Control and Anxiety

Here at Little Sailor HQ, we had our first panic episode last night. Historically, these have only happened when Dad is out of town, and the littlest sailor feels scared having "just us" in the house.  Last night, however, we were all under the same roof, but the littlest was not fully recovered from an earlier incident in the day involving our dog snapping his collar and getting off of his leash.  After this little jaunt, all went back to normal, or so I thought.

Come bedtime, when the littlest was trying to sleep, many of these helpless feelings came rushing back.  It took lots of time, lots of grounding exercises, lots of drinks of water, trips to the bathroom and talking it out for him to get settled and, thankfully, go to sleep.  This morning, I spent some time thinking of the concept of fear, the Locus of Control and how this relates to anxiety.  Here is a brief explanation of the Locus of Control, but in a nutshell:  we tend to view events and our existence in the world with either an internal locus of control (we have control over what happens to us and how we react) or an external locus of control (as events happen to us they are out of our control), and for some of us, these views can and do change with our circumstances.

My son generally has a pretty solid internal locus of control, until anxiety creeps in and logical thinking is replaced with panic.  In the light of day, we talked about what is currently worrying him, and discussed what we can control and what we cannot.  This was incredibly helpful and empowering for him, and I encourage you all to try it if your kids (or YOU) feel overwhelmed by a loss of control.
This can be easily done by drawing a circle labelled "things I can control", while labeling the space outside of the circle "things I cannot control" or "things that are out of my control".  Here is an example of one of the many graphics available online:

What feels currently out of our control?  Rate of transmission on Covid-19.  When we will be out of quarantine.  Knowing who is sick, who will get sick, if our relatives will get sick.

What can we control?  How we treat each other.  What we do with our time.  What types of foods we choose to eat.  How much screen time we get.  How much we exercise.  Choosing to get in touch with our family via texts, emails, FaceTime, letters.  How much we sleep.  How we take care of our pets.

So many things we can control!   Most importantly, we get to control how we react to what is happening around us.  This was a big lesson for my little.  I hope it can helps yours!