The Anxious One in the Family: How Anxiety Gets Passed Down

In the last post, I wrote about anxiety rooted in attachment, something that can form early in life and stay with a person well into adulthood. There's another root that works a little differently. Sometimes the anxiety is a role that a family needs someone to occupy.

How the role gets assigned

When you grow up in a family where parents are unpredictable, sometimes you may feel that the family needs someone to keep things steady. That might mean being the one who problem solves or keeps the peace. Or you may unknowingly step into the role of being the fixer or caregiver. Other times, you may be placed into a role more directly, and that can look different for everyone. For some, it might mean taking care of a parent or acting as a parent to younger siblings.

Whatever that role was, it doesn't mean the anxiety that came with it stayed in childhood. You may return to that same anxious pattern, no matter what it looked like. Meanwhile, a younger sibling who never had to hold that role has no reason to step into it now.

By the time you're an adult, the anxiety feels like it's who you are. But often, it's what the family has left you to hold.

Why this shift in thinking helps

Understanding anxiety as something you inherited from a role, rather than something wrong with you, can be a relief. It shifts the question from "what's wrong with me?" to "what did I learn to carry, and for whom?" That shift doesn't make the anxiety disappear, but it can change your relationship to it. It can help guide your choices in that scenario when faced with it again.

Where to start

A few questions worth sitting with:

• What was your role in your family growing up? The worrier, the fixer, or the peacekeeper?

• How did that impact how you engage in the world?

• What did it cost you to hold that role?

  
  

Whether you did or didn't choose this role it's one you have. Now comes the work on whether to change or how you navigate this role.

Part 3 of the series: what happens when anxiety isn't a distortion at all, but an accurate read of genuinely unstable circumstances.

If you are struggling with this kind of role that you had in childhood and now as an adult know you're not alone. There is support for you.