In the northern hemisphere it’s that time of year where summer vacations are drawing to a close and kids are going back to school. Lately I am hearing more references to rising anxiety centered around this event. Do you experience back-to-school anxiety?
Students often experience increased anxiety this time of year. After a break, an anxious student is faced with having to leave the “bubble” and return to the routine of getting up, going to class, and meeting the challenges that students face every day. It’s natural for a student that struggles with disordered anxiety to be apprehensive about this, be afraid, or even dread the return to school. This can certainly be a challenge. Those first few days or first couple of weeks back to school essentially represent a forced exposure where you have to go, can’t escape, can’t run, and will have to navigate through anxiety to the best of your ability.
Then there’s back-to-school anxiety for parents or caretakers. This is less obvious and really what I want to talk about today.
As a father, I used to experience back-to-school anxiety. When the summer was over and my kids were set to return to school, that first day back was traditionally one of the worst anxiety days of the year for me. If I’m being honest, I hear about this more from mothers than fathers, but we can acknowledge it as “parental” anxiety because it can happen to anyone in our situation regardless of gender identification.
Why does parental back-to-school anxiety exist?
When someone fears being alone, often the start of school means that the kids are out of the house and you may very well be forced to spend 6-8 hours every day alone again. After a two month break from that, it’s normal to be afraid. You may be dreading that first day back, wondering how you will handle the alone time. Alone time means being confronted with your thoughts and your anxiety symptoms. What if you need to be saved? Who will be there? These are common concerns as the start of school approaches.
Summer vacation often means that parents are spending more time with kids and family. There might be play dates, family oriented social engagements, summer sports and activities, day trips or extended vacations, and just generally keeping up with kids that are home all the time rather than gone at school all day. This takes up more time, which means that there is less time for … wait for it …. recovery work. Summer vacation is a break from school, but often also a break from consistently doing exposures and facing recovery challenges. Summer break is a convenient excuse to step back and “relax” (not that taking care of kids all summer is relaxing, of course) and maybe not spend as much time - or any time - doing challenging exposure work. When we take away that excuse as the kids go back to school, we are confronted with reality. We either have to resign ourselves to staying stuck, or get back to the grind and start going toward what we fear again so we can get better.
Is this you ? Are you fearing the first day of school because you’ll have to go back to your exposure and recovery work?
The start of a new school year can also bring up powerful emotions. Every kid only gets so many first days of school. This time of year means we burn another one of those and have fewer left. It reminds us that time is passing. Things are changing. Kids don’t stay little forever. This can be an emotional time for anyone, anxiety or not. If we factor in a propensity for big emotions to immediately trigger anxiety, fear, or excessive rumination, it’s easy to see why this time of year can mean an increase in anxiety for so many in our community.
There are likely a ton of other little reasons for increased anxiety based on the start of school. If you’d like to share your own, feel free to use the comments section on Substack to chime in. I always love the interaction.
Regardless of what might be beneath the rise in your anxiety levels as kids return to school, the rules generally remain the same. I know I sound like a broken record, but while it can be helpful to acknowledge back-to-school anxiety like this so we can conceptualize it more clearly, we don’t want to treat it as a special kind of anxiety that requires special instructions to overcome. As always, this is an exercise in learning that you are safe even when uncomfortable and afraid. This is once again about practicing navigation through rather than escape from. School will start, you will experience things, but in the end you have always been OK, and will continue to be.
I know this stuff is hard. I’ve been there. But I know you can do this.
Have you listened to this week’s episode of The Anxious Truth podcast? Check it out out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or my website and YouTube channel.
154. Do You Have Back-To-School Anxiety?