifts the blood flow back. You're probably familiar with John Gottman.

You know that name? I mean, I've heard Dr. Gottman talk about marriage counseling and he makes the same sort of assessment medically when he says when a man's heart rate gets higher than 98. So the constriction is going on.

Yes. He said the next thing out of his mouth is going to be really stupid because of the idea. He's not able to reason.

And so he's like, you need to step away from that conflict and settle it down and come back. You're saying the same thing with a teenage adolescent girl or boy? Or a six-year-old.

Or a 50-year-old, probably. Exactly. The next question is, how do we calm them down? So this is my favorite way to do it with kids. So what I have them do is I have them put their hand on their leg. Y'all can do it with me too.

Okay, I'm going to do it. Everybody do that. If you're listening at home, put your hand on your leg. Put your hand on your leg.

And there's another reason. Somebody just said, I'm driving the car. You can still do it. I do it in the car sometimes. Yeah, I do this too. So we call this square breathing. I call it square breathing with girls. Now, my counterpart, David Thomas, who does a lot of the work with boys at Daystar, he calls it combat breathing. Oh, that's good. Sounds cooler.

And he learned that term from some Navy SEALs. So it really is a thing. So what they're going to do is they're going to draw a square on their leg very slowly. With each line of the square, you're going to breathe a different way. So in, pause for three seconds in the corner. Out, pause for three seconds in the corner. In, pause for three seconds in the corner.

Out, pause for three seconds in the corner. Twenty seconds of deep breathing resets the amygdala. Really? Wow.

That's all it takes. Twenty seconds. Now, I will have a lot of kids or a lot of parents who will come to me and say, we tried the square breathing and it didn't work. But what happened was that if we're thinking about emotions on a one to ten scale, they're starting it at eight.

You've got to start it at two. Or when you know, when you're about to say something that you know is going to be triggering to your child or your teenager to say, let's do some square breathing while we talk about this. Or for me, if I'm about to go into something that I know is going to make me anxious. Sometimes before I speak, I've been doing it for a long time. I'll still get anxious.

I'll stand over to the side of the stage and draw a little square. Yes. And it's probably so good for parents, too, because as our kids are starting to get anxious, it creates anxiety in us of knowing how to respond. So it can trigger each other. Yeah.

It calms us down as well. Yes. But if they are at an eight and they've already gone there, is there anything we can do when you feel like, OK, she's super out of control?

Yeah. Have a move. If they're and, you know, teenagers, it's going to be harder to get them to have any buy in. If you said I want you to go run around the block, they're going to say whatever. But little ones, you can say, hey, I want you to go take a lap around the block or go run up and down the stairs one time.

Now, I am and the longer I do this work with all these anxious kids, the more I'm into incentivizing kids. And so coming up with often I will call them brave beads. And so when kids when a child will just on their own do the square breathing or when they'll say, you know, an adolescent will say, hey, I need to go for a run with them.

I don't think you'd give them a brave bead. But you would say, I'm so proud of you. Way to go for doing that on your own that you just knew you needed it in that moment. But with younger ones to say that's you just earned a brave bead for doing the square breathing on your own.

That's so great. You're working the system, you know, that we've come up with. And so any time they use basically a positive coping strategy, rewarding them for that. Here's what I'm thinking as I'm hearing this about helping an adolescent girl walk through this. It's where we started. It's like, I need to do this as a parent.

You know, I got to start with me and then be able to coach my son or daughter. Right. Exactly. I mean, it's really it's almost look in the mirror. It's like, man, it's like you said, when you're standing on the side of the stage, sometimes you're doing the square combat breathing.

Yeah. I think it's something that God calls us to. You know, it's easy to look at it like I've been thinking this whole time. Philippians 4, 6, be anxious for nothing.

And the question often is, I can't stop being anxious. How do I do that? And you've given us some tools to say, yeah, you can. God will help you do this.

And you can help lead your kids to do that, too. So that's been really, really helpful. Well, I'm excited that we've hit the first one of being able to learn how to calm down as we talk about square breathing. But we're not done. Yeah, we're not done.

It will be fun to hear what the number two and number three strategy are. And I think, too, I think a good reminder as we close is one of those ways that we can even do our square breathing. And one of the things I've learned to do, and maybe you've done this as well, Sissy, is I can just take those breaths and I can pray as I'm doing.

Absolutely. Lord Jesus, help me to calm down. Help me to remember who you are. Help me to remember that you are in control. And I think bringing in the power of scripture, the power of the Holy Spirit who abides in us. We know Jesus. That feels so good to bring him into it as well.

This has been so helpful. You just made me more relaxed by the way you said that. There is certainly no shortage of news in our world today that can lead us to become anxious or fearful. And if that's true for us, think about what it's like for adolescent young women in our culture today. And as parents, we need to be alert to this reality and know how to step into our daughter's life and help her deal with the anxiety or fear she's feeling. That's what this series with Sissy Goff is all about on family life today. It's also what Sissy's book entitled Brave is all about. The subtitle is A Teen Girl's Guide to Beating Worry and Anxiety. A great book for moms and daughters to go through together. It's a book that we've got in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can order it from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to order.

If you'd like to understand your daughter's emotions better and learn ways that you can help her battle against worry and anxiety, go to familylifetoday.com to order your copy of Sissy Goff's book Brave or call us to order at 1-800-FL-TODAY. 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now I don't know about whether your calendar is starting to look more crowded in the weeks and months ahead. I think most of our calendars start to fill up about this time of year. Here at Family Life there's a lot that's filling up our calendars like the return of the weekend to remember marriage getaways.

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And that's easy to do. You can go online at familylifetoday.com or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY and say I'd like to become a legacy partner. Please pray with us that in every city where Family Life Today is heard, there would be two new families who would step forward to do that. And if you're one of those two new families, thanks in advance for joining the legacy partner team. We look forward to connecting with you. And we hope you can join us again tomorrow when we're going to continue the conversation about how to help our adolescent daughters battle anxiety and worry, insecurity, fear. Cissy Goff joins us again. I hope you can be here as well. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.