SPACE: Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions

When I first start talking to parents about SPACE, I often introduce the concept by saying that responding supportively to a child’s anxious emotions is as paradoxical as riding a bike backwards. But unlike riding a bike backwards, SPACE can be extremely effective and get us where we need to go. SPACE, standing for “Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions”, is a parent-based treatment program targeted to treat children’s anxiety. That is to say, your child never has to step foot into a therapist’s office in order for SPACE to have a positive impact on the family system and on your child’s anxiety.

SPACE is designed to help parents with the often counterintuitive responses that children who struggle with anxiety need in order to promote bravery and decrease safety behaviors. Bravery in this sense means continuing to do actions that are important and values based for your family, despite experiencing anxiety or worries and safety behaviors meaning the things that your child’s anxiety is promoting that prevent their ability or willingness to engage in the world around them.  

I start by saying that SPACE is counterintuitive and paradoxical because it's just that. Parents are biologically hardwired to come to their children’s aid and rescue them in moments of suffering. This is often coupled with the fact that anxiety has just the right chemistry to fuel the entire family into feeling as though there is a crisis at play. These two factors frequently lead to parents believing that they either must aid their child by making the situation easier for them OR believing that they must demand action now; wondering why their child is refusing or seemingly not listening to direction. If we think about this from the flight or fight perspective, both ways of supporting your children would make sense - yes I’m going to let them get out of this because it’s too uncomfortable and clearly they can’t handle it (flight) OR I’m going to force them to fight the situation, telling them they must and have no other option but to suffer through. However, neither of these tactics allow for your child’s brain to learn anything new about the perceived fear at hand. 

SPACE offers a third option; unwavering support coupled with strongly held expectations. In SPACE, we will work together to identify a target area where anxiety most often shows up for your child. This area will be something that pops up frequently for the family and impacts multiple members. This might be dropping your kiddo off at school or play dates and having to stick around because they won’t let you leave, refusing to go certain places because of perceived danger or fears or any other restrictive rule that your child’s anxiety has started for the family that has begun to be taxing or started taking hold in multiple domains. SPACE requires parents to start conveying a sense of sincere confidence in their child’s ability to do something, despite the fear that they’re facing. It also promotes disengaging with the worrying “what ifs” and refusals that so often accompany children with anxiety. When we acknowledge and hold space for hard feelings but continue to express our belief that they can do it even with those hard feelings, anxiety will no longer have room to hope that there is a way out of the situation, empowering our kiddos to face their fears. 

One of the predominant theories of SPACE, held in other anxiety and OCD treatments such as exposure and response prevention, is that accommodation keeps anxiety alive and thriving. While the things that we’re doing in the moment may make an anxious child feel better, such as allowing them to come home early from school or skip a party because they’re feeling worried, what it is doing is sending messages to the brain, two fold. The first being slightly more overt, that the child is not equipped to handle the perceived distress of the situation and must be rescued. The second message being sent is more subliminal, it elicits feelings of connection, rescue and relief. The brain likes all of these things (hey, who doesn’t!) and starts to learn that by eliciting feelings of panic in the anxious child, it may also receive positive input down the line from those closest to the child - moments of connection, special 1:1 time, closeness etc. This is NOT to say that the children themselves are aware of the reciprocity between anxious emotions and positive connections but the anxiety itself is manipulative in this manner and will continue to elicit negative emotions if there is the belief that either a change in expectations OR positive outcomes are possible down the line. 

In working together through SPACE, we will look at all of the areas that most impact you and your child’s lives and see how we can change the parental/caregiver response to encourage positive changes in the child’s experience of anxiety. SPACE is meant to provide parents with a treatment so that they can work towards living their lives with a sense of freedom and vitality, without the walking on anxious eggshells that so many caring for children with anxiety experience. The benefit of SPACE is that although it is a treatment that is parent-only, its results are shown to be as efficacious as CBT for children with anxiety and OCD. 

SPACE: Therapy for Anxious Children at Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists

If you’re interested in SPACE or would like to learn more about this evidence-based treatment model and whether or not it might be right for you and your child, please reach out to us at hello@austinanxiety.com or 512-246-7225 to schedule an appointment at our Round Rock, Westlake, or Austin office. Austin Anxiety and OCD Specialists also offer on-line therapy appointments for families living throughout the state of Texas.