Parenting is no easy task, especially with the added pressures of academic anxiety and the growing teen mental health crisis. It’s imperative parents take an active role in their children’s mental health and anxieties while managing their own.
Enter: WHEN WORRY WORKS, a new book by Dr. Dana Dorfman, a New York City-based psychotherapist, that explores how to end the cycle of anxiety from parent to child.
“While there are many differences between being a therapist and a mother, there is obvious overlap between the skills warranted for both roles: creating a safe and nurturing relationship to identify, express, understand, and work through emotions,” says Dr. Dorfman in a Newsweek article. “So, unsurprisingly, many assume I must know what I’m doing as a parent. Unfortunately, what I know doesn’t always translate into what I do.”
From her work with patients, she knows that parents’ difficulties tolerating certain emotions in their kids are often reflective of the feelings they cannot bear within themselves.
In her book, Dr. Dorfman discusses:
*Adolescent Mental Health: What does anxiety look like in adolescents? What are the limitations and benefits of anxiety? How do you know what’s “normal?”
*Anxiety: Approaches to managing worry, anxious thought patterns and distortions. How you can familiarize yourself with your own anxiety patterns and make your worries work for you.
*Parental Anxiety: Where do parenting worries stem from? How can parents manage their worries?
*Achievement Culture and How it Affects Us: Many times, one’s cultural relationships with achievement become the focus of their parenting and can greatly affect the family. How do you break old patterns? In what ways can parents understand their own Parent Anxiety Reaction Type in order to avoid an achievement-anxiety spiral?
*Clarifying Parental Values: How do you want to live your life? What do you want to instill in your teens? What will ground you when you’re feeling anxious and adrift?
*Parent-to-Teen Communication: How can parents convey concerns to their teens without shutting them down or worsening issues?
*Adolescent Learning & the Adolescent Brain: What are the best environments and circumstances for adolescents to thrive in? How can parents and loved ones better foster this flourishing?
*Timely Topics: COVID-19, challenges in parenting Gen Z, academic anxiety & pressure, social-emotional learning, adolescent substance use/abuse, social media & technology
Are You an Anxious Parent? Identify your Parenting Anxiety Reaction Type and take the P.A.R.T. Quiz here.
When Worry Works: How to Harness Your Parenting Stress and Guide Your Teen to Success is available online and at retail bookstores.
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Author: Mile High Mamas
