Dealing with the Holi-daze and Difficult People

You know who I'm talking about.

That random cousin who always shows up with Aunt Gigi. Yes, the one who can't read a room, let alone stop talking about the conspiracy theory of the moment.  Or your sister's mother-in-law who insists on accompanying the family wherever they go, whether she was personally invited or not. It wouldn't be so bad if she stopped terrorizing the grandkids with her constant vigilance about their behavior:  "Stop running!"  "Were you raised in a barn? Stop grabbing at your food like that!"  "When was the last time you washed that hair?"

"Are you a girl or a boy?"

Regardless of the details, managing yourself through the holidays is the key to remaining present without drifting off into a haze of, "I can't wait for this to be over."

Let's start with the people who greet your arrival by making rude, intrusive, or inappropriate comments.

You know the questions:  "Do you have a boyfriend yet?"  "What happened to that boyfriend you brought last Thanksgiving?"  "Oh my, looks like you've enjoyed the past year eating your way through it."  "Are you sick? How did you get so skinny all of a sudden?"

Blah. De blah. Blah.

When you feel that immediate ick associated with this type of encounter, you'll find it much easier to remain calm and steady if you practice the following:

1. Maintain a neutral facial expression as you look the speaker in the eyes for two seconds without saying a word.
2. Then simply ask: "What did you hope to gain by asking me that/saying that just now?"
3. Continue to look them in the eyes while they process your question.
4. If they don't immediately explain themselves, preferably with an apology attached, simply walk away.
5. Maintain your distance from that person or group for the remainder of the gathering.

Pretty simple, eh?  It is, actually.

The problem comes when it's not just one person behaving this way, but several.

I remember attending a bridal shower with my mother-in-law shortly after my husband and I had our daughter back in the mid-1980s.  Literally every "old" Italian lady at that shower eventually worked her way over to me and asked:  "When are you having another baby?"

"You need to have another baby."  "It's not good for a child to grow up without a brother or sister."

No, I am not kidding, as I'm sure many readers have experienced some version of this themselves.

After about the fifth interrogation, I turned to my mother-in-law, who knew these women much better than I did. She advised me to simply smile and not answer.

Which I did.

She then proceeded to say something to each woman in Italian.  Whatever she said, it worked.

To this day, I have no idea what she told them. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to know.

Reminds me of another time when a stranger asked me a wildly inappropriate question about where I lived.  Without blinking, I simply looked him in the eye and replied:  "My own."  End of discussion.

Here's the thing: being afraid to respond with the equivalent of "Wait, what?" doesn't make much sense when you think about it.  Most of us aren't actually afraid of the person speaking.  We're afraid of feeling uncomfortable.  We're afraid of awkwardness.  We're afraid of the possibility that someone might think we're rude for refusing to absorb their rudeness.

Listen, as I always say:  "I don't start things, but I will definitely finish them."

You can too.

The truth is that many people who ask intrusive questions are counting on one thing:  your discomfort.  They assume you'll laugh nervously.  They assume you'll answer.  They assume you'll absorb the awkwardness so they don't have to.

You don't have to.

Sometimes all it takes is a calm:  "Wait, what?"  Or:  "What did you hope to gain by asking me that?"  People who are rude, intrusive, disrespectful, or simply lacking in self-awareness occasionally need a reminder that their behavior isn't welcome.

And trust me, that reminder doesn't require yelling, arguing, or causing a scene.  It just requires you to stop volunteering for the role of dart board.  You aren't anybody's dart board.

Starting the moment you decide otherwise.

Until next post...

What About Fear As a Lifestyle?

Walk through any department store in October and you'll find an entire industry devoted to frightening people for fun.  Turn on the television and you'll find murder documentaries, disaster predictions, economic collapse warnings, climate catastrophes, political outrage, and enough true crime programming to make you afraid of your own mailbox.  Open social media and there is always someone warning you about what should terrify you next.

Then we scratch our heads and ask why anxiety rates are skyrocketing.

Maybe we're asking the wrong question.

The question isn't why people are afraid.  The question is why we've built so much of modern life around manufacturing fear.

Fear was designed to help us survive the occasional bear.

Instead, we've created a society that delivers bears to our nervous systems twenty-four hours a day.

