I can’t stand spiders. We have some cool ones that come out in the fall that I enjoy from afar, but don’t let one of those meander towards me. It’s not that I’ve been mauled by a pack of tarantulas or knocked on deaths door because a softball sized Brown Recluse shot me full of venom. I don’t know, I just don’t like them. they make me nervous. So my body does this weird tingle, hyperawareness, increased heart rate thing when I’m surprised in any way by a spider. Fear, anxiety, call it what you want. It’s not rational but it’s real.

I think parents sometimes miss the boat when their kids tell them about anxiety that they feel. Fear of others not liking them (genuine fear), or fear that parents may not return home from the grocery store. Fear that someone may break in and kidnap them or fear of the weather. These are just a  sampling of legitimate, full fledged anxiety that some kids deal with on a daily basis. And as an adult, it gets really easy to try to rationalize and then minimize the fear. But just like for me, the fear is not rationale and it doesn’t have to be based on any previous experience. But it’s real.

I’ll put it to you this way. If a child has anxiety, they experience these fears on a consistent basis regardless of whether the fear is rational. It’s like carrying around a backpack everyday and in it is a bunch of spiders. Now someone could tell you, “there not poisonous” and “there’s no way for them to get out of the backpack or to you”. I can tell you, those spiders and that backpack would be on my mind all day, everyday. And nothing you could say would convince me otherwise. That’s a lot of anxiety to carry around. Pun intended.