Atlanta Parents: Is It Back-to-School Jitters or High-Functioning Anxiety?

It’s almost back-to-school time when the fun, upbeat Target commercials remind all parents that early wake times, school projects and carpool lines are right around the corner. And as this season approaches, we as therapists notice the intense energy that emerges in the later parts of summer in Atlanta as parents and families prepare for the new school year ahead. Just like with every new chapter, feeling a bit nervous about newness and change is to be expected. It’s normal for students to be nervous as they approach a new school year with high-pressure academics on the horizon but it’s important to know when it’s just new school year nerves and actual clinical anxiety. This is a guide to help Atlanta parents differentiate between the two and offer ways to help their kids in the process instead of reinforcing the anxiety unknowingly. 

With TikTok influencers and increased mental health verbiage filtering mainstream conversations, as clinicians, we’ve seen terms like anxiety wildly misunderstood and misused. So it’s important to understand what true, clinical anxiety is and what is just new school year jitters. Clinical anxiety, just like any other medical disorder, must meet a set of criteria to be deemed anxiety. We have a manual that every counselor, social worker and therapist is trained to use that helps us differentiate everyday worry and clinical anxiety since not all worry is anxiety.  

When it comes to the new school year, we’ve taken some of the criteria and helped clarify what it might look like as it relates to back-to-school time. 

When helping backfires and what you can do instead

Just like you’d comfort your child when they cry after falling off their bike or after a fight with a friend, it’s intuitive for parents to want to comfort and reassure their child when they are upset about going back to school. The challenge is that when we, as parents, reassure our children or teen that everything will be ok, you could be playing into an anxiety loop that simply gets stronger and stronger over time. When dealing with anxiety, giving constant verbal reassurance, while it looks like a fix, is only temporary. Additionally, it could backfire on you, the parent, because if things don’t go well at lunchtime or if they don’t do well on a test, they could question your trustworthiness since you reassured them things would go differently. 

When your kid has clinical anxiety, it is important to help them tolerate the unknown and face the possibility of things not going perfectly. Anxiety always overestimates harm and underestimates one’s ability to prevent and problem solve. However, when they can identify their fears, discuss ways to prevent or problem-solve, they can walk into the feared situation with more confidence and success. Their developing brains are constantly scanning for threats, but when we, as parents, stand with them to face their fears and metaphorically “look under the bed for monsters” with them, they realize that they are stronger than their fears. Then, instead of being hypervigilant and freezing in the moment, they come with tools and address their fears head-on. Avoidance only makes anxiety grow, but facing fears can help reduce it. 

How to break the reassurance cycle before the first day of school

So how do we do this? Let’s break it down…..

If your child is worried about which teacher they will have, give them empathy, not answers.

Say, “I know that change can feel scary right now. Sometimes our brain gets taken over by the worry bully and it throws a fit, making you ask the same things over and over. We can tell the worry bully that it isn’t in charge; you are. We can turn down the volume by focusing on where we are in this moment, finding calm in this moment and not letting it boss you around.” 

By externalizing the worry to something like a “worry bully” kids can treat their worry as an uninvited bully instead of something that is a part of them. It’s helpful to normalize the worry and to let them know that the worry bully comes around when there is something important going on. We wouldn’t worry about things we don’t care about, only things that matter. When we anticipate worry coming, we can acknowledge that it’s there and know that while it might go up, it always comes back down. Every time we do that, we are building our courage muscles, and the worry bug’s voice gets smaller and smaller. It might not go away completely, but its volume certainly turns down significantly. 

Simplify School Related Anxiety

Navigating back-to-school transitions in Atlanta can be challenging but anxiety doesn’t have to take over your child’s personality and dictate your entire family’s school year ahead. If you notice that your children’s anxiety escalates beyond the first 2 weeks of school, is refusing to go to school or reporting of physical symptoms on school days, we encourage you to find evidence-based support using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Our practice specializes in therapy for kids and teens facing clinical anxiety and academic stress. We are conveniently located in Buckhead and Norcross and are here to help you and your family navigate through high-pressure transition seasons with confidence. Click here to schedule an appointment with us today!