How do I help my daughter who has illness anxiety?

Helping a loved one with anxiety can be an overwhelming task, but there are several things that you can do to help them on a daily basis. While the anxiety may not go away altogether, there are some things that you can assist them in doing.

The first thing that would possibly help is understanding what causes additional stress and anxiety. These things are known as triggers. Talking with your daughter about the events that seem to occur before the anxiety or things that bring on stress in general can assist with better understanding her and helping her create a plan to manage these triggers so that her anxiety is not as debilitating as it has been in the past. For example, some people may have anxiety when they go to unfamiliar places. When they have to go to an unfamiliar place, it may be beneficial for them to have someone attend the area with them.

There are also techniques such as grounding techniques that can assist them with being more calm and distracting themselves from negative thoughts that may provoke an increase in anxiety. One grounding technique that can be done no matter where you are or what is in your atmosphere is listing 5 things that you see, 4 things that you can touch, 3 things that you can hear, two things that you can smell and one thing that you can taste.

Another one that helps is naming things that are a specific color around you or looking for things that start with a certain letter. Deep breathing is also something that could help. Some people think that deep breathing is simply taking four seconds to inhale and four seconds to exhale, but deep breathing is actually breaths that come from the bottom of your lungs near your diaphragm.

It would possibly be helpful for you to help your daughter by talking calmly to her about if there is anything that you can do while you are with her to help with the anxiety. Sometimes people want to help and when they try to help in the moment, they ask a lot of questions which can cause more issues. One thing that you can try when you are with your daughter and she seems to be anxious is to say, tell me five things that you see and so on....This gives her a straightforward task rather than her trying to think of an answer which can be difficult if her mind is already racing.

Attend her appointments with her if she will allow you to do so. This will help you better understand what she is going through. Maintaining a healthy relationship is possible, but there are still boundaries that you will have to hold in place. Knowing the difference between enabling someone and actually teaching someone will help. For example, if a person is putting off doing certain things that they are capable of doing (maybe going somewhere to pay a bill), teaching them how to overcome the anxiety of paying the bill would be more beneficial for them in the long run than actually doing it for them. Possibly seeing a therapist yourself is also a good option to help with processing the feelings and emotions that you have about particular situations you have with your daughter is also a good idea as well.