The human brain struggles to distinguish between an immediate threat and a vividly imagined one. Every headline, horror movie, catastrophe prediction, and worst-case scenario rehearsed in our minds becomes another practice session for fear.  Then we declare war on fear itself.  We buy books to conquer it.  Take courses to eliminate it.  Search for hacks to overcome it.  Yet the more attention fear receives, the larger it appears.

It's as if we've spent decades trying to extinguish a fire by pouring gasoline on it.

Just the other day, a client said to me, "I realize I avoid everything because I'm afraid of being afraid."  

She wasn't kidding.  When we have made fear loom larger in our life than it needs to, we start looking for ways to seek comfort in the midst of our own fearful imaginings.  And when seeking comfort, or being comfortable, or living inside our own "comfort zone" is a big enough priority—complacency naturally follows.

We start saying things like, "Oh no, we're not able to make it.  It might rain that day."

"I don't do crowds.  No thanks."    "I am not interested in being anywhere involving lots of steps."

"Babies and I don't get along."     "No, I don't do vegetarian anything."

Once complacency sets in and we become comfortable with it, we start avoiding as a lifestyle.  Which leads to isolation, which leads to disconnection from both self and others, which ultimately leads to a miserable life with or without active addiction(s) attached.  Active addictions such as whatever works to provide us with our own radical escapes from reality on demand.  Too much working, too much exercising, too much researching, too much reading, too much volunteering, too much giving until we collapse, too much rescuing stray animals—and these are the more "acceptable" forms of escape in our culture by the way!  We already know what the not-so-acceptable forms of escape are.  We read about those every day.

Courage is not the absence of fear.  Emotional health is not the absence of fear.  Resilience is not the absence of fear.  They are the ability to continue living meaningfully in the presence of fear—and in spite of it whenever it shows up.

We have been sold a false promise about fear in our culture, which is this:

"If you do enough work in whatever form that takes, you will eventually stop feeling afraid."

But that's not how healthy people function.  Healthy people still feel fear.  They just don't organize their lives around it.  Many people aren't suffering because reality is dangerous.  They're suffering because they've developed a habit of treating discomfort, uncertainty, embarrassment, rejection, grief, conflict, and change as if they were emergencies.  

With this way of thinking, the nervous system never gets a day off.  We have become a civilization that treats ordinary human vulnerability as a five-alarm fire.  We need to practice living in peace in spite of the storms around us, and in spite of the chaos, crisis, and mayhem that we witness.  Nobody can rob us of our peace or our joy unless we allow him/her/them to do it.

The most fearless generations were probably not the generations that talked about fear the most.

They were too busy building businesses, raising children, serving in wars, immigrating to new countries, starting farms, opening stores, and figuring out how to make it through another winter.  Not because they lacked fear.  Because they had purposes bigger than fear.  That may be the real antidote.

Not fearlessness.  Purpose.

Fear says: "What if something bad happens?"

Purpose says: "Maybe. But I have things to do anyway."

What do you need to be doing anyway—besides wasting time living in an attempt to avoid hard things?

Until next post...

Social Mockery by Proxy: Contemptuous Much?

Most people can recognize obvious bullying when they see it.  A child being ridiculed on a playground.  A coworker being publicly humiliated during a meeting.  An online troll attacking strangers from behind a keyboard.  But there is another form of bullying that often slips beneath the radar because it is quieter, subtler, and easier to deny.

I call it Social Mockery by Proxy.

You have probably witnessed it. Perhaps you've seen it at work, while waiting in line somewhere, at a family gathering, in a classroom, at the mall, or anywhere else human beings congregate.  Two people lock eyes.  One subtly glances toward another person nearby.  The other follows their gaze.  Eyebrows rise.  Smirks appear.  A chuckle is exchanged.  A private joke is shared.

Meanwhile, the unsuspecting target continues going about their business completely unaware they have become the source of someone else's entertainment.  Nothing is said directly.  No harsh words are spoken aloud.  No confrontation occurs.  Yet the message is often unmistakable:

"Look at that person."

"Did you notice...?"

"Can you believe...?"

What fascinates me about this behavior is that many people who engage in it would never consider themselves bullies.  If challenged, they are quick to defend themselves.

"I didn't say anything."

"You're imagining things."

"We weren't laughing about you."

"They can't hear us anyway."

