What Is It With Anxious Mothers? Maternal Anxiety Is Good… Up To A Certain Point

Ayşegül Aybar got in touch with me last week to ask my opinion as an expert on the subject of anxious mothers, on which she was writing an article. I met Ayşegül Aybar in the early days of what was then a new millennium. I had recently returned to Istanbul from the UK. She interviewed me for a numberof articles that appeared in the newspaper ‘Zaman’. She has been writing for Kadının Güncesi lately and once more she has selected an important subject to think about. She’s conducting a research study what makes people over-anxious. This can be an issue for many mothers who want to know the causes, effects and treatments for it. Here I share with you Ayşegül Aybar’s questions and my responses.

1)  Some mothers seem to be more anxious than others. How do we distinguish healthy and unhealthy anxiety?

Anxiety is a natural emotional state that appears when we feel threatened and insecure. In fact it is a normal part of life and it has its evolutionary advantages as it can help us predict and prevent problems. Nearly all mothers experience different levels of anxiety starting right from preconception.

If it’s a cold day and our baby is not warm enough, it’s normal for us to be worried; so we dress her in clothes that will keep her warmer or we raise the ambient temperature to keep her from getting sick. Or, if our baby is crying constantly and we cannot figure out what is wrong, we’re worried. Because we recognize the various sources of discomfort for our baby in the daily routine of life, such as hunger, thirst, exhaustion, indigestion, or teething, and we know how to deal with those. In that case, our anxiety is healthy as it motivates us to get help to comfort our baby.

Unhealthy anxiety is a state of fear that’s got out of hand. A mother with uncontrolled anxiety may have difficulty doing what she needs to do. Unhealthy anxiety may present itself in several ways. There are mothers who create imaginary feelings of threat and sustain it. For instance, a mother who develops an anxiety by imagining that she or her baby has caught a fatal disease may continuously search and gather information about ailments, look for symptoms in herself or her baby, frequently visit the doctors and ask for superfluous test to be done. A mother who creates a source of anxiety by imagining they might have an accident might try to avoid going out or to keep the baby close at all times, in a futile effort to annihilate the possibility of accidents.

Over-anxiety affects a mother’s body, mind and behavior. They may experience eating disorders such as overeating or loss of appetite; insomnia; stomach cramps; stomach ulcers; or blood pressure issues. They may have obsessive thoughts or a compelling need to be comforted or to control; they may be impatient, nervous and angry. Other problems include teeth grinding, focus and memory problems, aches and pains.

2) What would you like to say about the causes of excessive anxiety in mothers?

It might be due to the adverse experiences she had when she was young. For instance, a mother who gives a reaction amounting to panic attack every time she has to leave her child, for no reason that she knows of, may have been left alone, or even abused, when she was a child. The mind remembers this, although consciously she only knows that feels an kind of echo of her own childhood experience when she was not protected. The anxiety she experiences may be so great that she could end up not being able to leave her baby to go shopping.

A mother who was neglected by her parents may turn overanxious about being a good enough mother.

Traumatic events experienced or witnessed as an adult, such as an earthquake, or the unexpected loss of a loved one may also have a similar effect. Unfortunately some news seen on the media such as parents trying to raise money for a sick child in need of surgery may also create an unsettling effect on mothers.

There are mothers whose anxiety has been triggered by real reasons such as their partner’s infidelity, alcohol addiction or tendency to resort to violence. Such anxieties may not be considered unhealthy as it appears as a consequence of actually extreme real situations and constitutes the prerequisite of taking steps toward finding a solution. However, if it lingers and doesn’t evolve into solution-oriented behavior, then it becomes unhealthy.

3)  What damage is the anxious mother likely to cause to herself or her baby?

Such mothers will lead hellish lives in varying degrees as they are unable to enjoy life with their children. Their lives are really difficult. Their anxiety drains them so they may fall ill. They don’t have enough energy left for their baby who needs to be cared for day and night. They may be irritable, they may be obsessively angry with their partner. They may develop eating disorders. If these difficulties continue for a long time, they may succumb to depression and become dysfunctional.

It’s hard for the baby to feel safe with an anxious mother. The mother is over-protective and experiences complicated emotions when she has to leave her baby. The baby feels it and also experiences difficulty in moments of separation. They may cry more and have more difficulty falling asleep as they don’t feel safe. They may have development problems.

4)  What are the effects of the mother’s anxiety on the child’s development? Can it cause disadvantages that may extend beyond childhood and into adult life?

A child depends on her mother to survive. Of the mother-child pair, the evolutionary process favors the mother’s wellbeing so she can take care of her baby. This is why children with anxious mothers keep checking their mother’s mood continuously. They will often ask “Mum, what’s wrong?” Also, even though the child has left the mother’s womb, the psychological umbilical cord may remain intact for years. Children with anxious mothers take on efforts to try and calm their mother and make her feel better starting very early and maintain the same attitude while growing up. As this behavior hinders them from living their childhood, they also nurture an intense anger toward their mother, which they almost always suppress with feelings of guilt.

Depending on the parents’ degree of anxiety, such children may refuse to sleep alone at night, they may need to touch their mother while they sleep, they may have difficulties when starting preschool, or they may experience fear of school in later years. They may get on poorly at school as their mind is busy worrying about their anxious mother at home.

As adolescents, they may experience the childhood anger that they’d suppressed emerge even more violently; surprising both themselves and those around them, while some adolescents may express their anger passively by showing indifference or doing the opposite of what their mother asks from them.

Some of the children with anxious mothers may develop a bright and witty personality to counter it and comfort their parents and themselves. They may entertain others but inside, they may hide and suppress their real feelings. They may develop suicidal tendencies as they grow up as they will gradually grow alienated from themselves.

5)  Are anxious mothers that way right from the moment the baby is born or could anxiety appear in later stages?

A person can be anxious before pregnancy or anxiety may be triggered by pregnancy. Environmental factors may also cause anxiety after birth. For instance, a mother who is often criticized for her parenting or whose opinions are not respected by her in-laws may fail to cope with the psychological pressure and develop an overanxious attitude trying to deal with the situation.

Anxiety isn’t necessarily permanent either; it may appear for a period of time and later fade away as the person calms down.

6)  Could children with over-anxious mothers suffer from lack of self-confidence?

Lack of self-confidence my stem from several factors, one of the foremost among them being maternal anxiety. Imagine your mother constantly trying to guide you lest something bad happens to you; surely you would either react against it and move away, or keep to her side. But whichever is the case, in the back of your mind, you would always wonder whether she might be right.

Of course the degree at which each child is affected by their mother’s anxiety partly depends on their own nature and their interactions with the others in the family and around them.

7)  What is the treatment for over-anxious mothers?

Awareness is very important. Obsessing on thoughts is a clue that there are some issues related to the past or the present, requiring attention. These issues need closure. We need to face the conflicts that we’ve been avoiding, deal with the past and make peace.

It’s easier to relieve the effects of childhood and adulthood traumas with help from a professional. There are drugs that alleviate anxiety but they are only a temporary solution as anxiety will come back when utilization is discontinued.