anxiety maintenance cycle Archives - Mountain Valley Treatment Center

Five Things Every Parent of an Anxious Child Should Consider Heading Into the School Year

Posted on August 26, 2025August 26, 2025 by Mountain Valley Treatment Center

The start of a new school year can bring excitement, but for many children — especially those struggling with anxiety — it also brings a storm of worry and self-doubt. Parents often wonder: how much should I push, and how much should I protect? While there are no simple answers, there are guiding principles that can help families navigate the year ahead with steadiness and clarity.

Here are five key considerations for parents of anxious kids as school begins.

1. Normalize, but Don’t Accommodate Avoidance

Some level of anxiety at the start of school is completely natural. Where problems begin is when avoidance takes hold. Avoidance provides short-term relief but strengthens the vicious circle of anxiety, making future challenges harder. This cycle works by rewarding escape in the moment, which teaches the brain that avoidance is the safest option — and over time, the fear grows larger and the situations harder to face. For example, if a student skips class once because of anxiety, it feels like instant relief, but the next day returning to class feels even more overwhelming, making the avoidance harder to break.

Avoidance also interrupts the ability to participate in daily occupations like school, play, and friendships. The goal is to support children in gradually re-engaging rather than removing them from challenges. Parents can validate discomfort while still encouraging manageable steps forward.

Examples:
– Presentation avoidance: Scaffold exposure — practice with a teacher, then a small group, then the class.
– Nurse visits: Limit breaks, with the expectation of returning to class within a specific timeframe.
– School refusal: Resist defaulting to online schooling, which entrenches avoidance.
– Homework: Break assignments into smaller parts instead of excusing them.

2. Set Structure Through Routines and Plans

Anxious kids thrive when life feels predictable — at home and at school. Consistent routines around sleep, wake-ups, meals, and homework reduce uncertainty, while proactive communication with teachers and counselors helps prevent last-minute crises. Transitions, especially from summer to school, are smoother when structure is introduced early.

Routines aren’t just about efficiency; they create a sense of safety and mastery across multiple environments. Predictable structure helps children conserve mental energy, freeing up space for learning, play, and social engagement.

Parents also play a powerful role in modeling regulation. If a parent stays calm when the bus is missed or when homework feels overwhelming, a child learns that stress can be managed without panic. When parents and schools coordinate expectations and backup plans, anxious kids experience greater consistency, which reduces uncertainty.

Examples:
– Routine: Homework done at the same time and place each evening to eliminate nightly negotiations.
– Modeling: Respond calmly to a missed bus or forgotten lunch.
– Planning: “If she’s overwhelmed, she can take a five-minute break, then return — not skip the rest of the day.”

3. Look Beyond the School Day

Attendance doesn’t equal wellness. Some anxious kids grit their teeth and “white-knuckle” through the school day, only to retreat into isolation at home. Real progress shows up across multiple domains: family life, friendships, leisure, and play — not just classroom attendance. Functioning means engaging in a balance of daily occupations, not just enduring academics.

Connection is central. Kids need opportunities to belong, to laugh, and to participate in meaningful activities — whether it’s playing a sport, creating art, cooking with family, or spending time with friends. Leisure and play aren’t extras; they are essential therapeutic tools for regulating emotions, building skills, and counteracting stress.

Parents should also watch for subtle avoidance that signals anxiety is in control. Frequent nurse visits, perfectionistic meltdowns, or refusals disguised as illness often indicate that fear — not defiance — is driving behavior. Looking beyond attendance helps parents and schools measure whether a child is truly engaging in life, not just getting through the day.

Examples:
– White-knuckling: A child attends school but spends every afternoon isolated online.
– Extracurriculars: Avoidance of all non-school activities is still avoidance.
– Red flags: Morning “illnesses,” repeated nurse visits, or disproportionate stress over assignments.

