Why Anxious Parents Raise Anxious Children (And How to Break the Cycle)

You’re doing everything right.

You read the parenting books. You validate their feelings. You don’t shout (well, not often). You create a calm, supportive home environment. You’re present, attuned, trying so hard to be the parent you wish you’d had. And yet. Your child is anxious.

They worry about things that seem, objectively, fine. They have meltdowns over minor changes. They ask “what if” questions you can’t answer. They struggle with separation, with sleep, with trying new things.

And you look at them and think: Where did this come from? Except, and here’s the uncomfortable part, you already know where it came from. Because you see yourself in their wide eyes when they’re spiraling. You recognise the way they catastrophise, the way they need reassurance, the way their body goes rigid when things feel uncertain. You see it because you are it. And the guilt? The guilt is crushing. I gave them this. I passed on my anxiety like some cursed heirloom. I’m the reason they’re struggling.

So let me say this before we go any further: Your child’s anxiety is not your fault. But it is connected to yours. And understanding how that works, really understanding it, is the first step to breaking the cycle. Not through better parenting strategies. Not through managing your anxiety harder or hiding it better. Through actually addressing what’s happening in your nervous system. And theirs.

The Thing Nobody Tells You About Anxiety and Parenting

Here’s what they don’t tell you in the parenting books: Anxiety isn’t just passed down through genetics or modelling behaviour. It’s transmitted nervous system to nervous system. Your child isn’t anxious because they learned it from watching you worry , though that can be part of it. They’re anxious because their nervous system is responding to yours.

How Nervous Systems Communicate

Human nervous systems are designed to read each other.

It’s called neuroception, a term coined by Dr Stephen Porges, the researcher who developed Polyvagal Theory. It’s your nervous system’s ability to detect safety or danger in your environment, often without conscious awareness. And children? Children are masters at this. They’re constantly scanning their caregivers for cues: Am I safe? Is everything okay? Can I relax? And here’s the thing: they’re not reading your words. They’re reading your nervous system. So when you say, “Everything’s fine, sweetheart!” while your heart is racing, your jaw is clenched, and your breath is shallow? Your child’s nervous system picks up on the mismatch. Your words say “safe.” Your body says “danger.” And guess which one their nervous system believes? The body. Every time.

Why “Stay Calm for the Children” Doesn’t Actually Work

You’ve probably heard the advice: “Stay calm for your kids. Don’t let them see you stressed.” And listen, I get the intention. But this advice is fundamentally misunderstanding how anxiety works. Because you can’t fake calm to a nervous system. You can control your face. You can modulate your tone. You can say the right words. But if your internal state is anxious, if your body is in fight-or-flight, if your nervous system is dysregulated, your child will feel it. Not because they’re psychic. But because their nervous system is designed to co-regulate with yours.

Think about it; when you hold a crying baby and genuinely feel calm, they settle. When you hold a crying baby whilst internally panicking about whether you’re doing it right, they stay dysregulated. Your child isn’t responding to what you’re doing. They’re responding to what you’re being.

And if you’re chronically anxious, if your baseline state is low-level hypervigilance, tension, worry, your child’s nervous system is absorbing that as: The world is not safe. I need to stay alert. Even when you’re trying your absolute hardest to protect them from your anxiety.

The Anxious Parent-Anxious Child Feedback Loop

Here’s where it gets even more complicated and why this is so hard to break. When your child is anxious, your anxiety spikes. You see them struggling, and your nervous system goes into overdrive trying to fix it, soothe it, prevent it. You become hypervigilant to their distress. Which means your nervous system gets more dysregulated. Which means their nervous system picks up on your heightened state. Which makes them more anxious. Which makes you more anxious.And round and round you go.

It’s not your fault. It’s not their fault. It’s just two nervous systems stuck in a dysregulated dance, each responding to the other’s distress. And no amount of “calm down” or “don’t worry” will interrupt it because the communication is happening below the level of conscious thought.

Why Your Childhood Is Showing Up in Your Child’s Anxiety

Okay, here’s where we need to talk about your nervous system. Because chances are, your anxiety didn’t start with you. It started with your own childhood.