But bullying is not measured by volume.  Cruelty often whispers instead of shouts.  And if we're being honest, most of us have participated in some version of this behavior at one time or another, whether consciously or unconsciously.  That is precisely why it deserves a closer look.

Throughout much of my life, I experienced the looks, the stares, the whispers, and the assumptions.  I have a deep voice.  I am nearly six feet tall.  Growing up, these female-but-not-quite-female-enough characteristics often drew attention.  As a young person, I learned to defend myself the best way I knew how. I developed a razor-sharp wit and a comeback style that could rival any insult comic on the planet.  Today, however, I see these moments differently.

What once felt deeply personal now strikes me as a reflection of the other person's own personal discomfort rather than an accurate reflection of me.  And that observation leads to something important.  Social Mockery by Proxy often has very little to do with the person being mocked.  

Instead, it frequently serves as a form of unhealthy connection.  Not connection with the target.  Connection with the other person joining in the mockery.  It creates a temporary bond through shared contempt.

Think about that for a moment.  Healthy relationships are strengthened through shared interests, shared experiences, shared values, genuine curiosity, compassion, and honest conversation.  People connect by saying:  "That's beautiful."  "That reminds me of a funny story."  "Tell me more about that."  "I love the way you explained that."  "Doesn't she remind you of someone we used to know?"

Connection grows through curiosity.  Connection grows through empathy.  Connection grows through understanding.  But unhealthy people often connect differently.

"Look at her."  "Can you believe him?"  "What is he wearing?"  "What a joke."  "Oh my God..."

Instead of connecting through curiosity, they connect through criticism.  Instead of building intimacy, they build alliances.  Instead of elevating each other, they lower someone else.  For a brief moment, they create an exclusive club of two. 

And the price of admission is another person's dignity—as well as eroding away at their own.  That is what makes Social Mockery by Proxy so revealing.  The target is rarely the person who interests me most.  My curiosity tends to focus on the people doing the mocking.  Why do they need another human being to become a punchline?  What insecurity are they managing?  What discomfort are they avoiding?  What emptiness are they attempting to fill?  What satisfaction are they deriving from reducing another person to an object of amusement?

These are not questions about the target.  These are questions about the mocker.

So if today's post feels familiar because you have engaged in this behavior yourself, even unintentionally, I offer a simple question for reflection:  If the person being discussed were standing directly in front of you and could hear every word, would you still say it?

If the answer is no, perhaps it shouldn't be said at all.  Human beings were never meant to become social glue for other people's fragile egos.  That is not humor.  That is not connection.  That is not kindness.  That is not empathy.

It is simply Social Mockery by Proxy.

Perhaps it is time we begin calling it what it is, both when we witness it in others and when we recognize the temptation to engage in it ourselves.

Until next post...

The "Big" Truth About Psychological/Emotional Abuse

Here's a thought for today:  what if what he/she/they repeatedly told you about yourself was never actually true?

Today's blog post is about the "big" truth regarding psychological/emotional abuse.  If you aren't sure what that means, it means what people say to you about you in an attempt to convince you that he/she/they know better than you do about "who" you actually are.

Something to think about eh?

As a survivor of childhood psychological/emotional abuse, I remember thinking, even as a little kid, how something was wrong with my mother whenever she told me "who" she thought I was.  To me, it was as obvious as trying to convince me I was blonde haired with blue eyes when, in fact, I had dark brown hair and hazel eyes.

Unfortunately, many survivors of this form of abuse spend years and/or decades trying to honestly answer questions such as:  "Am I selfish?"  "Am I lazy?"  "Am I crazy?"  "Am I too sensitive?"  "Am I unlovable?"  "Am I the problem?"  "Is it always my fault?" etc. etc.

The bigger question we often overlook is this:  "What if these statements were never accurate descriptions of me at all?"

What if they were injuries?

The difference between a truth and an injury is pretty clearcut:  

A cut on your arm is not your arm.  A bruise on your body is not your body.  

A psychological wound inflicted upon you is not your identity.

When someone repeatedly tells you that you are worthless, stupid, selfish, broken, too much, not enough, and whatever else they say to you—guess what?  They are NOT revealing your true character.  They are, instead, attempting to create psychological injuries.

