Supportive Statements: A Tool to Decrease Anxiety

Our Maryland therapists explain the power of supportive statements to decrease your (and your child’s) anxiety.

Sometimes it can be easy to overthink…well, everything! From not packing your kid enough lunch to triple checking that you’ve finished everything you’ve needed to for your side of the big project.

It can also be daunting to face challenges we’ve never faced before. Making a good impression with your new potential boss? Check. Speaking in front of the biggest audience you’ve ever spoken in front of? Gulp.

Our therapists have a tool for you. This tool is versatile. You can use it in any situation you are feeling anxious about. The tool is called supportive statements.

What are supportive statements? And how can they help with anxiety?

Supportive statements are a tool from SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions) treatment. SPACE treatment is a type of therapy that helps support parents in decreasing children’s emotions. Click here to learn more about SPACE treatment.

Supportive statements include validation of feelings and a statement of confidence. They can help you boost your confidence while acknowledging how scared you feel in facing a challenging situation. Both those parts are required in supportive statements. Having one without the other is like having mac without the cheese…or cheese without the mac.

Supportive statements are an evidence based strategy to decrease anxiety in children. The founder of SPACE treatment Eli Leibowitz encourages the use of supportive statements for adults too. This includes parents facing challenging situations with their children and elsewhere in life.

Supportive statements in action

Say that you’re about to go to your first office party at your new job. You work for a big company. You’ve never really met your boss and your best work friend tells you that she’s caught a cold and can’t come. You want to bail but you promised you would be there. Besides, you want to meet your boss and make a good impression on her.

Of course you're feeling nervous. More than nervous, you feel a lot of anxiety. What if things go wrong? is currently running through your mind. You keep trying to pump yourself up but it just isn’t working.

Here’s the supportive statement to tell yourself. We’ll break it down for you.

1) Acknowledge the feeling

I’m feeling really anxious about this office party….

2) Give yourself confidence by believing in yourself

…and I know I can handle going.

Connect the two to acknowledge your anxiety and your capacity to handle it.

I’m feeling really anxious about the office party and I know I can handle going.

Voila! We have a supportive statement - that can be used as many times as needed for this scenario. Now try the formula with something else you’re feeling anxious about. Here are a few more examples.

I’m worried that my child won’t eat her lunch, and I know I fed her a good breakfast.

I’m nervous about this presentation, and I know I can handle the pressure.

Tip - It’s always important to remember to connect the two statements with AND. You want to acknowledge your fear AND the strength that you have. Overcoming the situation is important but radical acceptance of the feeling is equally important for the supportive statement to decrease anxiety.

Does your child also have anxiety?

SPACE treatment can help both you and your child. We teach SPACE parenting to small groups of parents (6 families at a time). Click here to learn about our next group!

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