Maybe you grew up in a home where:

Love felt conditional on being “good” or “easy”

Emotions weren’t allowed or were met with dismissal or anger

One or both parents were anxious, depressed, or emotionally unavailable

There was unpredictability: financial stress, conflict, instability

You learnt early on that the world wasn’t safe, and you had to stay vigilant

And so your nervous system adapted. It learnt to be on alert. To scan for danger. To stay small and good and careful. That wasn’t a choice. That was survival. But here’s the problem: that same survival wiring is still running today. And your child’s nervous system? It’s picking up on that. They’re not just absorbing your present day stress. They’re absorbing the unresolved activation from your childhood. The hypervigilance you learnt at age 6? Your child is learning it now. The belief that the world isn’t safe unless you’re in control? They’re internalising it. The chronic tension in your body, the inability to fully relax, the constant low level hum of “something could go wrong”? They feel it. And so the cycle continues. Not because you’re a bad parent. But because unhealed patterns don’t skip a generation.

What Breaking the Cycle Actually Looks Like

So what do you do? How do you stop your anxiety from becoming your child’s anxiety?

Here’s what doesn’t work:

Trying harder to hide your anxiety from them

Forcing yourself to “stay calm” when you’re not

Overcompensating by being overly permissive or controlling

Feeling guilty and spiralling into shame

Reading more parenting books hoping for the magic strategy

None of that addresses the actual problem. The problem is: your nervous system is still running on outdated survival programming. And until you address that, until you help your nervous system understand that the danger is over, that you’re safe now, your child’s nervous system will keep responding to yours.

What Actually Helps: Regulating YOUR Nervous System

Breaking the cycle doesn’t mean becoming a perfectly calm, zen parent who never feels anxious.

(Spoiler: that parent doesn’t exist. And if they did, they’d be insufferable.)

Breaking the cycle means:

1. Helping your nervous system come out of chronic hypervigilance

This is the foundational work. Your body needs to learn that it’s safe to relax. That you don’t have to scan for danger 24/7. That rest is not dangerous. This isn’t something you can think your way into. It requires nervous system level work, which is where therapies like IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Therapy) and Hypnotherapy become incredibly valuable. These approaches work directly with the part of your brain that’s holding the hypervigilance, the unresolved stress, the childhood patterns that are still running the show.

2. Processing the unresolved activation from your own childhood

Your childhood experiences didn’t just shape your beliefs. They shaped your nervous system’s baseline state. If you grew up in a state of chronic stress, unpredictability, or emotional neglect, your nervous system adapted to that. It learnt to stay activated, to never fully settle. And that activation is still there, stored in your body, influencing how you respond to your own children.Processing that, actually discharging the stored stress and rewiring the patterns, frees you from unconsciously passing it on.

3. Learning to co-regulate from regulation, not into regulation

Co-regulation is beautiful when you’re regulated. When you’re genuinely calm, your child can borrow your calm. Your nervous system becomes a resource for theirs. But when you’re dysregulated, you can’t co-regulate your child into calm. You just end up in a dysregulated feedback loop. So the work is: becoming someone whose nervous system is a safe place for your child to land.Not by faking it. But by actually doing the internal work to get there.

4. Giving yourself permission to heal, not just for your kids, but for you.

You don’t have to fix your anxiety just so your children don’t inherit it. You deserve to heal for you. You deserve to not live in a constant state of hypervigilance. You deserve to feel safe in your own body. You deserve to experience rest that actually feels restful. And yes, your healing will absolutely benefit your children. But it’s not only for them. It’s for you. For the child you were, who never got to feel safe. For the adult you are now, who’s been carrying this for far too long.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

So what does this actually look like in practice? Let’s say your child comes to you, spiralling about something: school, a social situation, an upcoming event.

Old pattern (dysregulated response):

Your own anxiety spikes immediately. Your chest tightens. You feel responsible for fixing this, for making them feel better right now. You either: Over reassure them (“It’s going to be fine! Don’t worry!”) whilst internally panicking Get frustrated (“We’ve talked about this a hundred times!”) Try to logic them out of their feelings (“But there’s nothing to worry about!”)Your child doesn’t settle. They might stop talking, but the anxiety is still there. They’ve just learnt not to come to you with it.

