Overcoming Parental Anxiety and Finding Joy in Parenting With Dr. Debra Kissen

Dr. Debra Kissen is a licensed clinical psychologist and the CEO and Founder of Light On Anxiety Treatment Centers, which specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and related disorders. As an internationally recognized speaker and author, she has co-authored books, including Overcoming Parental Anxiety and The Panic Workbook for Teens. In her recent book, she explores practical tools for parents to manage anxiety and enjoy parenting, drawing from both clinical insights and personal experience.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[03:08] Dr. Debra Kissen explains why she wrote a book about overcoming parental anxiety
[06:49] Why parents are wired to expect danger
[11:56] The anxiety cycle between parents and children
[17:46] Calming techniques to manage stress effectively
[22:41] Ways to practice self-compassion and reduce critical self-talk
[28:13] The value of being present with your child
[31:57] Releasing the grip of past experiences on current parenting
[38:11] How to relinquish control to improve parent-child relationships

In this episode…

Parenting is often described as one of the most rewarding yet challenging experiences, but for many parents, worry and anxiety overshadow the joy. Why does it feel so difficult to stay calm and make clear decisions, especially when your child is distressed? How can you maintain your emotional and mental well-being during parenting challenges?

According to Dr. Debra Kissen, an internationally recognized anxiety expert and author, the parent brain is wired for survival, attuning deeply to a child’s emotions through empathy and mirror neurons. While essential for bonding, this connection can amplify anxiety when parents feel their child’s distress as their own. The result is a cycle of heightened emotions where both parent and child struggle to cope effectively. By understanding this wiring and implementing tools for emotional regulation, parents can disrupt the cycle, build confidence, and guide their children through challenges while remaining calm.

In this episode of The Coping Podcast, Dr. Leigh Weisz speaks with Dr. Debra Kissen, CEO and Founder of Light On Anxiety Treatment Centers, about overcoming parental anxiety by rewiring the brain. They explore how to identify and manage emotional triggers, practical tools for staying calm in stressful moments, and strategies for fostering self-compassion as a parent. Dr. Kissen also shares advice on relinquishing control and finding more joy in everyday parenting.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Related Episodes

Quotable Moments:

“Our brain thinks we need to fight or flee, but a slow breath sends a signal: I’m okay.”
“Parenting is a job where moments of joy are possible, but not guaranteed.”
“You have the answers within; you don’t need any experts to really guide you.”
“It’s not just you; parenting is complicated and you’re feeling for two.”
“By assuming danger, our brains are helpful for survival, but not for peace of mind.”

Action Steps:

Practice mindful breathing: Incorporate mindful breathing techniques, such as square breathing, to regulate emotions in high-stress parenting situations. This approach helps calm the nervous system and allows parents to respond more effectively to their child’s distress without becoming overwhelmed.
Cultivate self-compassion: Be mindful of your inner dialogue and replace self-critical thoughts with kinder, more balanced perspectives. This self-compassion reduces parental stress and helps maintain a healthier, more positive outlook on parenting challenges.
Set realistic expectations and pick battles wisely: Identify the most crucial areas where control is necessary for your child’s safety and well-being, and allow for flexibility in less critical areas. This method focuses energy on important aspects of parenting, reducing unnecessary power struggles and increasing effectiveness.
Create short bursts of presence: Dedicate small periods of time, like two minutes, to give your child undivided attention, setting aside distractions. This consistent practice can enhance parent-child connections, making both parties feel more valued and understood.
Reflect on past experiences: Use journaling or reflection to understand and address how your past experiences might be affecting your current parenting style. This reflection can help identify emotional triggers and enable more thoughtful and less reactive parenting decisions.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners.

Coping Partners is a mental health practice dedicated to helping children, adolescents, and adults manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems and much more in the Chicago suburbs.

Our practitioners are devoted to building on our clients’ strengths and bolstering weaknesses.

