Session 6 Stress & Anxiety and how it affects us.

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While we’re going through this section, I want you to think about yourself as well as your child.  Stress and anxiety can impact us all at some stage throughout our lives and unfortunately some more than others.

Anxiety is a feeling and emotions or worries that don’t go away even when the worry has gone; it can be good in small portions but if you get too much of anxiety and all the time it makes you be on high alert.  When we are anxious and stressed it turns on the amygdala in our brain then switches us to go into flight, fight or freeze mode. This is a survival mode as a result of anxiety leading to stress.  It is a big feeling.  Anxiety is shorter lived.  Our brain doesn’t understand. 

When we are under stress, overwhelmed and under pressure we show signs mentally and physically. Have mental and physical symptoms, such as irritability, anger, fatigue, muscle pain, digestive troubles, and difficulty sleeping.  Too much stress can have an impact on our immune system.  It can affect our cardiovascular system as well.  People who are under massive stress can end up with Cardiovascular disease, Cancer and diabetes to name but a few.

What is the definition of stress  

Our body’s reactions to feeling threatened under pressures, can be motivating to help achieve things but too much can affect our health.  Negative emotional experiences will affect the whole body and mind. Psychologically experience and behavioral changes affect moods and uncontrolled outbursts.  A stimulus is when something happens and our bodies process and respond to it. How we adapt to the situation.

How our brain works when we are stressed or have anxiety.

The prefrontal cortex helps us think and problem solve within reason, flexible thinking and self control. Understanding other people’s point of views.  If you are stressed or have anxiety you cannot learn, we can be unreasonable, find it hard to make decisions.  

Bearing in mind that with your child they are only starting to develop, they may not be able to talk or have few words, they will not know what their emotions and feelings are.

The limbic system these parts of the brain are connected in some way and send messages and senses to each other.

The amygdala is where we have our fear and anxiety.  This plays a big part in stress and anxiety.  The Amygdala in the brain alters our fear processing and governs our bodies.  If we are under too much stress we will go into flight,  fight or freeze. 

Alarm system is raised, and we need to react and it can sometimes be a faulty warning system when there is no danger. 

The hippocampus senses memory formations, long term memory and instinctual thinking; 

The Hypothalamus helps our emotional, memories sensory processing brain stores memories and if you have been through trauma or situations, it will store that.

Different types of stress

Positive stress is also called eustress. It motivates us and at times can make us feel excited.  This is also when we react well to certain situations.  A brief increase in heart rate and a mild increase in hormone levels. Examples of this would be excitement when your child see you after being away for a few hours, or your child starting daycare or preschool.

Tolerable stress  refers to stress responses that could disrupt the brain, but generally occur within a time-limited period and are buffered by supportive relationships that facilitate adaptive coping. These conditions usually give the brain an opportunity to recover from potentially damaging effects. An example of this loved one dying, a serious injury or illness.  Parents breaking up.

Toxic stress refers to strong and prolonged activation of the body’s stress systems in the absence of the buffering protection of adult support, disrupts the brain and leads to stress management systems that respond at relatively lower thresholds, and increases the risk of stress-related physical and mental illness. These are normally long lasting events, strong experiences or repeated trauma experiences sexual abuse, extreme poverty, physical or emotional abuse from a care giver, serious neglect, family violence. 

Stress is a reaction we bring to a situation. Stress can impact both ourselves as adults and children from a very early age and sometimes before we are born. I am sure many of you would agree that there have been many times in your life where you just felt completely under pressure or completely overwhelmed and it’s not a nice feeling.

It is generally because we don’t feel that we’re in control and some of us cope with it very well and some of us just can’t cope with it at all. When we are stressed, our bodies produce a stress hormone called cortisol. Cortisol creates tension in our muscles, fatigue and tiredness.  Mental fogginess us mums know about the mental fogginess.  Just like a baby brain when we had our babies. As well as other effects.

I’m going to go through the effects that stress, and cortisol have on our immune system.

Stress is a build-up of cortisol that can lead to anxiety, depression and illness.  Stress can show itself in many different ways.

It can show a loss of appetite. Have you ever had a time where your child has sat down at a meal and not ate it when they should be hungry?  Think of ourselves, something has happened, and it has just completely put us off our food.  We just do not feel like eating.

For some of us stress can send us the other way with food, and we find that when we are stressed, we will eat more.  But normally more of the comfort food like crisp or chocolate.

Sleep problems.

You have sent your child to bed and they’re up every five minutes crying in their cot, maybe at the door of their bedroom or even coming down the stairs saying.

“I can’t sleep, or they wake up in the middle of the night and come into your bedroom saying. “Mummy I can’t sleep “and they get into bed beside you then you’re tossing and turning all night.

Have you ever lay in bed awake trying to get to sleep but your mind is racing?  Everything is going through it.  Like what happened today at work.  What’s for dinner tomorrow?  Did I remember to post that letter?  I need to put the bin out in the morning.  Where am I going to find the extra few quid for new shoes for Jimmy.  The car has broken down.  How am I going to do the school, we can walk, what time will I need to leave the house at?  Will it be raining?  I forgot to check the weather and it goes on and on.  You’re still lying-in bed a few hours later.

What about anger and frustration?  We all know this one well.  Have you ever thought of how your child portrays their behaviour? When they’re angry and frustrated.  I remember it all like yesterday it started as early as 2 years of age.  We would say it’s the terrible twos and I always say the terrible twos are still gone and my kids are in their teens.

You know sometimes we can laugh about it, but you know if you really think about it.  As a child growing at a very early age, they find it difficult to communicate.  They don’t know how to express their feelings and emotions and sometimes the only way that they can communicate is letting that frustration  out.

