When Anxiety Shows Up In the Family: A Conversation With Two Maryland Therapists
Anxiety can show up at any age, and be a whole family concern.
Being an anxiety therapist with a solo practice can be great, but also kind of lonely at times. So I was so delighted to get a chance to recently sit down with my friend and colleague Robin Brannan, LCMFT, the owner and director of Better Together Family Therapy in Kensington, Maryland, to talk about this thing we both think about a lot: anxiety. [You can watch our full conversation on YouTube here] Not just anxiety as a diagnosis, but anxiety as a whole-life experience that shows up in the body, in relationships, in parenting, and in the space between the people we love most.
Robin works with kids, teens, adults, and families, with a particular focus on neurodivergent families. I specialize in anxiety treatment for individual adults, ages 18 and up. We don't always work with the same people, but we kept finding ourselves nodding along at each other's observations, because anxiety has a way of touching everything. Here's some of what came out of that conversation, and why I think it matters for anyone who's been living with anxiety for a while and wondering if anything can actually change.
Is Anxiety All In Your Head?
Let me answer that with a firm, but friendly, no. Anxiety is most often diagnosed based on thinking patterns: the worry, the rumination, the overthinking that won't quit. But if you've lived with anxiety for any length of time, you already know that it doesn't just live in your thoughts. It lives in your chest, your stomach, your shoulders, your jaw. It lives in the way you lie awake at 2am running through everything that could go wrong. It lives in your relationships.
As I said to Robin during our chat, anxiety is "happening in the body, the mind, the nervous system, the relationships that we have." It's a whole-life experience, which means treating it effectively has to be a whole-life approach.
This is actually why I love what I do so much. Because when we only try to fix anxious thinking by talking about anxious thinking, we often end up going in circles (my personal belief is that being more mindful of the body makes thinking approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) much more effective). The mind is so busy being anxious that its most nuanced, reflective capacities are kind of... offline. The worrying part is running the show (you can check out some older blog posts on this if you want to jump down the brain geek rabbit hole with me on how that all works). And sometimes the most useful way in is actually through the body, not starting with the thoughts at all.
Can working with the body really help anxiety?
Yes! For a lot of the people I work with, it's one of the most meaningful shifts they experience. I bring in a range of body-based approaches: mindfulness, emotional self-regulation, breathwork, yoga therapy practices, and clinical hypnotherapy. These aren't add-ons or extras. They're often the thing that finally gets traction when years of purely talk-based approaches haven't moved the needle.
Here's why it works: when anxiety is activated, the part of your brain that runs the fight-or-flight response takes over, and the more thoughtful, reflective parts of your brain get crowded out. (Sound familiar? It's the same phenomenon as going completely blank during a test even though you studied, or suddenly remembering all your best arguments in an argument three hours after it ended, once you've finally calmed down.) Trying to reason your way out of that state is like trying to parallel park while someone is honking at you. It's just not the easiest moment for your brain's fanciest thinking.
Coming through the body (using the breath, tuning into physical sensations, finding a foothold of calm in the nervous system) can actually help bring those more thoughtful parts of your brain back online. And from there, we can do a whole lot more.
What if you have trouble feeling what’s happening in your body?
Feeling a bit wooden? Learn somatic skills for improving body awareness.
This is something Robin brought up that I found really worth sharing, especially for anyone who's tried mindfulness or body-based practices and felt like they just couldn't access it.
When Robin works with neurodivergent clients, she often encounters one of two things. Some people feel body sensations very intensely and have, understandably, learned to shut them off as a form of self-protection. There's a kind of wall between what the body is doing and what the person is able to consciously notice. Others have less developed interoception (that's the sense of what's happening inside your body) and need to build that connection gradually, starting very simply, like just noticing what it feels like to move a finger.
I see versions of this in my own practice too. Some people are, as I'd put it, living from the neck up. They know exactly what's going on in their thoughts, but their body is kind of a stranger to them (or at least someone they haven’t hung out with in a long time).
The good news is that no matter where you are on that continuum, there is a way in. It just might not look like the standard mindfulness script you've tried before. It might need to be slower, simpler, more tailored to where you're actually starting from.
how does a parent’s anxiety affect their kids?
More than most parents realize, and in some ways that might surprise you.
Robin made such a good point about this: parenting is itself a generator of anxiety, even for people who don't typically struggle with it. You love your child more than anything, you're deeply invested in their wellbeing, and you have very little actual control over their experience. That combination is almost engineered to bring up anxiety.
When a child is struggling (especially with their own anxiety) parents naturally want to help. They adjust the schedule, skip the triggering situation, step in before things get hard. This comes from love. But over time, it can quietly reinforce the child's belief that they can't handle discomfort on their own. You can read on here for more about how avoidance increases anxiety.
As I often remind my own clients with anxiety: children are not just reading your words. They're reading your nervous system. A parent can say "I believe in you, you've got this", and mean it, but if their own nervous system is quietly broadcasting "this is not okay and I am freaking out inside," kids pick that up. It's not just about having the right thought. It's about being able to inhabit a nervous system that says: we can manage this.
This is a big part of why Robin and I both put so much emphasis on body-based regulation. It’s not just for anxious adults on their own behalf, but for anyone who is trying to show up differently for the people they love.
