Parenting Children with Anxiety: Using DBT Skills to Interrupt the Anxiety Cycle

Parenting is a journey of profound love and meaning, one that demands time, energy, and resources that often feel scarce. For those who parent a child struggling with anxiety, this can feel exponentially difficult. It often feels as if you're navigating a small boat through a relentless storm, tossed by powerful waves of worry, sadness, guilt, exhaustion, and sometimes, even despair. It's heartbreaking to watch your child struggle and exhausting to manage meltdowns, avoidance behaviors, defiance, and the resulting strain on the entire family.

I know this struggle first-hand. As the mother of a child with OCD, I am her anchor, her safe harbor, and her first line of defense against a world that feels overwhelmingly threatening. My natural impulse is to rescue her by avoiding triggers, offering reassurance, and altering my own life to accommodate her fears. In moments of her high distress (or my anticipatory anxiety around it), this feels like the easiest path, as it provides immediate relief. Unfortunately, that path inadvertently teaches her that the world is too dangerous to handle and that her feelings are too big to contain.

I have learned that the goal of parenting the anxious child isn't just to stop the struggle; it's to master the delicate balance of Radical Acceptance and Change. This means doing two things simultaneously:

1. Validate their experience: We acknowledge that their emotional experience is real and okay.

2. Hold belief in their capability: We simultaneously hold a firm belief that they can engage in the activities important to them, despite the distress.

Ultimately, we are teaching our children—and reminding ourselves—that as humans, we can both tolerate distress and engage in life.

The Unique Difficulties of Parenting the Anxious Child

Anxiety is a hypersensitive false alarm system that drives behavior. For parents, this manifests in several common, painful cycles:

• The Accommodation Trap: Your child’s anxiety screams, "I can't go to school!" Out of love, you allow avoidance. This only temporarily reduces their distress while reinforcing the belief that avoidance is the correct solution.

• The Emotional Contagion: Your child's emotional dysregulation can trigger your own stress, fear, or frustration. When your emotional reactivity takes the lead, it inadvertently escalates your child’s anxiety, creating a vicious cycle of mutual distress.

• The Validation Vacuum: It's hard to validate an apparently irrational response, leading to comments like, "Stop worrying; there's nothing to be scared of." While well-intentioned, this invalidates their experience, making them feel misunderstood, isolated, and more anxious.

The goal isn't to eliminate anxiety. It is to teach your child how to manage the feeling and choose effective actions even when emotions feel consuming.

DBT Skills to Empower Parents 

The core of effectively navigating these cycles lies in your ability to remain grounded when your child is struggling. DBT provides concrete skills to help you regulate your emotions, ensuring you respond from Wise Mind instead of Emotion Mind.

1. Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the foundation of DBT: paying attention, non-judgmentally, to the present moment and doing what works.

• How it helps: When your child’s anxiety flares and they become defiant, mindfulness teaches you to slow down and not respond as if it is a crisis.

• Practical Application: When panic hits, put your hand on your heart, take slow, deep breaths, and observe your internal experience. This pause helps you determine if you are capable of responding skillfully, and if not, allows you to safely remove yourself to regulate first.

  
  

2. Distress Tolerance

Parenting an anxious child often feels like an unending series of crises. Distress tolerance helps you calm your own nervous system so you can return to the situation grounded.

• How it helps: Your child's meltdown is intensely distressing. Your urge is to fix it instantly—often by giving in. Distress Tolerance helps you take a step back and not respond to your own immediate distress urges.

  
  

  

  Anna demonstrating the Temperature TIPP Skill - @pacificdbt

  
  

• Practical Application (TIPP Skill): When you feel overwhelmed, use the Temperature part of the DBT skill TIPP by engaging in a cold-water dive. Get a bowl, fill it with cold water, hold your breath, bend over, and quickly place your face in the water for as long as is comfortable (or for 30 seconds). Repeat two more times. If you don’t have access to a bowl of cold water, you can use an ice pack instead.

  
  

3. Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation teaches skills that decrease vulnerabilities and intense emotions while increasing awareness and understanding of emotion. This helps us determine the most effective way to respond to our child.

• How it helps: When your child is fearful and acting defiantly, your corresponding emotion might be anger, especially after an exhausting day. Emotion regulation skills provide greater insight into your emotional response, including any underlying vulnerabilities, helping you determine the most effective way to respond.

• Practical Application: When you feel angry because your child is being defiant, you might be interpreting their behavior as disrespectful or evidence of a bigger failure. Checking the Facts can help you realize that responding with anger is likely to make the situation worse. It reminds you of the fact that your child is scared and tired (and so are you), which helps you approach the situation with more patience and self compassion..

  
  

4. Interpersonal Effectiveness

Interpersonal effectiveness is a set of skills that helps us navigate conflicts, get our needs met, and maintain self-respect and relationships. It is crucial for holding limits and avoiding the accommodation trap.

• How it helps: It provides concrete communication tools to convey that you understand their feelings while holding important limits.

• Practical Application: It's 8 a.m., your child is refusing to go to school because of a test, and you need to be at work. Instead of yelling (which increases distress), focus on validation without agreement: "I can see you are terrified about this test, and that's a really painful feeling. Your fear is real." This simple statement acknowledges their pain, builds connection, and creates an opening to coach them to use their coping skills, rather than trying to regulate their emotions for them..

You Are Your Child's DBT Coach 

You don't need to be a therapist to use these skills—only a consistent coach and a skillful model. Start by learning and using the skills for yourself first. When you respond to your child's anxiety from a regulated, skillful place, you are teaching them how to effectively navigate life and building the foundational emotional competency that will serve them throughout their lifetime.