The Self-Driven Child

Six Steps to Being a Non-Anxious Presence

• Ned Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 51

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Hey folks, Ned here. In this episode, I’m diving into something that feels more essential now than ever—how to be a non-anxious presence for the people who count on you. Whether it’s your kids, students, partner, or even yourself, being that calm, steadying force can make all the difference. I know from personal experience and years of working with families that this isn’t easy, especially when the world feels like it’s spinning off its axis.

So, I break down six practical, research-backed steps you can take to help yourself stay grounded, build emotional resilience, and show up as the helper people need—even when things get messy. I’ll walk you through stories from my own life, including the toughest parenting experience I’ve faced, and offer concrete strategies for managing your own stress so you can be that safe harbor in the storm. 

 

Episode Highlights:

[1:47] - Opening reflection on “helpers” and what it means to be a non-anxious presence.
[4:22] - Step 1: Assessing your own baseline level of stress and why many of us don’t realize how stressed we really are.
[7:56] - Step 2: Identifying your personal stress triggers using the N.U.T.S. framework. (Novelty, Unpredictability, Threat, Low Sense of Control).
[11:34] - Step 3: Spotting your “tells” and emotional signals when you're not at your best.
[14:10] - Step 4: Claiming your space—how to communicate your emotional needs without blowing up.
[19:32] - Step 5: Facing challenges by confronting your fears and reframing anxious thinking.
[22:18] - Step 6: Emergency and preventative stress relief techniques—laughter, breathing, exercise, and more.
[24:40] - Personal story: How my son and I reframed our thinking during his brain tumor diagnosis and what we both learned about resilience and peace.
[26:50] - Final thoughts on raising kids to thrive through hardship and modeling courage and calm.

 

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Ned Johnson:

Ned, welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm Welcome to the self driven Job Podcast. I'm your host, Ned, your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William sticks of your host, Ned, Johnson and co author with Dr. William streude Johnson and co author with Dr. William streude of the books, with Dr. William streude of the books, the self driven child, of the books, the self driven child, the science and sense of the books the self driven child the science and sense of giving the self driven child, the science and sense of giving your the science and sense of giving your kids more control over giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do your kids more control over their lives and what do you say? kids more control over their lives. And what do you say, how you say, how to talk with kids. to build motivation, stress How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance and tolerance and a happy home. a happy home. When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping, but what exactly does a helper look like? I mean, for a child, you can picture firemen and policemen and doctors and nurses and probably moms and dads too, but that's easy if they're wearing a cape or a hat or a stethoscope, but the more subtle helpers are everywhere. And in my experience, the people that I run to or am drawn to are the non anxious presence, the people who seem to have it together, to keep their cool, to think clearly, to not panic when things are a mess. I don't know about you, but I feel like there are a lot of things that are scary in the news and in the world and for many of us in our lives right now, and we look for those helpers, and more importantly, we probably want to be those helpers, Bill and I talk about in the self driven child, and what do you say? How to be a non anxious presence. What it means to be a non anxious presence. In this episode, we'll talk a little bit about how to be a non anxious presence. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. So in our latest book, The Seven Principles for raising a self driven child. A workbook we explore seven principles as the name implies, and one of them is naturally the idea being a non anxious presence. And some people are kind of wired more this way. They're just things. They roll off their back and they roll with things that are hard. And for others of us, we just have nervous systems that are a little less that they're a little bit more amped up, a tad more edgy. But there are ways that all of us can move in the direction of being a non anxious presence. So I'd like to talk about this in this episode, about six steps to helping you be more of a non access presence for the people in places that matter to you. Step one, assess your own baseline level of stress. Many of us are stressed, and we don't even realize it. I recently started work with a lovely kid. Knew the family for a while, and the youngest was this bright eyed bushy tailed, terrific kid, but she was really anxious, but she didn't know it. She fought it. Her dad said I was trying to get her to a therapist all last year, and she said, No, I'm good. I'm fine, in part because maybe she wanted to believe that, but also perhaps because everyone around her may have been just as anxious as she was. And he finally said, You did throw up before school every Said, Yeah, I guess that's true. Now, there are ways for us to assess our own level of stress without checking whether we are vomiting every day before school or work, but just a few questions for you to reflect on. In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly? Felt that you were unable to control important things in your life. Felt nervous or stressed, and by the way, there's a hole in the book. You can tally things up and there's numbers, but for now, we'll just listen and I'll keep talking. Felt confident about your ability to handle your personal problems. Felt that things were going your way, found that you could not cope with all the things you had to do just a few more been able to control irritations in your life, felt that you were on top of things, been angered because of things that happened that were out of your control, or felt difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them. And if a lot of these struck you as things you couldn't handle and things weren't going your way, then chances are you might be a little more stressed than not. Again, you can do some math on here if you pick up the workbook. Now. Importantly, again, a lot of people don't feel that they're stressed, even though they may, in fact, be, importantly, I think, for men, especially, not only men, but more often, we'll say things like, I'm not stressed. I'm just pissed. Well, honestly, frankly, Potato, potato. For many people who skip right over the freeze or flight, part of the stress response and go right to the fight, meaning they get angry, irritated, really easily about pretty much everything. For my part, I tend to get moody and Surly and just kind of retreat to a cave which doesn't make me particularly happy or make me an easy person to live with, so I try to watch that, which brings me to step two, identify your trigger. What are the places who are the people? What are the states that are in that make you feel more anxious? One really useful way to analyze this is with nuts, the Sonia Lupe and research we talked about in the self driven child, of what makes us nuts, of not so and this novelty, new situations, U, unpredictability, T, perceived threat, oftentimes, for many of us, particularly for kids where our egos feel threatened and s, low sense of control. And you can hear that so much in these questions, where do you feel like you're out of control? And that would be an indication of both the cause of your stress and likely also a symptom of your stress. Because when we feel anxious, we naturally are drawn to wanting to seek more control, even control over things than we really can't have, or maybe shouldn't have control of. Again, just a way to note it for me, I know