Beyond Separation Anxiety: A Strategy that Works
- Claire Lerner, LCSW-C
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
When focusing on feelings can go overboard and add more stress.
Key points
Respecting and validating feelings is critical when it come to helping kids with separation anxiety.
But more is not always better, especially for deeply feeling kids who can stuck and ruminate.
Talking about feelings all the time can increase distress and anxiety
What they need is validation and also help moving on, not looping alongside them.
In this day and age of "gentle parenting," moms and dads have gotten the message that when it comes to respecting and helping kids manage their feelings, more is always better.
But in practice, what I am finding is that this approach is not what's most helpful to kids, that it's not leading to working through their feelings and reducing anxiety, it's getting them stuck in their feelings and increasing distress and anxiety.
A recent case provides a powerful illustration of this phenomenon, that reflects what many other families are experiencing. It provides a roadmap for how to thread the needle of showing respect and validation for feelings, while also helping kids work through them.
A mom and dad sought my consultation because they were concerned about the intense anxiety their five-year-old daughter was experiencing when separated from them. She is a deeply feeling child who can stuck when she has a big worry or is feeling sad. She ruminates and has a hard time paying attention to anything else.
These parents had divorced when their child was two-and-a-half. Their separation was amicable. They get along well and coparent collaboratively. Even so, their daughter has struggled with deep feelings of sadness about missing them when she can’t be with them. It’s most intense at school.
Their child generally enjoys school—learning and playing—and when they pick her up at the end of the day, she almost always says it was great. But every morning and evening she ruminates on how much she’s going to miss them when she’s back at school. She talks almost constantly about how sad she is when she’s at school and not with them. It has taken over; it feels like all their time is spent discussing her sadness and brainstorming ways to reduce it, leaving little space for connecting joyfully.
Their daughter has been in therapy since she was four. Her parents have done everything her therapist has suggested, which is all in sync with their parenting approach: they ask about, listen to and empathize with her feelings; they help her think of strategies to try when she is missing them sad at school; they share their own feelings of missing her and how they think about her and feel connected with her throughout the day; they have given her trinkets from our workplaces that she can have with her at school.
While she seems responsive to these strategies and eager to have these discussions, none of it has reduced her looping and preoccupation. They don’t see any significant change.
Also of concern is that their daughter seems to be confusing love with worry. When they tell her that they miss her, too, when they're not together, but that they're also okay, she has responded: “If you’re not worried when you’re not with me, it means you don’t love me.”
The Insights
It’s to be expected that a child will experience deep sadness and confusion about a parental separation. They need validation of and compassion for their feelings, and lots of opportunities to work through these emotions and to make sense of their experiences.
But my strong sense is that, as counterintuitive as it might seem, at this point, it’s too much. What seems loving and sensitive and “right” in theory—processing her feelings for long periods and brainstorming solutions—is actually not what Sasha needs or what will help her work through the separation anxiety. It’s intensifying her rumination—the “looping”—repetitively thinking about the same distressing thoughts without moving toward resolution. It’s keeping her stuck in the feelings in a way that isn’t healthy.
When I share this insight, it resonates. Knowing their daughter as they do, they can see that the incessant discussion about her missing them is only exacerbating her distress, not alleviating it. They know living in this constant state of stress is not healthy for her.
The Guidance
Given this assessment, my guidance to these parents is to:
Make a book that tells the story of their family using photos. It starts with the parents meeting, getting married—their life together before they had their daughter. Then her birth, their time together as a family, and their lives now—times they spend together and separately with her. The purpose of this is to recognize and honor their family’s journey—to celebrate their times together while acknowledging all the changes.
Make a poster with their daughter that lists her big feelings and the tools she has to cope with them. They take photos of her using the different tools/strategies that she can access when she’s feeling sad or worried. This serves as a visual for ways she can get calm and remind herself that mommy and daddy are always there for her, even though they’re not together in the same house.
Clarify for their daughter that when they are apart from her, they think about her and can’t wait to hear all about her day and to be together again, but they are not sad, worried, or suffering. They are doing important grown-up things that they really enjoy and she is doing really important kid things that are helping her mind and body grow. They explain that it was a mistake for them to connect love with worry. You can be separated and feel safe and secure inside.
No longer partner in her perseveration; they acknowledge her feelings and then let her feel them. They don’t try to make it all better, apologize, or spend long periods of time brainstorming how she can handle them. Those responses historically resulted in more rumination and stress for their daughter. They remind her of her list of tools that she can refer to and use any time. Then they help her move on by engaging in a fun activity.
The Outcome
They followed my advice and changed their approach. Instead of going down rabbit holes trying to help her manage her emotions, they respond empathetically but more dispassionately and tell her we trust her to be okay at school. They made the photo album telling the story of their family and also talked to her about mistaking worrying for love.
The first week, they had some bright moments followed by some hard moments when their daughter turned to school after missing a few days for a trip. Then they saw a shift. She may mention once or twice that she misses the other parent or that she will miss them at school, and then she basically drops it; she doesn't loop.
In the last few days, she has started telling them all the reasons school WILL be okay. She'll say things like, ‘I might miss my parents at school, but it's kind of good because that's where I get to spend time with my friends, and I don't do that at home.’ Or, instead of saying she's worried, she'll say, ‘I think I'll be okay today because so and so will be there.’
They now feel that the bulk of their time is spent enjoying each other's company and not managing emotions. They are also finding that the positive impacts are resulting in much less anxiety going to school and back and forth between houses, which had been major stressors for their daughter.
Claire Lerner, LCSW-C -blog
