The Conscious Parent

Paradoxically, when we are caught up in anxiety, we are afraid of
actually taking charge of our situation in a way that might change things
for the better. In fact, when we examine anxiety closely, it’s really a
passive state—a distractor that allows us to fill our head with busy
thoughts that appear to be active responses to our situation but in reality
are powerless. Though we seek to impose control through the stance we
take on an issue, by means of our thoughts, or by seeking to impose our
will on others, we rarely take the action required to alter things.
The anxiety generated by the thought of surrendering to our reality
manifests itself in a variety of ways. It’s worth exploring some of them.
For instance, whenever life doesn’t turn out the way we want it to, we
experience an overarching sense that we are “above” life, which means
that things are only supposed to go wrong for other people, not “special”
individuals like ourselves. We tell ourselves, “This wasn’t supposed to
happen to me. This can’t happen to this family. I can’t believe that I, of
all people, have to go through this. I need more from life. This isn’t what
I bargained for. This isn’t what I worked so hard for.”
Others of us indulge a pervasive sense of victimization, even
martyrdom, when things turn out in a way we didn’t anticipate. We think
of ourselves as unlucky. “This always happens to me,” we may say. “I
always lose in the end. I can never win.” We might even come to believe
that everyone is out to get us. Taking this a step further, we can begin to
believe that the world isn’t only unfair, but also unsafe.
Our internal dialogue runs something like, “No one cares about anyone
but themselves. It’s all so competitive. I hate living in a world that
revolves around money, not love. People do such mean, cruel, vengeful