that I am really much more likely to be anxious when I am tired. It's just my really it's my kryptonite. I joke with my students that I'm not just cranky, I'm sort of borderline homicidal if I get two nights of really bad sleep. So identify the people that set you off, or the States or the places that set you off, so you can be mindful of them and how to well, we'll talk more in the next steps about what to do about them. Step three is identify your tells. One quick story we note in the new book seven principles is that I tend to be pretty patient with kids, in part because I know what the ARC of this is likely to be. I have confidence in them and my ability to get them where they need to be. So when I am impatient with kids, I'm trying to assess, am I tired? Do I have too much on my plate? Or am I picking up on the anxiety of the kid who's in front of me? Oftentimes we see anxious kids and people who don't know better. Can sort of blame that on parents for having kids who are anxious. But we want to be mindful that anxious people anxious children. It can also make us as parents anxious as long as we're attentive, because stress is so contagious, and of course, it's bi directional. Step four, claim your space. We have all heard about self care, probably to the point that we just want to throw self care right out the window, but we talk about claiming your space in ways that are a little bit different. A lot of this is the language that we use to regain our own space. We talk about in the book, what do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress, tolerance and a happy home? Terrific book. If you haven't read it yet, might be my favorite book, but don't tell Bill, claiming your space is not just physical, but temporal and relational as well. So if you find yourself getting really amped up in a situation and you're not quite sure what to do, and you frankly need space to calm down, you can say things to your child or your spouse or people around you that I just have a pretty sensitive stress response. And when I'm around other people who really intense, and some of these people have been pretty intense. It tends to affect me, so I just need a few minutes. I'm going to go for a walk. I'll be back in just a bit when I can sort of gain my balance again. I hope that's okay, and I hope you understand that with children, when you are in a bad mood, they tend to pick up on that well, but not be very good at interpreting it. My daughter for her. Heart when she was 23456, incredibly sensitive to other people's stress. We described it in the self driven child. It's sensitive to secondhand stress, and if people around her were frustrated or angry or impatient, she assumed that those people were angry or frustrated or impatient with her, rather than near her. So if you find yourself being in a moment, and I have to do this with my daughter, because I do, I will say things like, I'm in a really terrible mood today. I'm not upset with you, but I just need you to know that I may snap a little bit. So be a little bit patient with me, if you can. And honestly, I'm upset with everything right now, including me. I hope it's okay. I need to be alone for a little while to process this. And it's not just, you know, test prep geeks and normal dads who have this I have a dear friend, woman in Anne wake who was this brilliant, brilliant clinician recently passed, and she was, she was, of all things, recruited by Marcia Linehan, who created DBT dialectal behavioral therapy. She was hand selected by Marcia when she was in her mid 60s to bring a DBT practice to DC. Brilliant, brilliant clinician. And she told me a story about how when she would come home from work and she had three young kids, she would tell them, mom needs to go upstairs and collect herself, and then I'll come down and attend to dinner and be the mom that you want, but I need time to collect myself, to be the mom that I need to be. So please do everything you can to not interrupt me while I gather myself. And she processed a lot of really hard stuff. The earliest part of her career was working with children who had suffered sexual trauma. So she had a lot to process, and she said sometimes I would go upstairs and I just wouldn't come down for dinner. I needed that much time to process what I'd heard. So for us as parents, you can have a heck of a day of traffic, of work, of your own problems, of your spouse, if your parents, whatever, and you're doing your best to handle that. And in that moment, you may struggle to be the best version of a non access presence, because your cup is overflowing with stress, but you can let your kids know my cup is overflowing with stress, and I hope you give me a little time just to come back and be the mom or dad that you need me to be. I would note that kids are also likely to express that, but maybe not in quite the right words, where they'll say something like, just leave me alone, which may be that you're trying to have a conversation, though important is not one that they can handle right now. They've had enough going on, socially, emotionally, academically, you know, extracurricularly, athletically at school, and their processing lot, and they may not be able to talk that through with you right now. They may need that downtime, especially kids who are still working out their introspection, right? A lot of kids who are neurodiverse process things in ways that are different than how you might certainly, it took me a while to learn this for my daughter that her downtime was going upstairs in a room and watching whatever she was watching for a period of time and thinking through and then coming back downstairs to engage. So when kids say, just leave me alone, they may need that time alone. You can check in, as I would do with a text 1520 minutes and say, hey, just checking in. Are things cool? Is it okay if I pop my head in just to say hi, not to have that important conversation, but as a gentle way, respecting her need for quiet and alone time, but also trying to gently convey that, Hey, I see that you're