4. Guard Against Comparison and Social Media

School has always been a breeding ground for comparison — grades, sports, popularity, appearance. Today, social media magnifies every insecurity, offering kids a 24/7 scoreboard of who’s prettier, smarter, more athletic, or more “liked.” For an anxious child, this constant measuring can be crushing. As the old saying goes: “comparison is the thief of joy.”

Children need space to build a strong sense of self through meaningful activities, leisure, and authentic connections — not through relentless comparison. Parents play a critical role here. Kids don’t need to be measured against siblings, peers, their parents’ childhood selves, or even their own former abilities. For anxious kids, who are already their own toughest critics, comparison only deepens shame and erodes confidence.

Instead, parents who highlight individual progress — whether that’s raising a hand once in class, walking through the school doors after a hard morning, or choosing to join a friend for an activity — help their children recognize growth on their own terms. These moments of authentic achievement, however small, are the antidote to comparison.

Examples:
– Sibling or peer comparisons: Avoid comments like “your sister never struggled with this” or measuring your child against classmates.
– Self-comparisons: Refrain from “When I was your age…” — the world your child is navigating is different from yours.
– Comparisons to their former self: Avoid saying “you used to be able to do this,” which often lands as failure and pressure when a child is already vulnerable.

5. Recognize and Manage Your Own Anxiety as a Parent

Perhaps the hardest — and most powerful — part of supporting an anxious child is managing your own worry. Children absorb parental anxiety like sponges. A parent who rescues too quickly or models panic reinforces the message that the child can’t handle discomfort.

Parents can use the same principles we ask of kids: regulate emotions, lean into support, and find balance through healthy routines. Modeling calm confidence, holding firm but compassionate boundaries, and celebrating small wins show kids that growth comes from tolerating discomfort, not avoiding it.

Examples:
– Over-accommodation: Calling to excuse a child from gym every time they feel nervous.
– Modeling: Owning mistakes calmly teaches resilience better than preventing all discomfort.
– Self-talk: “It’s okay if my child is uncomfortable — that’s how they grow.”
– Wins: Recognize showing-up behaviors: attending one class, raising a hand, or staying through a difficult day.

Moving Forward with Support

Parenting an anxious child can feel exhausting, especially during the back-to-school season. You may find yourself torn between wanting to protect your child and knowing they need to face challenges to grow. The good news is you don’t have to figure it all out alone.

Lean on your resources. Talk with teachers and school counselors, reach out to therapists, and don’t hesitate to ask for extra help when your child’s struggles feel bigger than what you can manage on your own. Asking for help is not failure — it’s part of showing your child that strength comes from connection.

Remember, the goal isn’t to erase anxiety. It’s to help your child take one step at a time, supported by the right people and strategies, and to celebrate progress — however small — along the way.

Why Summer Isn’t Always a Vacation for Teens with Anxiety

Posted on June 13, 2025June 13, 2025 by Mountain Valley Treatment Center

For most adults, summer evokes a sense of ease—time off, warmer days, fewer demands. It’s natural to assume that teens feel the same. And for many, they do. But for adolescents with anxiety, summer often brings less relief than expected. Some teens even become more dysregulated once school ends. Parents may wonder: How can my child be struggling when the stressors of school are gone? Isn’t summer supposed to be the easy season?

From a clinical perspective, there’s a clear explanation—and a path forward.

Why the Absence of Pressure Doesn’t Always Equal Peace

During the school year, structure provides containment. For an anxious teen, daily routines—waking up, attending classes, managing assignments—can serve as external regulators that help keep internal distress in check. While these routines may create pressure, they also offer predictability and rhythm.

Summer removes that structure. Days become unbounded. Routines dissolve. And for many teens with anxiety, this shift creates a destabilizing vacuum. Without a framework to organize time, they feel unmoored. Uncertainty increases, and with it, so does anxiety.

This speaks to a core trait in anxiety disorders: intolerance of uncertainty. The anxious brain struggles to tolerate the unknown, often preferring the discomfort of overstimulation to the perceived threat of having nothing to anchor to. In this context, summer’s wide-open freedom can feel less like a break and more like a cliff.