To gain insight and tools for getting unstuck check out our website at CopingPartners.com, email us at support@copingpartners.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 00:00

Welcome to The Coping Podcast, where we share strategies for coping with the stressors of life, especially the difficulties of parenting. And here is your host, Dr. Leigh Weisz.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 00:15

This is doctor Lee Weiss. I am the host of The Coping Podcast, where I feature top experts on topics like raising healthy children, parenting, and so much more. Past guests include Doctor Eli Lebowitz, neuropsychologist doctor Lisa Novak, nutritionist Lara Field, and many more. Just a quick disclaimer the information provided is for educational and informational purposes only. This is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a client therapist relationship. The information provided is not a replacement for being assessed and evaluated by a licensed professional, and is not intended to replace mental health or medical advice. This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners. Coping Partners is a mental health practice in the Chicago suburbs dedicated to helping children, adolescents and adults. We help manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems, and much more. Check out more episodes of our podcast and our website at copingpartners.com, and you can contact us with any questions you have. So before we dive into today’s topic, I wanted to introduce you to our guest, Dr. Debra Kissen. Dr. Debra Kissen is a licensed clinical psychologist and the CEO and founder of Light On Anxiety. And she is also an internationally recognized speaker and author, committed to translating clinical research into practical tools for her clients and the broader community. She has co-authored several books, including Overcoming Parental Anxiety, The Panic Workbook for Teens, Rewire Your Anxious Brains for Teens, and more. Outside of her professional life, Dr. Kissen is the proud mother of three teenagers, so she can relate to this topic personally as well. So today we’re going to focus on Kissen’s most recent book, Overcoming Parental Anxiety: Rewire Your Brain to Worry Less and Enjoy Parenting More. So thank you for being here, Dr. Kissen. I think parenting has always been the hardest and most underpaid job out there, and I actually love how you put it in the book. It starts by saying, if you had to put out a job post for being a parent, the job post would say something like help wanted 24 hours 24 seven are the hours. No days off, no salary. The job demands constant stress and fatigue and occasionally feeling like your heart is being ripped out of your chest. Moments of joy are possible, but not guaranteed. So it tickled me how you put it. But it’s true that parenting can be really hard sometimes, and of course, joy and fulfilling at other times, and it seems like parents these days are struggling more than in past generations. So I first wanted just to ask you what motivated you to write this book? Where did this kind of idea come from?

Dr. Debra Kissen 03:08

Well, and I love this question. It’s it’s really exciting, kind of reviewing the journey backwards. All of our book projects really have come from a clinical need. So starting with the first book that I wrote with my colleagues around treating panic disorder. So through sessions with clients and seeing different demands that mental health consumers, their struggles, the motivation normally comes from where might there be a gap in the kind of resources that people need? So in working, we specialize in anxiety treatment for children, adolescents and adults and in the work with children, adolescents. You also always end up working with parents. And I think realizing that so many of the struggles that parents were having, they felt like it. It shouldn’t be so hard. And so when we were trying to work with parents, maybe on even if your child is having a meltdown about going to school, that doesn’t mean. Doesn’t mean giving in to and letting them stay home from school. So when we’re trying to give parents these tools on how to work on some of their accommodations or assist their children challenging moments, they would feel like it’s, I know I shouldn’t do it, and it’s just so hard. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to handle these moments. The reason it’s so hard to handle moments when your child is in distress is because the parent brain You’re so deeply interconnected with your child, and you’re supposed to be for survival purposes. Little human, little babies. We need to tend to them, and we need to feel what they feel. But that doesn’t necessarily stop throughout their lives. And there are a lot of times we’re feeling what they feel. And so even if it’s an ineffective emotion where they’re, oh no, it’s going to be terrible to go to this party, then we, we, we feel what they feel. And so I wanted parents to have a tool to realize that it’s not just you. It really is complicated. And you’re feeling for two. Wow. And it’s not it’s not just that you’re just not able to navigate it.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 05:31

Yeah. Right. Right. No. And in, in in the book, you explain beautifully how the parent brain is really wired, like you said, for, you know, attunement, for empathy, for nurturing, for caretaking of our children. And we have these mirror neurons that actually fire, you know, and so we really do feel their pain. We really do feel their joy. So it is a little bit tricky to navigate. How do you make the right choice as a parent? Like you said, to not give in. When the child says, I can’t go to school, I can’t go to school. When you’re feeling their, you know, their fear or their anxiety in that, in that moment.

