Who Will Advocate for Your Kids if You Don’t?

Starting  series of marriage councelling sessions can be an important way of caring for your children.  Unrelenting arguing between husband and wife is the perfect recipe for your child to develop an anxiety condition. The overwhelming emotions that the younger child feels combined with the sense of powerlessness to do anything about the problem eventually makes the child feel trapped.  When child knows mom and dad are in marriage councelling, he or she can relax because, in their minds, something is being done about the problem.  They don’t have to worry so much.

Child Anxiety Attacks

But when a child sees no solution her feeling of being trapped becomes the perfect soil for the symptoms of anxiety attacks. Just like adults, children experience fear, anxiety and apprehension. These are but normal emotional experiences that a person feels regardless of age. However, if anxiety becomes irrational, recurring and severe, and anxiety attacks happen without any apparent reason, and the reaction is disproportionate to the problem at hand, it can be a cause of concern.  Another benefit of marriage councelling in this case is that the parents may be a little more relaxed and thus have enough “mental space” to be attentive to how the conflicts are effecting the children.

This is why on the first signs of problem, have your child get proper diagnosis by a health professional to be able to rule out any possible causes and determine the right treatment to be applied. Since recurring anxiety attacks are often signs of an anxiety disorder, it is important to know what happens to a child who is suffering from a particular disorder.

To be able to identify it, here are the following symptoms:

1. Frequent feeling of fear and panic
2. Bed wetting
3. Tantrums and excessive crying
4. Fear of making mistakes
5. Fear of getting embarrassed
6. Avoidance of certain activities such as school event and summer camps
7. Nightmares and night terrors
8. Compulsive behaviors
9. Resistance to any change
10. Low self-esteem, lack of confidence
11. Overly shy and difficulty making friends
12. Chronic physical symptoms such as stomach aches or headaches without any apparent reason, or, “Mommy, I can’t breathe…”

Symptoms of Anxiety Attacks in Your Child

The symptoms of anxiety attacks in your child one time does not constitute an anxiety disorder.  Only when panic attacks become recurring does it suggest an anxiety “condition.”  However, by the time a parent notices one panic attack, the odds are that the child has already had other attacks previously that escaped notice.

A child is under an anxiety attack if he shows the following symptoms:

• Gush of overwhelming panic
• Hot flashes or chills
• Trouble breathing or choking sensation
• Feeling of loosing control or going crazy
• Feeling and fear of dying
• Feeling unreal or detach
• Nausea or stomach cramps
• Hyperventilation. IMPORTANT NOTE:  When your child says, “It’s hard to breathe,” or “I can’t get enough air…” then he or she may be reporting hyperventilation and it’s good to ask about the other symptoms of panic attacks.
• Shaking or trembling
• Feeling like passing out
• Chest pain or heart palpitation

Different children of different ages or even of the same age may manifest different symptoms. Moreover, some of the symptoms given may be considered as a normal behavior of a child when there are no other symptoms. Thus it is a bit tricky to determine if he or she is really having an attack or not. What should be done is to recognize these symptoms and consider them as a reason of concern, then help your child deal with these symptoms through the following: Seek help from health professional at least once to get a good diagnostic read.  Many parents do not do this.  Why?  Because if they are avoiding marriage councelling for themselves, then they may also be in denial about what all the marital tension is doing to the kids.

Effectively stopping anxiety attacks begins with recognition and followed by a compete diagnosis from your medical doctor. A full medical examination should be administered in order to rule out any other physical causes unrelated to anxiety. Doctors usually give prescription medications to help relieve anxiety.  SSRI antidepressants are the best because they are not addictive and they give the child much-needed relief so that they can work with a psychologist on natural ways to deal with the anxiety.

Self Help for Panic Attacks…for Your Son or Daughter

Parents may seek the help of books available for treating child anxiety. This is also very effective in teaching parents strategies for responsible parenting, which improve parent-child relationship and help build child self-confidence and self-esteem. Play therapy – is the child version of exposure therapy. As an effective child anxiety treatment, play therapy uses the power of play to simulate each fearful situation in a controlled environment, which then helps the child face the problem and come up with a solution.

Causes of Child Anxiety Attacks

Child anxiety, just like that of adults, is a normal, healthy emotion felt as a response to certain stimuli. But when anxiety becomes recurring, irrational and intense, it may be considered as a disorder. Episodes of anxiety attacks can disable the child from performing his daily duties in school and at home. And while it is generally safe, anxiety attacks can affect how the child lives.

What’s the Big Deal?

Recurring panic attacks almost always have a negative impact on a child’s ability to concentrate in school, enjoy play, and sleep well. Panic attacks create dysfunction in a child’s socializing. Since children are more fragile, they more vulnerable to such attacks and the effects of these attacks may be more severe than to adults.  If a child is not having impaired concentration from the tension between mom and dad, then the panic attacks will certainly impair concentration.  Marriage councelling can become the first step in facing what is happening in the family as a whole.

But what causes anxiety attacks?   Two of the most common reasons of anxiety attacks are school phobia or separation anxiety.  But these may be masking the root cause:  fear that mom and dad are going to get a divorce.   Sometimes an anxiety attack is brought about by unresolved internal issues , which are not directly connected with the trigger. For example, a child who experiences a death of a loved one may panic whenever a certain reminders of death or loss come up in a TV show.  Or, overhearing an argument between mom and dad can trigger the feelings of previous fears and losses.  The traumatic experience that he or she went through in the past which are not processed properly can come out, in this case through an attack.