The problem is that psychological/emotional wounds are invisible.  Because we can't see them, we often mistake them for absolute truth(s).  Psychological abuse creates false mirrors.  Abusive people often hold up a distorted mirror to your face.  In that mirror, you may appear defective, incompetent, unworthy, undesirable, and responsible for everyone else's problems.

After enough exposure, many people stop questioning the distorted reflection they see in that mirror.  they being studying it, analyzing it, trying to fix it, and believing it.  But how can a distorted mirror tell the actual truth?  It can't. It can only distort reality.

A critical question to ask yourself is this:  "Who benefited from me believing these negative things about myself?" 

This question often reveals something important.  Healthy people help you to see yourself more clearly.  Abusive people often benefit when you doubt yourself.  The more uncertain  you become about yourself, the more control an abusive person gains over you.  You stop trusting yourself, and start believing what this other person/people/group tells you about yourself.  Ironic how that works eh?  Have you ever met the person or group who repeatedly tells you how kind, sweet-spirited, smart, and hard working you are?  When you do, introduce them to me will you?  (LOL!)  Psychologically and emotionally abusive people may "love bomb" you for a bit;  in the end, however, they are your greatest detractors.

What was said to you in an attempt to control and manipulate you is not who you are.  Someone calls you difficult.  That does not mean you are difficult.  Think of it this way:  if someone accused you of stealing something when you know for real and for sure that you did not steal anything,  you would also know that the person making the accusation was misinformed—or is a liar.  Pick one.

People who tolerate psychological/emotional abuse;  they don't pick one.  They just blindly believe what they've been told by their abuser(s).  Because that's how abusers roll.  They don't give you a break.  They chip away, chop away, sledgehammer away (however you want to define it!) at you until they know they have broken you down—along with breaking your spirit in the process.

How tragic is that?

People can make all sorts of statements about who you are.  That does not make those statements facts.  The facts stand on their own regardless of what anyone does or doesn't say about "who" you are.  And the more you authentically understand  yourself and who you are, the easier it is to treat these false accusations and harsh judgments like buzzing flies around your face—rather than an avalanche that suffocates the life out of you.

One of my favorite lines in dealing with a psychological/emotionally abusive person is this:

"I know who I genuinely am;  it's too bad you don't."  Old school translation:  "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me."  

No kidding, but it takes practice!

Of course, when we don't know who we are, this represents one of life's greatest vulnerabilities.  When we don't know ourselves, how can anybody else understand us, let alone understand us "well" and/or "intimately" (Into-Me-You-See)?

When we are unsure of our value, identity, strengths, and character, we become vulnerable to accepting other people's definitions of us.  If we do not know or work on figuring out who we are, someone else will happily tell us.  And not everyone who defines us is qualified to do so.

Recovery begins with the simple realization that whatever was said about you may NOT be the truth.  Instead, it may be the evidence of what happened to you.  

The shame.  The self-doubt.  The confusion.  The fear.  The harsh inner critic.  The guilt.

These are not character flaws;  these are scars from the injuries you sustained.  

Instead of asking "What's wrong with me?", try asking "What happened to me?"

Instead of asking "Why did I believe him/her/them?", try asking "How deeply was I wounded?"

These are the questions that often lead toward healing.

Remember,  you are not the accusation.  You are not the label.  You are not the distortion.  You are not the injuries you sustained.

You are the person who survived all that.  There's resilience in your story because you are still here to tell it.

Keep up your own good work.  You are worth it.  October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  Don't let another month, season, or year go by where nothing changes...

Also be sure to check out Dr. Ruth from Michigan on Youtube.  She is a PhD researcher who left a psychologically and emotionally abusive marriage after ten years.  Her online moniker is Dr. Ruth/That Was Abuse and Healing By the Numbers.  If you google that, you'll get right to her. She's worth giving a watch/listen to online or on her Youtube channel.

Until next post...

Empathy Gone Sideways...

Empathy is a wonderful engine.  However, boundaries are the steering wheel.  Without both, you eventually crash.  Today's blog post is about understanding pathological empathy aka "hyperempathy", "toxic empathy", "compassion fatigue", and "emotional enmeshment".  Get your seatbelts on.  This will be a ride you are not likely to forget.