Ways young children would show their frustrations would be to cry, to shout, have you ever experienced the high pitch scream? Some children throw things or stamp their feet. I can remember speaking to someone a few years back and saying isn’t it terrible that children as young as the age of 2 are self-harming, banging their head off the floor due to frustration and it is really sad.

I know at times in the past when I have been really stressed out and my husband or child says something simple to me, I have flown off the handle.  The shouting that used to go on in my house at times when I look back was crazy.  It was a house full of stress and anxiety.

Has your child ever come to you and said mommy my head’s sore. They possibly have a headache, but they really don’t know what’s wrong with them and it’s not their head that is sore but possibly anxiety and something worrying them.

We know ourselves when we have things on our mind that we have trouble concentrating and just like our children they will also have trouble concentrating.

Could it be that they have too much on their mind there too?

Our minds can race through 101 million things going through our heads and even children at an early age can experience this especially if they are worriers. They just don’t know how to express themselves. They don’t know the techniques; they don’t have the tools to help them manage or to express their emotions in a more regulated way.  They don’t know how to destress, and I know for many years as an adult I didn’t either.  Most children don’t even know they are stressed or worried.

Studies have shown that there has been a steadily increase in stress being recognised in children as young as five.  I suffer from anxiety and it’s not a nice thing to have.  If we have never experienced these emotions and feelings as an adult it’s very hard to relate and understand our children.

Anxiety can be presented in the many ways that I’ve just talked about. When anxious. I get that nervousness, that constant feeling of being on edge. That feeling of fear and then with that would come emotions of being worthless and sad or not good enough or feeling guilty as a parent.

Medical experts estimate 90 percent of disease is caused or complicated by stress.  Dr Esther Sternberg, director of the (Integrative Neural Immune of Mental Health) (NIMH) has been rediscovering links between the brain and the immune system. How stress or experience in early childhood can affect us even as adults.

All children experience stress at different times in their lives and at different levels.  For example, a child may have a fear of a spider and a spider jumping out on them may create major anxiety.  

A child may be bullied at school and the trauma of this experience will stay with them into adulthood.

A child may experience death at an early age, and this may create anxiety and fear that their loved ones may die.

In school or nursery a teacher or other child may make a comment to a child that they are stupid or could do better.  This child may go through life with feelings of low self-esteem.  I’ll give you an example of myself.

During P7 back in the day of the 11 Plus I was expected to pass with flying colours.  I was a very intelligent child and always did well in school. 

Then my 11 plus came.  I can remember being under a lot of pressure with other stuff going on too and instead of getting a 1 I achieved a 4.  

Bottom score, I was disappointed in myself.  My family was disappointed too.  I thought I had failed.  My first failure.   I am 11 years old.   

Ever since then my anxiety around exams is terrible.  Through secondary school I worked hard and tried my best most of the time.  When I became an adult, I had this obsession that I didn’t know enough, that I was stupid.

I completed course after course after course.  To then realise in September 2020 at the age of 41 that I was trying to prove something to myself and that was that I wasn’t stupid.  That I am not a failure.

I’ve had this conversation many times with different people who have failed an exam or their transfer test and for one small event to have a massive impact on the rest of your life.  Crazy isn’t it.

According to the School of Education at John Hopkins University, adults fail to recognise the incidence and magnitude of stress in their children’s lives.  

Studies have shown that parents perceive children as having lower levels of stress than children perceive themselves as having.  This was confirmed by a nationwide survey that concludes “parents underestimate how much children worry. (John Hopkins School of Medicine 2005) Yes 2005 this may be a bit outdated.  Especially with Covid mental health over the last few years has had a spotlight on it and awareness raised.

Children suffer more stress today than ever.  Children can suffer stress from as early as in the womb thanks to chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol crossing the placenta. 

The impact of stress that it has on ourselves as well as our children. It affects our memory, our attention.

You know cortisol and the other stress hormones can make us have a decreased insensitivity to pain. 

It can really increase our risk of heart disease.  

It can increase our blood sugar making it high and could lead to creating diabetes.

Stress is not good for our digestive system.  You know some say that many people with IBS and issues of the digestive system suffer themselves with stress. 

Being stressed out and living in survival mode feeds our bodies with constant stress hormones. This has an impact on our body and reduces our immune system making us at higher risk of getting infections and increases our blood pressure.  When we are stressed out, we are less motivated and can turn to unhealthy foods.

Look what Covid has bought many of us.  From personal experience Covid has brought a lot of stress.  I myself have over ate, over drank and at times had anxiety creep in.  With over a stone in weight and those that are in our 40s unfortunately know how much harder it is to lose that extra bit of weight.

Feelings and emotions.

As adults it is imperative that we understand the impact and damaging effects of stress on ourselves and children’s lives.  Using mindfulness and positive mental health we can teach ourselves and children how to value a calm and relaxed state of mind.

Some stress can be positive if it causes us to feel stimulated and better able to manage situations.  A positive response to stress can provide the energy we need to handle emergencies, meet challenges and excel in life.

Stress is negative when we feel threatened and not in control of a situation.  These feelings instigate a powerful reaction affecting both the body and the brain in ways that can be destructive to us 

physical and mental health

Other reasons children may be stressed.

They may be feeling the pressure to perform or behave beyond their natural ability

A disrupted home situation, a blended family or both parents working

An increased exposure to violence either real or on screen

Excessive exposure to technology or too much screen time

Unrealistic demands from the classroom, disagreements with teachers’ parents or other adults or peers.

In the next section an introduction to Psychology