A child may also show episodes of anxiety attacks because the problem at hand reminded him or her about family conflicts. Fighting in the family as well as anticipating the divorce of parents may be traumatic to a child that when witnessing a similar situation, he or she goes into a panic.  If you marriage problems have been going on for more than two months, it’s best to swallow your pride and schedule an initial session of marriage councelling.

What is Divorce Recovery?

Divorce recovery is a period lasting at least several months in which a person loses and then recaptures a  sense of self, a settled faith in Christ that integrates all aspects of the divorce, and connections with people.  It is the process of  healing from the wounds, sins, and trauma of a dissolved marriage.

Some Key Aspects of Divorce Recovery

Having watched a number of people who have gone through this process it seems to me that it includes at least these elements:

1. Facing the fact of the breakup.  Divorce recovery begins on the day you truly face the fact that your marriage is over.  Many poeple take months or years to get started on divorce recovery because they will not, or cannot, face the fact that their marriage is dead.
2. Becoming reasonably settled in new friendships, family connections, and social interactions.  This can include a change in location, a job change, going back to work, changing churches.  It also includes finding key people who’s presence and/or advice prevents unnecessary suffering on top of the unavoidable misery of a divorce.  Divorce recovery usually involves giving your connections with people a complete makeover to fit well with your new needs and capacities to give.
3. An identity change that produces every bit as much upheaval as a turbulent adolescence or a mid life crisis.  Ideally, it results in a person to both say and feel,  “The marriage may be dead, but I’m not; and I can be a happy, purposeful person who rebuilds successfully.”  It also includes redefining what it means to be a mom or a dad and changed beliefs about what is necessary to have a strong sense of family.
4. A wise and thorough grieving of all the losses entailed by the divorce.
5. A personal sifting of the lessons learned.
6. A self-assessment of one’s own style of relating to a husband or wife that may have caused or exascerbated problems in the marriage.
7. A reaffirmation of belief  in the institution of marriage after a season of cynicism and disillusionment.
8. A deeper sense of being forgiven by a gracious Heavenly Father.  This includes sorting out all the many tangled issues of conscience that seem to plague conscientious followers of Christ.
9. Damage Assessment:  A realistic assessment of specific ways that your ex-spouse has harmed you.  One the reasons that people get stuck in unforgiveness is that they have not adequately faced, taken inventory, and felt the emotions of how they have been hurt or wronged.
10. Forgiving:  Finding the freedom in Christ to:  (a) let go of anger or grudges; (b) Choose to no longer hold anything against your ex; (c) Catching your self thinking thoughts like, “I really hope that works out well for him/her…”  When we have forgiven someone we don’t have to pretend to be happy for someone’s blessings.
11. Taking responsibility for your life in the present, not in the sense of blame, but in the sense of, “I am the one responsible for what I do with my life from this point on.”
12. Finding one’s own unique style of being single and being hopeful and confident for the future.  This includes resolving your views of dating, sex, marriage, and commitment.  It even includes being playful again.  It’s not just about being older and wiser, it’s about being confidently wiser.  This new confidence involves the desire to love and be loved again, knowing the perilous risks that genuine love always brings into our lives.
13. A deeper, richer faith in Christ that includes convictions such as, “God holds on to me even when I lose my way and life becomes unbearably messy.”  Or, “Knowing Christ does not mean that all my important dreams work out just fine.  Rather, he sustains me and heals me as I walk (or limp) through the dark tunnel of divorce recovery.”
14. Rising out of the soup of cynicism and disillusionment that is inherent in the aftermath of divorce.

It Only Feels About as Bad as Chemotherapy

In some ways, divorce recovery is similar to chemotherapy.  It feels uncertain as to whether or not you will live through it, it turns your life upside down, it makes you doubt almost everything, and it creates new problems which themselves require recovery and healing.

I Hope to Make You Think…with the Mind of Christ

I am excited about this blog site because it is an opportunity for me to speak informally about my thoughts and observations about individuals trying to make sense of married life, entering the divorce recovery process, or contemplating the challenges of remarriage.  I welcome your questions and will try to answer as many as possible either through an article, an audio post, or a short video.  Just post your question in the comments section below.  I hope you will also check out one of my other sites:  TuneYourHeart.com.

I Hope to Make You Laugh  (Trivia Below)

You may find it a bit amusing that I am a marriage counselor who can’t spell “marriage councelling.”  Don’t worry, the mispelling throughout the site is intentional for indexing purposes which also means that I want people to find this site so that they can benefit from it.  I am also smiling as I write this because it very possible that this site will attract a community of people who all have one thing in common:  they are prone to type marriage councelling instead of marriage counseling (the correct spelling).

I Hope to Expose You to Good Resources and Tools

As I write this I am preparing online courses for Christians facing some tough challenges in life.  Christian suffering involves enduring with patience the difficulties that are unavoidable and which work to refine our character “even by fire.”  But suffering as a Christian also means that we access wisdom to avoid unnecessary misery for ourselves and others.  In my experience most people, including me, are prone to confuse necessary and unnecessary suffering.