Most of us have been taught that empathy is always a good thing.  Be kind.  Be understanding.  Put yourself in their shoes.  Care deeply.  These are certainly valuable qualities.  However, there is a difference between caring and carrying.  There always has been.

Empathy can stop being healthy and start becoming harmful when they lead to this basic problem:  caring so much about another person's feelings that you lose track of your own.

Healthy empathy connects you with another person who is hurting.  It does not consume you.  When you are practicing healthy empathy, it says things like:

"I understand you are hurting."  "I care about you."  "I am willing to help you with that."  

Yet, healthy empathy also says:  "Your emotions belong to you."  "My emotions belong to me."  "I cannot live your life for you."  "I cannot make your decisions for you."

Toxic empathy, on the other hand, can start out innocently enough.  You notice someone is suffering and you want to help him/her/them.  Then gradually:

    .    You become preoccupied with their problem(s)

    .    Their mood determines your mood

    .    You begin to feel responsible for fixing them

    .    You spend increasing amounts of time rescuing them

    .    Your own needs begin disappearing

Eventually, the relationship revolves around their distress and your response(s) to it.  That is no longer empathy.  That is emotional over-investment.

Some people are good at recognizing the distinction between healthy and toxic empathy.  Repeatedly giving money to him/her/them, solving their crises, fixing their mistakes, absorbing their personal responsibilities—these are examples of toxic empathy.  You do not exist to constantly rescue people from the consequences of their own actions.  

This is, sadly, a common mistake of highly successful "parents" who are then finding themselves enmeshed with an under-responsible adult child (or children) who expect their own brand of save/fix/rescue handouts on demand.

For the hyperempathic "giver" in this type of situation, you are going to feel exhausted by the relationship with your adult son/daughter/grandchild/their family system.  You feel drained, overwhelmed, anxious, and emotionally depleted.  Yet you continue giving.  You confuse helping with loving.  You believe that love requires toxic levels of sacrifice, self-denial, and/or endless availability.

Many highly empathic people learned early in life that their value came from taking care of others.  Perhaps he/she/they learned to:

    .    Keep the peace

    .    Manage parental emotions

    .    Support an addicted family member

    .    Attend to unpredictable caregivers

    .    Become the "responsible" one in the family

Over time, helping became part of their self-identity.  Their self-worth became tied to being needed.

And then they wonder how they get addicted to their need to be needed over time?  Uh, not a big stretch there when you think about it!  

People stuck in toxic empathy often unconsciously ask themselves, "Who needs me?" rather than "Who is healthy enough for me?"

As a result, they frequently find themselves attracted to:  chronic victims, crisis-driven people, emotionally unstable partners, highly dependent friends, and people who refuse responsibility.

Not because they enjoy suffering, but because being "needed" feels meaningful.

The hidden cost of being excessively empathic produces anxiety, burnout, resentment, depression, emotional exhaustion, physical health problems, lost friendships, and loss of personal identity.  

The helper becomes so focused on another person's life that they abandon their own life in the process.

Empathy says:  "I feel your pain."  Which is very different from Compassion which says:  "I see your pain, care about it, and remain grounded."

Know the difference.

Empathy jumps into that hole in the sidewalk.  Compassion throws a rope.  Compassion helps without jumping into that hole with you.

Your life is your responsibility.  Compassion, boundaries, and reality allows you to engage in healthy caring without carrying the burden of someone else's life on your own shoulders.

Until next post...

"More people would..."

I was cleaning out a desk drawer yesterday and came across this piece of paper I had tucked away with a printed (copied) quotation on it.  It said, "More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them."  

No kidding.

Speaking of quotes, I just published my first book to do with quips and quotes I have created after nearly 25 years in practice as a mental health clinician.  It came out earlier this month (August 2026) and it's called Resilience:  Quips & Quotes to Change Your Life One Truth at a Time.  It's available for purchase in either Kindle e-book or paperback formats through Amazon.com.  I wrote it because people are often challenged by remembering truths presented as part of any general conversation.  Let's take the difference between genuine fear and anxiety for an example.  It's one thing to say:  "Genuine fear is when you are at risk of imminent life-or-death danger, given the immediate circumstances.  Anxiety is when you imagine "what if" that terrible thing is going to happen and then worry about it."  In my book, I put it this way:  "Genuine fear is when your pants catch fire;  anxiety is when you worry about them because they're your favorite pair."  On healing, "Healing is when you realize you were never too much, you were merely surrounded by people who preferred less."  Like that.

