What Kids and Pets Can Teach Us About Coping With Anxiety

When we are anxious and worried, we lose sight of the present moment as our minds fixate on possible future outcomes and worst-case scenarios. If we pay attention, children and animals can serve as guides back to the present moment. These small yet inspirational beings can remind us of the importance of play, presence, wonder, gratitude, and communication. Here, we will explore some of the ways in which kids and pets can educate us about how to be mindful when we are experiencing anxiety, worry, and stress.

Presence and Mindfulness

If you’ve ever been walking your dog and felt irritation that she was taking too long or sniffing and exploring too much, you may have missed an important lesson from your companion: The present moment is all that there is right now. Dogs, cats, and other animals have a way of focusing intensely on what is happening in the now. They simply do not possess the cognitive ability to fixate on potentialities or future outcomes.

While we humans do have that ability for better or worse, we can take a lesson from the animal kingdom and work to refocus our attention on the present when we are feeling overcome and overwhelmed by future thoughts. Recently, during a rain shower, I looked out the window and observed three deer simply lying on the grass, seeming to contentedly allow the raindrops to shower them. It made me wonder, how often do we simply stop and experience what is happening? Through an anxiety lens, probably not often enough, as we constantly get hung up on the next task, the next “what if,” and the next thing on our to-do list. Mindfulness is a proven, timeless antidote to anxious and catastrophic thinking. Just watch the way animals soak in every moment of whatever they are doing with complete, uninterrupted focus.

Wonder and Play

The next time you are feeling a “joy deficit” because you are overstressed, stretched too thin, or fatigued by “adulting,” think about how a young child plays and experiences the world with a sense of wonder. In Virginia Axline’s psychology classic, Play Therapy, she writes that the only need of a child at play is “the need to be unshackled, to be freed, to be permitted to be expanded into a complete self without a frustrating and warping struggle.” When kids play, they experience freedom, autonomy, and a sense of endless possibility.

If we are able to tap into this mentality when we are stressed, it can free us from the chains and constraints of anxious thinking. Echoing Axline’s concept, the psychologist Ernst Kris wrote of the value of “regression in service of the ego.” In simple terms, Kris means healthily “regressing” at times to simple, joyful, childlike activities as a way to rebalance our stress levels and live more mindfully and less anxiously. Children can teach us the benefits of wonder and play, and the freedom that comes from a joyful, playful view of the world and of our lives.

Gratitude

When you pet your cat, the purr you hear is an expression of comfort and gratitude. Animals and children alike have a way of showing us how to be thankful for positive, soothing moments. We, too, can work to incorporate gratitude into our often-stressful lives. A simple act like pausing to look around and feeling grateful for our surroundings can help us to soothe ourselves during moments of overwhelm. Gratitude allows for a cognitive shift from thoughts of worry and dread to thoughts of comfort and contentment. These types of mental reframes, which come so naturally to children and animals, can help us to refocus our emotional attention and reduce and soothe feelings of anxiety and worry.

Asking for Help

Though a young child crying can be jarring, it does the important work of communicating the child’s needs. As adults, we often choose to suffer in silence. Though we experience intense feelings of worry at times, we are hesitant to share those feelings, concerned that we will burden others or that we are being “weak.” What we can learn from children is that we can only receive the soothing we need if we communicate that we are experiencing that need. Obviously, we are more mature and sophisticated than an infant or toddler, which means we possess more adaptive means of expressing our needs. Whether this means letting a loved one know we are struggling or seeking assistance through therapy, the power of expression, which kids naturally have, is a vital part of our ability to cope with anxiety and overwhelm.