Back to School

Written by Lona Loken, R.Psych

Summer days in Edmonton often feel magical to me. The light lingers far into the night and there is an easiness and freedom to life. I can do so many things or nothing at all, and both feel like a luxury. I can hop outside late at night for a last minute walk with my puppy and end up sitting on the grass watching the light slowly settle and the shadows deepen all around us. It is lovely and peaceful. But then as the summer goes on and it stretches into August, I start to notice that it gets dark sooner and feel a tightening in my chest as I recognize that the end is coming. I picture the dark cold winter days, and how I will be perpetually late as everything starts to take longer than I want it to. I don’t want my magical summertimes to end. I want to hold onto it and keep it with me.

I notice that my small clients at work begin to talk about how they don’t know who their teacher will be or what class they will be in. They give me long explanations about how this teacher or class would be better than that one and all their reasons for this belief. If I mention their worries to their parents, I often see the same fears reflected in their parents’ faces as well. Muscles tighten, lowered eyebrows, and they give me recitations about attempts they have made to get their child into this class or that class. Or they might describe all the activities they are beginning soon.

Most schools in Edmonton release their class assignments about a day or so before school resumes for the summer, and will not take requests from parents about class assignments. I’m sure they have a lot of really practical reasons for this such as just how impossible it would be place every child in the class they are hoping for. But, this can be really difficult for those of us with more anxious tendencies. We want to make a plan, to know what is happening, and to prepare for it. Does this rob us of the joy of just enjoying what is in front of us? Of course it does, but it also feels so much safer. Anxiety tells us that we cannot handle the challenges life throws at us, and so we try to prepare as much as possible.

We hope that this year, if we just plan ahead and push ourselves more, we won’t have to drag around that heavy feeling that everyone in the world is doing better than us and that eventually someone will notice how poorly we do everything and call us out on it. We hope that this is the year that we will finally feel like to we belong and we matter. Most of these feelings are a normal part of being human. We feel grief when things we love come to end because we attend to and pay attention our lives and their changes and rhythms.

Part of feeling love and appreciation is also noticing when those things are gone and feeling loss. I am often happy that I’m not robot because I don’t want life to pass by me without me noticing or caring about it. This is also why we feel anxiety. Because life matters to us and it is important to us. Children care about having their best friend in their class because they love their best friend and being close to them makes the year so much more fun. And they want to feel like they’re being successful, they’re competent, and to feel cared about because we all want those things. It is good to care about these things. But sometimes it feels like anxiety takes over and controls people’s life. It sucks the joy from everyday things and turns your moments into endless swirling thoughts, overwhelming sensations in our bodies, and a constant sense of dread. It is my job to help people learn to cope better with anxiety when it starts to feel this way.

To find ways for them to handle the thoughts and feelings that come up for them, and to help them see that their worth lies in so much more than their school grades or their job performance. But I also want to give you some tips for how to better support yourself or others in these ups and downs of normal life.

Here some things to reflect on and ask yourself. Somewhere beneath all these voices in your head what is your gut telling you about this situation? What would it be like to trust yourself and listen to that voice? What is the difference between what anxiety is telling you and your real voice?

Here are some ideas for how to support others with anxiety: Make space to pause, spend some time alone, and reflect on what has been going on for you lately. Validate your feelings and experiences. If you’re feeling some negative emotions such as loss or anger be curious about these feelings and make space for them. Pay attention to your body, take some breaths, do a body scan, loosen up your tight muscles. Talk to the people in your life who are feeling anxious and try to really notice the feeling that is going on for them beneath the problem they are taking about. Feeling listened to and heard can go a long way to helping people learn to better able to cope with their own feelings. Try not to solve people’s problems or rescue them. Even parents shouldn’t be solving all their children’s problems or reassuring them about everything. This can send the message to them that they can’t handle these things themselves and that they need to be saved by someone.

Don’t try to fix or erase people’s negative emotions. If you want to take your child out for ice cream every time they feel sad then pause next time and think about this before you do it. How do you feel about your child experiencing sadness? Make space for them to tell you about their sadness and really hear it so they aren’t getting the message that they should never feel sad. And then take them out for ice cream if that’s what you want to do.