What Is Space therapy?
Managing anxiety with kids is a whole family effort.
SPACE (Support for Anxious Childhood Emotions) is an evidence-based approach that Robin uses in her practice, and I was so glad to talk to her about it. It treats child anxiety by working with the whole family system, not just the child. Which, as Robin put it, appeals to her family therapy brain, and I have to say it appeals to my systems-thinking brain too.
Here's the core idea, as explained by Robin: when a child is in anxious distress, screaming "I can't do this!", what they're really communicating is "I don't believe I can do this." SPACE works by training parents to respond in a very specific way that, over time, helps the child build their own confidence in their ability to cope. It's not instant. You don't put this into practice on Monday and see a transformed child by Friday. But the research supports it, and the results over time are real.
Don’t sleep on the fact that the parent has to do their own nervous system work in the process too. You can't just decide you believe your child can handle something. You have to be able to hold steady when your child is upset, when you are melting down internally and everything in you wants to rescue them. That requires you to regulate your own internal experience, not just your words.
Robin's practice offers SPACE both in small group settings and one-on-one, and they have a free introductory workshop coming up for families who want to learn more before committing, if you have kiddos experiencing a lot of anxiety.
does talking about anxiety actually help?
Yes, and also, it's often not enough on its own. Insight matters. Understanding why anxiety shows up for you, what it's connected to, what it's trying to protect. That's genuinely important work! But insight without action doesn't create change.
This is something I notice regularly with adults I work with. There can be real surprise when I say: okay, now we have to actually do something different. Not just understand it differently, but truly do it differently. Practice it. Try something new and see what happens.
At the same time, action without understanding tends to feel random and doesn't stick. The most effective path forward holds both: the insight that helps things make sense, and the concrete steps that move you through and out of the anxiety pattern.
One thing I particularly love about the approach I use is that for a lot of people with anxiety, there are some genuinely remarkable strengths hiding inside the very thing that's been making their life hard. A lot of anxious people are extraordinary at visualization. They just tend to use that skill to vividly imagine things going wrong. Once we can redirect that same capacity toward imagining things going well (this is a place where some hypnosis is often helpful because of that strength of visualization), toward finding calm and confidence in the body, toward building a different future, it becomes one of the best tools in the whole toolbox.
what if you already tried therapy and it didn’t help?
Please don't cross therapy off your list because of that. Therapy is not a monolith. Therapists adapt constantly: to who you are, what you need, what's actually working and what isn't. And if something isn't working, the most useful thing you can do is say so.
I know that can feel hard. As I said to Robin, it's sometimes hard for me to tell my hairdresser that something isn’t working and I want something different. Telling your therapist that a particular approach isn't landing takes some courage. But it's also incredibly valuable information. It might lead to a shift in approach, a different tool from the toolbox, or a referral to someone who's a genuinely better fit for what you need.
We aren't mind readers. We can pick up on a lot, but we can't help you move forward if we don't know what's not working. We honestly want to be moving forward with you. We want to see things shift, even if it’s not with us. So, please, speak up for your needs and let us know what’s working for you and what’s not. We can take care of our own feelings about it all. The therapeutic relationship is for YOU and your benefit.
TL; DR
Here’s the bottom line: anxiety is not a life sentence, and there is nothing wrong with you for having it. It makes sense from a nervous system standpoint, from an evolutionary standpoint, from just about any standpoint you want to look at it from. You're not broken. You're a person with a system that got a little too good at detecting danger, and that system can learn something new.
Whether you're an adult who's been dealing with anxiety for decades, a parent watching it shape your family, or someone who has tried things before and just hasn't found what clicks, there is a way forward. You're more resilient than anxiety has let you believe. And so are the people you love. We’ve helped lots of folks on this path, and are ready to support you too.
More about somatic approaches to reducing anxiety
This interview comes in the midst of a current blog series on working with the body to understand and reduce anxiety. Come on back for additional and upcoming posts on:
How your nervous system works (in plain English, no jargon required), and why anxious nervous systems get stuck in high alert
Overview information about somatic approaches to anxiety treatment
What clinical hypnotherapy for anxiety actually feels like, from the inside
A self-compassion practice specifically for the body experience of anxiety
Each post will be practical, and each will connect back to real work I do with anxiety therapy clients in College Park and online in Maryland.
working with a maryland therapist Integrating Body and Mind
My approach to anxiety therapy has always been integrative. I use CBT, mindfulness-based approaches, somatic and embodied healing practices, and clinical hypnotherapy because different people need different things, and most people need a combination. The body and the mind are not separate problems. They need to be worked on together.
If what I've described here resonates, and you'd like to find that powerful connection of insight and action to reduce anxiety, I'd love to talk. I offer a free 15-minute consultation call so we can see whether working together would be a good fit.
Sessions are available in person in my College Park, Maryland office, or online anywhere in Maryland. Contact me here, or call (301) 818-3978.
About the author, A MARYLAND ANXIETY COUNSELOR:
Beth Charbonneau, LCSW-C, is a Maryland therapist, specializing in anxiety therapy and treatment. With over 20 years of experience, she brings a holistic approach to calming the mind and body, and encourages her clients to feel empowered to find more joy in life. More information about her practice can be found on her website.
