Green Child Magazine Spring 2016 | Page 28

Coping with Parenting Fear & Excessive Worry be vulnerable? Taking time to audit your belief system can help reveal your truth and help bring you to awareness so you can stop the mental spin of fear. Am I “safe” or “not safe?” This is how your brain interprets unknown or new situations. If the world does not seem safe, your brain is going to reach for one of three strategies used to combat fear: Fight Flight Freeze Shock is the freeze strategy. Once the shock of your experience wears off, you have the option to fight, run, or reconnect with truth. Running can look a lot like staying very busy. Fighting can look like acting out or becoming controlling. At the root of the strategies of fight, flight, or freeze, however, is fear. While that’s normal, getting stuck there is not how fear was designed to work. Consciously remaining in the truth—even when the truth feels like one big unknown— allows you to move from a state of being “on alert” to a state of calm “awareness.” This is important because awareness allows you to carry on in your day without feeling irrationally afraid. 28 Shifting from “alert” to “aware” happens by slowing down and reconnecting. If a surprising and stressful event occurs in your life, take stock of what happened. Tune-in to how you feel and let yourself feel it, then don’t dismiss what you’re feeling. Always remember to ask for support if you need to — raise your hand — because we all need help sometimes (and, on a consistent basis, we’re certainly also helpers). Take time to revitalize and rejuvenate so that you can continue to experience the tapestry and simple joys of life. Asking for a hug, taking deep breaths in-and out