having a lot going on, and I just want to check in for a moment. Is that cool? Step five, this probably the hardest, is is to face challenge and confront your own fears. One of the things that makes it hard for us to be a non actress is we see something not going well, and we catastrophize and believe that this will obviously be the end of the world as we know it, or my kid, who's struggling is never going to find another friend like that, or struggling so much academically that how are they ever going to right the ship? How are they ever going to have a productive life? How are they and when we are at our worst in terms of stress, we tend to generalize, we tend to catastrophize, and we tend to prophesize, and think that the things that are going on now are prevalent everywhere, and this will be our kids future. And of course, that is incredibly stressful to us. Our fears are really rarely about in the moment, but our fears are about the future and that our kids will get stuck someplace. And so I challenge you. We challenge you, and you can pick up this book and work through it. We challenge you to challenge your negative thinking, to challenge your most fearful thoughts. Take a line from Katie Byron. Do I know that that's true? Can I be sure that it's true? Who would I be if I didn't have that thought and we challenge it, and there's a bunch of exercises in here, but I won't go through all of it now, because this is a podcast, but there's a story I'll talk about in a moment, about my son and his brain too. Which some of you may know about. I'll come back to that in just a moment. And Step six is stress relief, both emergency and preventative. What are the things that in the moment you can do when you're just feeling a lot? And I'll go back to leaning in on Sonia Lupi, and she of the nuts who said that the four methods of emergency stress relief are laughing, singing, deep, breathing and vigorous exercise. So yeah, tick tock has its place if it's funny, right? Spend time with people who make you laugh. Watch ridiculous movies. Sing in sing around the house. Be I had a student who was an in car singer. Physiologically, it lowers stress, deep breathing, lots of methods of deep breathing. I love the box breathing, created by naval seals, super helpful. I think of them as high performing individuals and kind of stressful work environments. And they, too benefited from deep breathing and vigorous exercise. Vigorous exercise blows off cortisol in a really profound way. You can pick up Robert Sapolsky book why zebras don't get ulcers because they have really short, intense moments of stress being chased by a lion, but that are counteracted in part, by blowing off the stress with a hard and fast, intense run that they do. You don't have to be chased by a lion, though, to get the physiological benefits. Just saying, and preventative methods, I'll stick with exercise, since I'm there, regular exercise rewires the brain to be less anxious. It's super cool stuff. There's a wonderful article I'll put in the show notes by Gretchen Reynolds when she was at the New York Times. And what happens when people, in this case, they were working with animals, would exercise on a regular basis, and they could look at the neurons that were created, not the effects of exercise today, but the neurons through recreate, but the neurons that were created, and look at them two weeks later. And these neurons had two characteristics. One, they reacted more quickly in response to a stimulus. This is a good thing. It means you're smarter. You're quicker on the draw. You respond in a crisis really well, and an increase in a neurotransmitter called GABA, which is effectively the their, their, their, their neurotransmitter, the nanny, the nanny hormone, as they described it, in a stressful moment, you want to respond quickly, because life might depend on it, but as soon as you realize, oh, it's just the whatever, and it's not life threatening, you don't want to stay in that state of this neurotransmitter. GABA tells your nervous system, coast is clear. We're good. And you go back to whatever you go back to. But there are all kinds of other things that are really helpful as preventative medicine, sleep, probably above all, exercising on a regular basis, as I mentioned, yoga, especially meditation. All of these are things that lower our stress in a preventative way, because they deepen the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. And so when you have an intense moment, or I or your kid, or anyone has an intense moment, the amygdala, with all those decision making problems solving, what do we do right now or in the future? And what we want is for our prefrontal cortex to engage the problem solving. What do I do? How do I figure things out in the moment and also in the future, part of our brain and the part of our brain that allows us to put things into perspective, to say, well, this is just part of the path. This will be okay we and now we just have to figure out how the prefrontal cortex will regulate the amygdala, so when it flares, it goes, we have a plan. Oh crap, we got a solution. It's going to be good enough. And the depths of the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala is the single strongest neurological marker of mental health and a pretty good indication of who is a non anxious presence. So the last thing I want to talk about is cognitive reframing, returning to step five to face challenge and confront your own fears as an important step to moving in the direction of being a non anxious presence. Somewhat recently, I was out for a long drive with my son who those of you who have been falling to work for a while. May know, developed a brain tumor after his first year of college. He's great now, but golly, what a process and path that was to walk. So we're out on this ride, and my son, who too loves psychology and studied some of that in college, and lots of things on Tiktok and books that he's read was just sort of riffing on how much he loves metacognition, the ability to think about his own