Parental anxiety is persistent, excessive fear and worry related to the wellbeing, safety, health or future of your children.
Some degree of concern for a child is entirely natural and is part of being a caring parent. Parental anxiety is different. It is characterised by worry that is disproportionate, intrusive and difficult to control, and that significantly interferes with daily life, the enjoyment of parenthood and in many cases the child's own development and wellbeing.

Parental anxiety can begin with a new baby and evolve through every stage of childhood and adolescence. It can centre on physical safety, illness and health, the child's social and emotional development, academic performance, friendship difficulties, online safety, the dangers of adolescence, or the looming transition of children leaving home. For some parents the anxiety is relatively specific. For others it is a pervasive, background sense of dread that something terrible is always about to happen.

Parental anxiety is particularly difficult because it is socially invisible. Concern for your children is expected and valued. Parents who are suffering from genuine anxiety are often told they are just being a good parent, and this makes it harder to recognise the anxiety for what it is and seek the right help. Meanwhile, the anxiety takes a heavy toll, generating constant mental exhaustion, tension in the relationship with the child, and in many cases a transmission of anxious thinking and behaviour to the child itself.

Research consistently shows that parental anxiety is one of the strongest predictors of anxiety in children. When a parent relates to the world as an anxious place and to their child as someone who needs constant protection, children absorb this model. Breaking the cycle of anxiety benefits not only the parent but the entire family. Hypnotherapy offers a genuine, lasting resolution of the underlying anxiety rather than simply managing its symptoms.