Worrying About Your Kids: How To Sit With Not Knowing

If you're a parent with a loud, worried mind, this talk is for you. Not just when your kids are small, but when they're grown and you're still lying awake running through everything that could go wrong.

Most of us have absorbed the idea that worrying about our children is proof we love them or that it keeps them safe. It doesn’t. Worry is a habit of the mind, and it changes nothing about what happens to the people we love.

In this talk I look at why the mind gets stuck in the worry loop, why it feels like protection when it's doing the opposite, and how to step back so your own steadier wisdom has room to be heard. I introduce Sue, the name I give the inner critical, overly responsible voice, and the three drives behind her: Safety, Uncertainty, and Exposure.

This isn't about silencing your worry or forcing yourself to feel calm. It's about seeing worry clearly enough that it no longer makes sense, and get to be the grounded, present parent your kids will feel the benefit of.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this track. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today. So if you're a parent, There is a very high chance that you believe a subtle lie that society has given to you. That the more you worry about your kids, The more it means that you love them or the more it keeps them safe. We expect to worry when they're babies or toddlers, But lately, I've been having conversation after conversation with clients who have full-grown adult children, And they're still trapped in the exact same loop of sort of constant worry and exhausting overthinking about their kids. So in this talk, We're going to look at why your mind gets stuck in this habit, Why worry feels like it's protecting your kids when it actually isn't, Power of that noise in your head so that you can be present with the wisdom that your kids really need. So worry appears in so many sneaky ways throughout parenting. So when they're young, It's maybe worrying about high fevers or their first day at school. And when they're teenagers, It's holding your breath when they're out on their bike with their friends for the first time, Or waiting to hear the taxi door shut on a night out. And when they become adults, It can turn into worrying about whether their marriage will survive, If they'll find a job, Or how a health diagnosis will play out. And because we worry about the people that we care about, Our mind is naturally wired to protect our close circle. We innocently end up making a false equation. Worry equals love. Worry equals being a good parent. Worry keeps those I love safe. And here's the truth, Worry is completely optional. That doesn't mean it's your fault if you're worrying or that you should blame yourself. It does mean that worrying is a habit of the mind, Not a measure of your love or your capacity to keep your kids safe. To understand why this happens, We have to look at how the mind operates when it feels out of control. Because our thoughts can feel so compelling and real, I created a framework to help us understand that inner critical, Overly responsible, Scared voice in our head. I call that voice Sue. So this isn't gender specific, It's simply a description or a metaphor to help us understand how all human minds operate. Sue operates on three main drives that spell her name. S is for safety, U for uncertainty and E for exposure. These are the drives that she is filtering everything through, Which results in that constant narration about life. How are you doing? What might happen? Et cetera, Et cetera. And parenting hits the safety and the uncertainty drives full on. So life is inherently uncertain. We can't control whether difficult, Painful, Or challenging things happen to our kids. But because facing that unknown is uncomfortable, Sue steps in and offers a fake solution to us, Worry. So worrying feels like you're doing something in the face of uncertainty. It creates a false sense of the hyper-visual vigilance, As if that sheer mental effort of imagining worst-case scenarios will somehow build a shield around your child and prevent bad things from happening. Over time, This becomes a deep mental habit. Sue starts up her loop, And because we care so deeply, We innocently pay attention to her. We think, I'm worrying, So there must be some vital information here I need to fix or that I need to pay attention to. That worry is a signal of some impending doom that we need to, You know, Pay attention to rather than a habit of the mind. And here's the hardest thing for most parents to see, But it's also the most liberating truth once you do see it. Worry serves zero practical purpose. It does not change outcomes. So I'm gonna say that again because it won't feel like this is true. Worry serves zero practical purpose. It does not change outcomes. So let's look at two real examples. So we'll look at a lighter one first. So imagine that your teenager is out on the dirt tracks on their bike, And you're sitting at home going around in thought. Sue is in full action. What if they crash? Did they take water? What if they run out of phone battery and can't contact me? So in this imagined scenario, Here's a question. Does your mental activity at home whether their bike tyre slips on a rock five miles away. Not at all. Let's look at a slightly more difficult example. So imagine an adult child who's navigating a serious health diagnosis. It's completely natural for feelings and scary thoughts to surface, But no amount of your anxiety, Sleepless nights or mental churning is going to alter the physical outcome of that diagnosis. So thought has the power to create our moment-to-moment feeling experience, But it does not have the power to control external outcomes for another person. So when we stay up in our heads, Trapped ensues worry loop, It exhausts us, It lowers our mood, And it steals our ability to actually enjoy being a parent. And worse, It actually clouds over our own intuition. So going forward, I'd like you to consider this switch or this change of perspective. When worry about your kids starts up, Don't treat it as the signal to get involved or go down a rabbit hole or keep worrying in the belief that it helps in some way. It's not a signal that this topic demands worry. See the anxious or worried feeling or the thoughts as the signal that you are lost in Sue. You are lost in the mind, Lost in a story about what might happen rather than present with the here and now. And this is one of the most powerful things that we can do to experience anxiety and worry differently. So when Sue isn't stuck going around on her own axis, Something remarkable happens. You clear space to actually hear your own inner knowing. So beneath all that mental noise, All that mental activity, The anxiety and the hypervigilance, You have a quiet, Deeply reliable well of wisdom. We all do. But when your head is full of what ifs and scary future scenarios, That subtle voice of intuition can get completely drowned out. So think of the difference between worrying about a situation and knowing what to do in it. So the worrying is loud and it's urgent and it's exhausting and it keeps you running around in circles in your mind. But knowing what to do in a situation, Your wisdom shining, Is quiet and grounded and present. So when you step back from Sue's commentary, Your mind naturally settles. And from that calm place, You can trust yourself. You can see clearly whether there's an actual practical action to take, Like offering help or listening or researching a doctor, Or whether the wisest action is simply to do nothing, Sit back and trust the process. So you don't have to force intuition. It's just what's naturally left when the worry stops. So as I said, When you're stuck in a worried state, It's much harder to reach your own inner wisdom and quiet clarity. You're more likely, It's not impossible, But you're more likely to miss the quiet nudges that tell you when to step in with some practical help for your child and when to step back and let them work it out for themselves. So I was reading a thread on Reddit recently and so many adults were saying, My mum is in her eighties and still constantly worries about me, But I'm completely fine. So constant worry can actually frustrate the person that you're worrying about because it subtly communicates that you don't trust their ability to handle life. So if your worries centre on the choices that your teen or adult child is making, Their friends, Their health, Their future, It can feel especially important to keep reminding them of the better choices they could make, Or offering the solutions that make sense to us, What we care about, What we believe matters. But repeating the same, You should be doing this because of your worry, Isn't going to have the effect that you're looking for. It's really hard to make people care about or prioritise the things we think are important. And constant reminders and that nagging type of energy rarely moves the needle in someone else's behaviour. But when you're operating from that grounded wisdom rather than a state of panic, Your kids feel it immediately. One of the most powerful things that you can do for your children, Whether they're five, 15 or 45, Is to be the person who holds the space for their innate resilience. Every human being has built in resilience and capacity to cope. When you stop worrying and ground yourself in your presence, You get to reflect that strength back to them. So the next time you feel that the heavy engine of worry starting up again, Remember, It isn't proof of how much you love your child. It isn't keeping them safe. It's just Sue doing what Sue does when faced with uncertainty. So notice the worry for what it is, A habit of the mind, Not a message that you're obliged to obey and pay attention to and act on. And see what becomes possible when you stop taking orders from the voice in your head, Sue. So thanks so much for listening.

Reviews

🙏