New pattern (regulated response):

You notice your own nervous system activating, but you have the capacity to pause. You take a breath. You check in with your body. You remind yourself: I am safe. They are safe. This feeling will pass. Then you respond from that place of regulation: You acknowledge their feelings without trying to fix them immediately (“I can see this feels really big right now.”) You offer your calm presence, not frantic reassurance. You stay with them in the discomfort, modelling that feelings are safe to feel. Your child might not calm down immediately. But over time, they learn: My parent can handle my big feelings. I don’t have to regulate myself alone. It’s safe to feel what I feel. That’s the difference. Not perfect parenting. But regulated parenting. The Work Isn’t “Parenting Better”, It’s Healing Yourself. I know this might feel like a lot. You’re already exhausted. You’re already trying so hard. And now I’m telling you the answer isn’t a better parenting strategy, it’s therapy for you? Yes. And I’m sorry if that feels overwhelming. But here’s the truth: You cannot give your child a regulated nervous system by reading parenting books. You cannot think your way out of patterns that are stored in your body. You cannot “stay calm for the kids” when your own nervous system is in a chronic state of activation. The most powerful thing you can do for your anxious child is heal your own nervous system. Not because their anxiety is your fault. But because your healing gives them permission to heal too. When you stop living in a state of hypervigilance, they don’t have to either. When you process the unresolved stress from your own childhood, they don’t inherit it. When your nervous system learns it’s safe to rest, theirs learns the same.

Why Traditional Talk Therapy Often Isn’t Enough

If you’ve tried talk therapy for your anxiety and felt like you understood everything intellectually but nothing actually changed, this is why. Anxiety isn’t just a thought problem. It’s a nervous system problem. You can understand why you’re anxious. You can recognise the patterns. You can even have insight into how your childhood shaped you. But if your nervous system is still running on the same survival programming, the anxiety doesn’t go away. This is where approaches like IEMT and hypnotherapy are so effective, because they work directly with the nervous system, not just the conscious mind. IEMT helps process the stored emotional charge and rewire the patterns that keep you stuck in hypervigilance. Hypnotherapy accesses the subconscious beliefs and nervous system states that are running the show, allowing you to update them at the root level. These aren’t just “nice to have” therapies. For nervous system-level healing, they’re often essential.

What Healing Actually Feels Like

So what does it look like when you start to heal your nervous system? It doesn’t mean you never feel anxious. You’re human. Anxiety is part of being human. But it means: Your baseline state shifts from hypervigilance to relative calm. You can feel anxiety without being consumed by it. You don’t automatically catastrophise every situation. Your body knows how to return to rest after stress. You can be present with your child’s emotions without immediately needing to fix them. You stop passing on the unresolved patterns from your own childhood. And your child? They start to relax too. Not because you’re doing anything differently on the surface. But because the internal landscape they’re navigating, you, has changed. Your nervous system becomes a place of safety. And from that safety, they can learn to regulate their own.

The Truth About Breaking the Cycle

Here’s what I want you to know: Your child’s anxiety is not your fault. But your healing can be their greatest gift. Not because you owe it to them. But because when you heal, everyone benefits. You get to live in a body that feels safe. Your child gets to grow up in a nervous system environment that’s regulated. And the patterns that have been passed down for generations? They stop with you. That’s not just parenting work. That’s generational healing. And it’s some of the most important work you’ll ever do.

So What Now?

If you’re reading this and recognising yourself, if you can see the ways your anxiety is showing up in your child, and you’re ready to do something about it, here’s what I want you to know: This isn’t about becoming a “better” parent. It’s about becoming a regulated one. And that work? It’s not something you can do alone through willpower or self-help books. It requires support. It requires nervous system level intervention. It requires someone who understands how trauma and anxiety live in the body, not just the mind.

That’s the work I do.

Ready to Break the Cycle?

If you’re tired of watching your child struggle with anxiety and knowing it’s connected to yours, if you’re ready to do the deeper work that actually interrupts the pattern, let’s talk.

Book a free 15-minute consultation to explore how IEMT or hypnotherapy could help you heal your nervous system and break the cycle for both you and your child.