I have categorized my quips and quotes into sections by topic:  Fear & Anxiety, Pain & Suffering, Courage & Change, Control & Surrender, Hope & Healing, Gratitude & Grace, and The "G" Word:  God.  This is the first book in my series on Resilience and resilience-based living.  My second book Living Between the Fault Lines  Poetry Then.  Wisdom Now. (1996-2026) will be available sometime before mid-September, 2026.  That book presents seventeen poems I wrote when I was 40 years old and believing my healing and recovery work was all "behind" me.  How mistaken I was.  I found those poems 30 years later as I was cleaning out my office.  Since becoming an LLP Psychologist in 2003, re-reading those poems made me realize how much further I had come in my healing as a lifelong "work in progress".  My insights appear in the book next to each poem, along with more of my "Mary sayings" to introduce each poem and the lesson(s) learned from them since 1996.  I hope you will consider checking it out as well once published.

So, back to the front here about why living in the truth is so important for all of us.  

Many of us grow up fearing truth.  That's it.  Plain and simply stated.  When we get in "more" trouble for telling the truth than we do for lying about it, do you have to wonder why we deny so much while we are here living life on Planet Psych Unit?  I don't.  Going back to my opening (and borrowed) quotation about mistakes and denying them;  of course it's easier to deny what we would rather not face and then work to solve ourselves!  That's true for anyone and everyone.

As any adult child of an alcoholic will tell you, life is very hard being raised in an alcoholic household when everyone in the family has to walk on eggshells to make certain the alcoholic either (1) remains in the background of everyone's life within the family, (2) is "watched" and/or "protected" to ensure he/she/they don't say or do anything that could impact the family name/image/reputation in a negative manner, (3) is treated like royalty so as to hope he/she/they will remain "stable" (whatever that means!) often enough, and/or (4) doesn't die/kill/seriously injure someone else as a result of his/her/their drunken antics.  Double that when physical and/or sexual abuse is part of that package involving the other partner/parent and/or their child(ren).  I didn't mention verbal and emotional abuse just now because it's already going to be present when being raised by and/or exposed to an alcoholic adult on a regular-enough basis as a child.

What a way to live, right?  But millions have anyway.  When the children grow up, they are left with some major choices:  don't ever indulge in alcohol and/or drugs, drugs o.k., but no alcohol, don't "be" with anyone who drinks or does drugs, and/or drugs are o.k., but no alcohol.  There is another choice.  Repeat the pattern without realizing you're repeating the pattern, and then find someone else who is just like you—or only does drugs and doesn't drink—or who lives a clean and sober lifestyle.  

So—more people really would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them.

End of.

Until next post..

Yes, I created the artwork for the cover. (Acrylic pour painting) ;-)

  

Kidz and Anxiety (Back to School Preparedness)

August is always an interesting month for me;  it's when I get lots of phone calls from parents with highly anxious kids.  If you think about it, once a child knows school is starting back up "soon"—it's no wonder (at least to me!) why their anxiety ramps up.  Today's post is about having a chat regarding that uptick in your child(ren)'s anxiety before school resumes as and when it does.

First we need to get it straight about what anxiety actually is.  It is "imagined" fear.  Not legitimate life-or-death fear.  Imagined.  That means that whatever fear(s) your child(ren) articulate(s)—it's YOUR job as a parent and/or primary caregiver to understand whether or not that fear is legitimate in nature or not.  On top of that, "imagined" fear plus worry combined is what anxiety actually is.  I mean it's one thing to have a wild dog start chasing you down your street (legitimate fear); it's another thing entirely when you worry about a wild dog coming out of nowhere and chasing you down the street.  

For example, "I don't want to go back to school!  Billy's there!  He hates me!"  O.k.  Do you know who Billy actually is?  Do you and/or your child have a history with "Billy"?  If so, what is that history?  Has Billy actively bullied, physically assaulted, and/or otherwise abused your child either before, during, or after school?  This all may seem ridiculous if you are reading this and saying to yourself, "My kid thinks everybody hates her because she's highly sensitive."  Listen.  To.  Me.  And....??  Don't you see the need to genuinely understand what your child is thinking and believing to be true about (in this case!) her relationship (be it real or imagined!) with "Billy"?  If you don't,  you're a negligent parent.  How about that?

