Stress Is Contagious

This week I have my top three tips to avoid catching someone else's stress. Because, a lot of times, it can feel like anxiety and stress loves company.

1. You have your space, I have mine:

Stress can rub off on you if you let it. Just remember that you are only in charge of yourself, and that means you have this great opportunity to take a step back and focus on you. Sometimes you may want to literally take a step back and go to your office, or take a quick break outside to reconnect with yourself.

…

Stress responses impact emotional and behavioral health in a few ways. 

Physiologically, a stress response leads to increased heart rate, breath rate, pupil dilation, and muscle tension. Your child’s adrenal glands are pumping to prepare them for a fight, flight, or freeze response. It’s a healthy activation. 

What happens with repeated stressors?

But when this stress response gets activated again and again, it becomes maladaptive on the body’s long term health. A higher amount of adverse childhood experiences (stressors) is linked to a greater chance of cancer, drug use, stroke and heart attacks. 

Often, the kids and teens I work with inherit or learn a portion of their perfectionism from one or both parents.

There’s of course the biological component of anxiety, and then the environmental. So if you have a perfectionist parent, you’re much more likely to engage in perfectionist tendencies as well.

That perfectionism often gets in the way of school performance, turning assignments in on time, or feeling incapable of handling unexpected stressors. So, how can we help?

Your picky eater may be a little annoying.

You go to a restaurant, you bring an extra meal for your kid. You and your partner make dinner, and your little one has a whole separate menu for themselves. You'd rather have them eat something than nothing, but you're a little worried that if they eat another chicken nugget, they're going to turn into one. 

Why are kids such picky eaters?

There are a lot of different reasons that kids can be picky eaters - but part of the underlying issue can be anxiety. 

We can't always predict when there will be a change to our schedule, our plans, or our life. But it's important to recognize that pre-schoolers may have a particularly hard time with changes both expected and unexpected. Read below for a few tips on how to set your preschooler up for success.