Dr. Debra Kissen 06:07

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a lot. It’s, it’s it’s a lot that that we, we feel and we care and we love. And so that was really the motivation of kind of what is a toolbox of emotional regulation and distress tolerance. And what other ways can we handle all of these big, powerful moments to be the effective parents that we hope we can be for sure.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 06:33

And we’re going to get into the tools because I know that’s what. Okay. Exciting. No, but not quite yet. I was going to say. Okay. All right. Teach us a little bit about why it is that we are, as parents, on such high alert for threats. Like what? Why are we wired this way?

Dr. Debra Kissen 06:49

Well, it makes sense from a survival for survival purposes to to have more false positives. So if you see your with your child moving through the forest and there’s a big shadow to assume that’s a bear and not the shadow of a tree, or if you hear a noise in the middle of the night, not, oh, that’s just the wind against the window, but that might be someone trying to break in. So by by assuming by our brain saying no, no, it’s danger. And then the worst that happens is we’re we’re planning for something that doesn’t happen. So it’s helpful for survival. It’s just not helpful for peace of mind and and having less experiences of false alarm. But our brains and bodies have been made for For survival. Our ancestors that were like, oh, that’s that’s not a poisonous snake. That’s a stick. They’re not around as much as, you know, the genes, the genes of the people that were more on high alert.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 08:00

Right. So so essentially there are times where this, you know, we’ll call it overactive part of our brain. There’s there’s times where that really serves a purpose. Very much so us or our kids, in this case, really safe from danger. Like I think about when someone’s crossing the street and may not be paying attention. You’re like, no, you have to look both ways. And you’re right, we have them like that serves a purpose. It’s life and death, right? But I think that for most of us, our our parent brains are on high alert, like constantly. Right. And so we can we have more of these false alarms. Can you give us an example of a time where it might not be life or death, but you’re kind of alarm signals are going off as a parent when you’re worrying about your kid.

Dr. Debra Kissen 08:48

So many. So my brain is flooded with, okay, so just in the last few hours, what kind of examples. But. Well, for example, it’s college season. I have a senior in in high school and she had applied ed to college and a couple of days before getting the decision was starting to have this panicky like, oh no, what if I made the wrong decision and I’m going to be trapped? And what if this wasn’t the right decision? And and my wise mind feels very confident that, like, it’s all going to be okay and a good enough decisions are good enough, and either way it’s going to be fine. But in those moments of what am I? What did I do? And her, you know, her suffering was my suffering. So I try to use tools. In those moments of noticing, like the dread and the despair that I’m feeling, and not necessarily like reacting or calling the school and trying to pull the plug and saying, can we just kidding, I don’t want to eat. But like the urges to oh no, like, her pants are on fire and I need to find a bucket of water. It feels that. Much, right?

Dr. Leigh Weisz 10:06

It feels really intense. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I’m thinking of even. Even a younger example comes to mind for me is like, you know, we get parents a lot who are just, you know, again, understandably distressed because their child wasn’t invited to something, you know, sleepover. Great. Whatnot. And it happens every day and they’re and and I really again as a parent I feel for them. It’s it’s so hard to see your child in pain. But like you said, it is not right. The kind of safety Situation where we really want to overfunction, you know. But parents, of course, get equally upset as their kids in these types of situations. Oftentimes. Yeah.