How the Anxiety Maintenance Cycle Shows Up in Summer

One of the most common patterns seen in anxious teens over the summer is a rise in avoidant behavior. With fewer external expectations, teens may begin to opt out of discomfort—social interactions, physical activity, even basic responsibilities. What may initially look like rest or “needing a break” can, in reality, become a retreat from the world.

Clinically, we understand this as the anxiety maintenance cycle: anxiety prompts avoidance, which provides short-term relief, which in turn reinforces the anxious belief that the avoided thing is dangerous. Over time, avoidance shrinks a teen’s world. What started as taking a few days off can quickly become chronic social withdrawal, disrupted sleep, loss of motivation, or increased reliance on maladaptive coping strategies.

At the same time, other teens go in the opposite direction. Sensing their child’s discomfort with open-ended time, some parents overcompensate—stacking the summer with camps, classes, college prep, and travel. While structure can be protective, overscheduling an anxious teen can trigger overcontrol, perfectionism, and performance anxiety, especially in those who mask their distress with high achievement.

In both scenarios—withdrawal or overdrive—the teen’s anxious nervous system is not regulating. It’s reacting.

Nervous System Dysregulation in the Absence of Anchors

Anxiety is not just a cognitive experience—it’s physiological. During the school year, daily movement, social engagement, intellectual stimulation, and consistent routines all serve as regulators. They provide feedback loops that help organize the nervous system.

When those inputs disappear, it’s not uncommon for teens to become dysregulated. Parents may observe increased irritability, emotional lability, fatigue, or somatic complaints (like headaches or GI issues). Sleep patterns may become erratic. Motivation may plummet. And without the demands of school to mask it, underlying distress rises to the surface.

This is why “just relaxing” rarely works as a strategy for teens with anxiety. The nervous system requires intentional regulation—not just time off.

What Can Parents Do?

There’s no universal summer strategy that works for every teen. But there are a few clinical principles that can help guide parents in supporting their child’s emotional health:

1. Create Light but Reliable Structure
Daily anchors—consistent sleep/wake times, meals, light physical activity, scheduled therapy—can restore rhythm without overwhelming. The structure doesn’t need to mimic school but should provide a scaffold to help the teen feel contained.

2. Watch for Patterns of Avoidance
Avoidance is the hallmark of anxiety. If your teen is consistently retreating from social situations, physical activity, or new experiences, it’s important to interrupt that pattern gently but directly. Help them take small steps back toward engagement—even when it’s uncomfortable.

3. Support Regulating Activities
Encourage movement, time in nature, creative expression, and face-to-face social interaction. These all support nervous system regulation. Excessive screen time, isolation, or late-night sleep schedules tend to do the opposite.

4. Don’t Wait for Motivation
Anxious teens often say they don’t “feel like” doing things that might help. Waiting for internal motivation before acting only reinforces avoidance. Instead, use behavioral activation—support them in engaging first, with the understanding that motivation often follows action, not the other way around.

5. Separate the Teen from the Anxiety
When teens push back on plans or resist doing hard things, it’s often the anxiety talking. Help them externalize it: “I wonder if your anxiety is telling you this will be too hard. What would it be like to push back on it instead of listening to it?”

6. Model Calm Executive Function
Anxiety thrives in ambiguity. If parents leave every decision up for negotiation, anxious teens will often default to avoidance. It’s okay—and often necessary—for parents to make calm, confident decisions, especially when anxiety is driving the conversation. Being empathic doesn’t mean being passive.

A Different Kind of Growth

Summer doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be packed or left entirely open. What it can be is a space for developmentally appropriate challenge, nervous system recalibration, and increased emotional awareness.

Anxiety doesn’t take a vacation—but that doesn’t mean teens can’t learn to navigate it with more confidence. With a balance of routine, rest, and gentle exposure to discomfort, summer can be a season not of avoidance, but of quiet growth.

MOVING MOUNTAINS

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