When Everything Feels Hard: Anxiety, Control, and What Helps

To the outside world, it can look like a child who "can’t cope." They shut down at the smallest challenge. They freeze. They avoid. They seem to genuinely believe they can’t do hard things. This is not a child who lacks resilience. This is a child who feels chronically overwhelmed and powerless.

There is a particular kind of anxiety that shows up quietly, persistently, and everywhere.

I see it in children who are anxious about everything.

Going to the bathroom alone. Being in a room by themselves. Taking a shower. Separating from their parent at school.

To the outside world, it can look like a child who "can’t cope." They shut down at the smallest challenge. They freeze. They avoid. They seem to genuinely believe they can’t do hard things.

Parents often come to me worried and exhausted, saying things like:

“They have no resilience.”
“They don’t think they can do anything on their own.”
“Everything feels hard for them.”

But here’s the reframe I want to offer.

This is not a child who lacks resilience. This is a child who feels chronically overwhelmed and powerless.

A child living in constant stress

Let me tell you a bit more about one child I work with (details changed, of course).

This child wakes up already tense. Their body is tight before the day has even started. School feels overwhelming before they’ve left the house. Separating from mum feels unbearable — not because they want to cling, but because their nervous system genuinely believes something bad will happen if they let go.

Even ordinary tasks feel enormous. The bathroom feels unsafe. The shower feels unpredictable. Being alone feels impossible. When something doesn’t go as expected, their whole system shuts down.

Nothing about this is defiance or laziness. It’s a nervous system that has learned to stay on high alert.

Understanding stress through NUTS

One framework I find incredibly helpful comes from the book The Self-Driven Child. It explains stress using the acronym NUTS:

• Novelty – things that are new or unfamiliar

• Unpredictability – not knowing what will happen or when it will end

• Threat to ego – fear of getting it wrong, failing, or feeling incapable

• Sense of control – or rather, not having one

Now read that list again — and think about this child.

Separating at school? NUTS. Being alone in the bathroom? NUTS. Taking a shower when your body already feels unsafe? NUTS.

When a child lives in a constant state of NUTS, their nervous system isn’t practicing resilience.

It’s practicing survival.

The antidote to stress

Here’s the most important part.

The antidote to stress is control — held within a supportive relationship.

Not control as in “fine, you never have to do anything hard.” And not control as in “you need to push through this.”

But control as in:

• having a say

• knowing what’s coming

• being prepared

• moving at a pace the nervous system can tolerate

• feeling believed and supported

When children don’t believe they can do hard things, it’s often because life has felt hard for a long time — without enough safety, predictability, or choice.

Resilience doesn’t grow from being pushed into independence. It grows when a child experiences:

“I’m supported.”
“I have some control.”
“I can do this — and I don’t have to do it alone.”

If your child shuts down easily, avoids challenges, or clings tightly, it doesn’t mean you’re doing too much — or that they’re doing too little.

It often means their nervous system is asking for more safety before more stretch.

And that starts not with fixing the anxiety — but with understanding it.