Dr. Debra Kissen 10:49

Or sometimes more, depending on like their own journey through life. So I really like what you’re saying in terms of modern living. Our brain was created, you know, a long time ago for a lot of different kind of challenges, much more like lions and tigers and bears and immediate threats. And thank goodness, in modern life, there are some of them we need to tend to, but most of the stressors are maybe on taking a test. And there was some material that you didn’t realize was going to be on. It might not be great, but not life or death or not being invited to a party. That doesn’t mean the tribe is going to leave you in the middle of the woods to fend for yourself for the rest of life, but our brains are wired when it comes to those.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 11:37

Yeah.

Dr. Debra Kissen 11:38

Real, immediate threats that do have the life or death consequences.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 11:43

Now it makes sense. Can you tell us a little bit about how a child’s distress can feed a parent’s distress, and how the parent’s distress can then feed the child’s distress and lead to this loop? Like, give us an example of that.

Dr. Debra Kissen 11:56

Yeah. So kind of like the there’s an anxiety cycle just within all of us anyway. So as an individual we might. Oh no, I feel really anxious. I have to go to a, I don’t know, a, a dinner or like, let’s say a coffee at the school. And I’m not going to know any, any parents. Okay. You know, maybe I just won’t go I feel better. So when we we have an anxious thought and then if we engage in a behavior, then we’ll feel better. But we might get short term relief. But long term, we’ve just avoided and taught our brain we couldn’t handle it. So it’s internally there’s like an anxiety cycle that occurs between parent and child and the mirror neurons. There’s this. Let’s say a child like, oh no, I don’t want to go to the party. I won’t, I won’t know anyone and maybe like having a tantrum and freaking out. And then the parent mirror neurons might either, like, stop yelling, there’s nothing wrong, and start yelling back at the yelling child. Or maybe try to rescue the child, like, okay, you don’t need to go. And then if in that moment you yell, what that becomes is like a distraction, the child, instead of having to learn to tolerate that moment, instead they’re just attending to your big emotions. So either the power struggle in that moment or or just watching your parent flip their own lid. Now they’re no longer kind of making contact with the challenging feelings that we’re all going to have at some times and need to learn how to get through, but it’s kind of short. Short circuited through this now interaction with the parent. And then often that could lead to either avoidance of the activity or distraction. And then the brain gets reinforced of the child like, wow, I really couldn’t handle that. And they don’t have the corrective experience that like, okay, if I went, I didn’t know that many people I’d survive.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 14:02

So what? So in that situation, it’s a good example. What would you want the parent in that situation to do? In a perfect world, if they were able to be regulated, how would that child’s distress.

Dr. Debra Kissen 14:16

So and I would say just assuming the fact that this is a perfectly acceptable as a parent, like knowing if you’re sending a you’ve maybe picked a camp for your child and knowing your best guess that this is going to be a perfectly Okay experience. Like, say, there was going to be a party where it was 20 bullies and they were going to be. Yeah. Laughed at the whole time. We don’t want to ever set anyone up for for failure. So assuming that this is whether an acceptable school for them or a party or a camp and they’re like, I can’t do it, I don’t want to go. And it also depends on the age of the child. What would be like the I guess a response would be step one validating like, yes, I see your feeling. I see this is really hard. Like those feelings are real. Sometimes what we might do is it’s fine, you’re fine. It’s not a big deal. It’s dismissed and right. And then that just gets sort of that. They then have to prove why it is a big deal. And so instead like, you know, I and I’m sorry that this is hard for you. I wish it weren’t. And I believe in you because it has to be something you actually believe is a fair challenge for them. Like, I wouldn’t and I believe you could go fly that plane right now. Like, no, I don’t believe that because you don’t know how to do that. But this is something that as a parent, you believe minus their anxieties and fears. It’s a perfectly fair challenge. And then, you know, sort of like, listen, I’m going to be in the car. This is happening. And, you know, I don’t I can’t convince you it’s going to be okay, but it’s happening. You’re going to go and and we’ll see after the fact. Right, right. What’s happening?

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