Anxiety Without A Village

As a parent, it is very natural to experience anxiety at times. Worrying whether you are doing things right, or if things are going well enough for your child, if they are eating enough healthy foods, sleeping well enough or feeling confident and safe in social situations. Anxiety can be normal because you are responsible for little human beings that you care so much about.

Sometimes, that anxiety can be a little higher than at other times. When your child is unwell, or just starting school, moving into their own room or a big bed for the first time, potty training, or any other developmental milestone or big moment.

Anxiety ebbs and flows in parenthood.

Without a village, though, experiencing anxiety in parenthood can feel a bit different. Without a village, anxiety can feel less occasional and more woven through everyday life.

It is often less tied to specific moments and more a part of carrying everything with very little room for things to go wrong.

This is a symptom of one or two of you handling everything without any others to rely on or ask for help if you need it. The feeling of responsibility for maintaining everything in the household and making sure everyone is okay is intensified, because there is no one else holding any of it with you or able to step in to help with holding it if you need it.

Anxiety is increased in a number of ways when you do not have a village of support around you. If a parent becomes unwell, it comes with anxiety because there is no one to call to lend a hand, and you may worry about looking after your children when you are running on less capacity and energy. If an emergency happens, anxiety may be even more heightened because there is just one or two adults carrying everybody through that in terms of emotions and logistics.

There is also another reason anxiety may be heightened without a village: the lack of outside perspective. If you have less people to turn to or chat through things with, anxiety can be fed more and grow bigger than when there is a network of supportive people around you regularly to share your thoughts and worries with.

I have found that without your own mum to lean on specifically as well, there is another shade of anxiety in parenthood. I don’t have the nurturing figure that others do to turn to and ask what they did when I was a child, whether I experienced things like sleep regressions or certain illnesses or what age I got to developmental milestones. There isn’t that supportive person who knows me, who cares about me, to hold and help me in moments of anxiety and pass down wisdom or guidance. In this way, I feel like the level of anxiety I experience in parenthood is a little different to some others that do have this.

I have noticed at times that without a village, my brain rarely fully “switches off”, also. There are always things running thriugh the back of my mind. I’m thinking about the future, preparing for different eventualities, mentally reviewing things or running through what I would do in different crises or changes of routine. Even on calmer days there is this feeling that it might be dangerous to unwind or switch off because there is no back up.

You are not imagining the intensity of these feelings, and they are valid. Without supportive and consistent people to turn to when you need support, advice or practical help it can feel like you are on edge much more as a parent and everything can feel just a bit bigger.

This isn’t weakness by any stretch. This is because you are carrying all the different responsibilities of parenting your little humans squarely on your shoulders at all times, without people to call if you need anything in any scenario. And without people to sense check or chat through things with. That can create more worries and make anxiety harder to brush off in parenthood, no matter how capable, loving, strong and intelligent you are.

Be gentle with yourself this week.