To minimize, to dismiss, to ignore, and/or to mock whatever is going on inside your child's mind IS, in fact, a form of child abuse.  At least it is in my book after seventy years of life and twenty-three years as a practicing LLP psychologist.  Your child isn't highly anxious "now" because it's Friday and 10:30 a.m. EST.  Your child is anxious because FEAR is taking over when it shouldn't be.  So there's that.  Whether that fear is legitimate in nature or not has yet to be determined, but at the very least please discuss to understand what your child is thinking and believing about the source(s) of their anxiety puleeze!

So before you call someone like me to work with your child, there IS work you can do to (1) best understand what your child is experiencing which is causing their real or imagined fear-based reality, and (2) communicate that understanding to them so your child understands that you understand.  That's pretty much the first steps you need to take before anything else.  Got that?  Good!

So, getting back to our example:  you've asked your child all the questions you can think of about "Billy" if you don't know Billy;  if you do know Billy, you can ask whatever other questions of your child because you both "know" who Billy actually is.  So—let's say you conclude from all your child's responses that Billy is engaging in passive-aggressive behavior involving your kid both before and after school.  She sees him in the school bus and he starts making disturbing noises when she walks into the bus, which makes the whole busload of kids start laughing.  She tries to sit as far away from him as she can, but sometimes she can't avoid him being "close" to where she is sitting.  When that happens, he will do things like knock whatever is in her lap off of her lap.  Or he might start making other noises like an animal or a dog while he's looking right at her.  By the time your child gets off the bus, she's already highly anxious and worried about what Billy might do before they both reach the front door of the school. 

Even if that is "all" you can get out of your child about Billy—you are at least "now" in a position to problem solve with her about how to manage this "Billy" issue by empowering her with alternate strategies she can choose from to practice.  

I know for many of you reading this, the content here will seem like taking a class in Common Sense 101, but believe me, it's "not" about that for many parents. They are just too busy and distracted and/or otherwise engaged to achieve this level of mutual understanding with their child and "exactly" what the situations and circumstances are which led to an increase in their child's anxiety.

Without getting into any more excruciating detail, any real life and right now problems have the power to be solved, resolved, and/or dissolved once a child's parent(s) takes appropriate action to intervene and block further incidences of bullying, whether they be covert or overt in nature.  When kids feel empowered by speaking out and telling the truth about what they are going through, and then look to you, as their parent(s) help them navigate their solution(s) to the problem—it usually ends in a win outcome all the way around.

I remember one twelve year old boy I saw many years ago whose father was shuttling himself back and forth between their residence and his family of origin's "home" in a foreign country.  The boy was struggling with feelings of abandonment, while his older sister was being regaled by their mother and other female relatives here in MI as the Second Coming of All Things Bright and Beautiful.  This boy was highly anxious and did not feel like his mother, sister, aunts, and grandmother had his back.  And to tell you the truth, they didn't.  He was not what any of them expected him to be.  He was too chubby, too clumsy, too contrary...amongst other things.  

After seeing him a handful of times, I met with his mother.  She basically informed me that she didn't want a son;  she had hoped for only girls.  And now that she suspected her husband of cheating on her when he was out of the country, she really had an axe to grind with all persons "male".  As you might imagine, this boy was basically functioning as the sacrificial lamb in a set up he could never have imagined or understand.  His parents eventually divorced and his father chose to stay in their native country.  That boy is close to thirty years old now.  I can only pray he figured out what he needed to in understanding "he" had nothing to do with the dysfunction that so profoundly affected him.  When we still believe (the lie) that "we" caused the trouble present within our families of origin, we throw ourselves under the bus and our anxiety becomes even more unmanageable and intensely chronic over time.  

And how sad is that?

I am not of the persuasion that in order to teach kids how to swim, all you gotta do is throw them into the deep end of the pool.  Then watch what happens live.  Too many parents emulate this philosophy and then wonder why their child(ren) grow up to be incompetent, insecure, and intensely anxious. 

Time to get a clue.  Instead of sending your kid to me for help, how about YOU come see me for help.  I haven't been proven wrong yet.  Just sayin'.