The Healthy Family Connections Podcast:

Our Daughter’s Anxiety is Running the Family

Episode 043 · Duration: 00:15:06

Our Daughter’s Anxiety is Running the Family

Untreated anxiety can bring adolescent development to a halt. Parents can find themselves in a bind when their teenager won’t cooperate with treatment. Find out what to do when this happens in Episode 43 of Healthy Family Connections.

Virginia from Palos Heights, Illinois, writes:

Our 14 year old daughter is very bright – gifted in fact. Yet she has always been anxious and insecure. For instance, she was always reluctant to go to her classmates’ birthday parties, believing the other kids didn’t like her. We always did everything we could to help with her confidence, but she rarely did anything social. If we pushed her, she would complain that her anxiety would get out of control. We worried about her in middle school because she hung out with misfits, but she always got A’s so we didn’t feel we could complain about it too much.

We always thought things would get better as she got older and developed interests. But it doesn’t seem that she has developed interests. She spends most of her time in her room either doing homework or playing video games with people she says are her friends. She doesn’t like what I cook, so she doesn’t come to the table for dinner and just makes her own food and eats it in her room. She still gets A’s and throws that in our face whenever we complain about anything or ask her to clean her messy room. She demands that I drive her to school every day and says she won’t go if I make her ride her bike. We sent her to therapy for a few months last year, but she always complained every time and nothing really changed. The therapist wanted her to see a psychiatrist for medication, but she refused. Her older brother is nothing like this; he isn’t extremely social, but he does have friends and they hang out together. With our daughter’s anxiety, it really limits what we can do as a family. We just don’t know what to do at this point. Help!!

Listen to this week’s episode to hear Neil discuss:

• managing anxiety so that it doesn’t control you or your family’s life
• encouraging development of age appropriate social relationships and activities
• identifying and ending Control Battles
• setting expectations for family participation and chores
• the importance of regaining and maintaining authority
• when to seek help from mental health professionals

Neil Says:

“Adult success is based more on emotional intelligence and the ability to work successfully with other people.”

“We’re anxious about being anxious and we’re anxious about their being anxious. That’s a closed-loop that just feeds on itself.”

“Work together to help her resolve her anxiety and move forward in healthy ways.”

“Turn off the Wi-Fi. That will get her attention and she’ll be more willing to listen and cooperate.”

…and more!

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