thinking. And he talked for a while, and I said, you know, when you were battling the brain tumor, I had to do a lot of work on my own thinking. One of the things that I did was try to project myself into the future and imagine what would. Happen. How would I handle things if things didn't turn out okay with you? Because I needed to confront those fears and live in that space with those feelings and figure out how it would be, if not okay, at least how I would handle it would be good enough so that I could continue to be the dad I need to be for your sister and, you know, for mom and for myself and for my own life and the people I work with, the other students I help, and on and on it goes, because if I were utterly pancaked and unable to deal with losing you. One, how could I leave my life? And two, how could I in this moment be anything other than a hot mess, when what I wanted to do was to be a source of strength, a source of confidence, a source of courage as we walk through this process of having your treatment for your brain tumor, and he looked at me said, Well, I did the same thing. I said, you did? They said, Yeah. I said, Well, tell me about it. He said, Well, I imagine what would happen if I died. I said, and, and he said. I told myself, well, if I die, I've had a wonderful life. It was, it was quite a moment. It was a little hard not to drive the car into the ditch. And I thought, My goodness, that ability to think about his own thinking, to make peace with what could be really hard allowed him and me to walk this path with as much grace as we could, and fortunately, it didn't end up with a really bad outcome. And I say this knowing that there are many, many, many people who battle cancer, and things didn't work out okay. Going into Children's National here in DC, where he had his treatment, was an incredibly humbling experience, one, because he was this super tall kid when there are all these tiny little people. And I was also struck by the awareness that there were all kinds of children here who weren't going to have a good outcome and whose lives were very short. So that was humbling. Still, I was so struck by my son having this perspective that allowed him to walk this process with his chin up and not much hair on his head or my head. And it also occurred to me that that way of thinking, of living maybe with more courage and less fear, was part of what led him to feel that he had, in fact, to that point, and I hope for many years to go and for many years to come, had had a happy life, a wonderful life, because life is not all sunshine and roses, right? In many ways, we benefit from things that are hard to develop resilience, to develop our courage, but also to weigh against other experiences. It's hard to appreciate how wonderful things can be if you never have a little rain in your life. And I don't wish that. I don't wish that on anyone, but my son, somewhere along the line, had said to my wife and me, you know, my life was so great. You know you're great. Katie's great. My school is great. My friends are great. And I always wondered when I'd be challenged, and I thought, well, listen, you gotta chose something a little less dramatic. And he said, I know, I know, but I really do think I'm a different person and a better person for having had this experience. And I think he's right. So I offer this up for you who are listening, or for people in your life that even this really the hardest thing that he faced in his young life, and the hardest thing that I faced as a parent was it a good thing or a bad thing, that he faced this, that we face this, and knowing that we can face our fears and challenge our fears and confront our fears, In part by saying, reminding ourselves and our children that this may just be part of their path allows you, at least it allowed me to move in the direction, to hold that space of trying to be more of a non anxious presence, to be the helper, as Fred Rogers would say. Fred Rogers mom would say to be the helper that he could come to when things were hard. So I wish this for all of you, ideally in ways that are much less traumatic. If no child ever got cancer again, I would be awfully grateful for that. But your kids are going to have hard things. They're going to struggle academically, they're going to make mistakes, they're going to embarrass them. Ourselves. They're going to screw up friendships. People are going to break up with them. They're going to break up with other people. They're going to break people's hearts or have their own hearts broken. They're going to reach far and fall flat and knock themselves down the dust, and they'll be bruised and bloody and dusty and but still, ideally, they get up and they dust themselves off, and they apologize as best they can, and they say, Okay, well, what's next? Because that is life in all the ways that is good and bad, and knowing that, that it's true for you, that the things that were hard for your in your life are likely the same things that make you the courageous, capable person that you are, you wouldn't want to relive them, but you probably wouldn't want to have this stripped from your own experience and your own background. It isn't easy to be a non anxious presence, particularly in the world today, but it's been hard in the past, human beings have always faced hard things, and ideally, we do it with grace and courage and compassion and self compassion, so that we can be the best version of ourselves to help our children be the best versions of themselves. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know, to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you'd like to, in part because we tender virtual ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say, full of reflections and exercises to do yourself with your partner and with your children, we want to help make the self driven child way your way, so that you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids In ways that we know you want to be. If you get a chance, order a copy Bill and I and your kids would be grateful. You.