“Transforming Anxiety into a Superpower” with Dr. Tracy Foose (Parent Education Presentation)

Anxiety evolved to protect us, but nowadays, it’s a much-maligned emotion. This mind/body awareness of potential threats can feel so overwhelming and uncomfortable that it stops serving as a protective messenger and starts feeling like a menace. In our current mental health climate, it’s even been labeled an epidemic. Misunderstanding this emotion has made us anxious about anxiety itself. Kids… parents… we could all use a reset. Viewing anxiety from an evolutionary perspective helps us admire the human body’s natural response to threats with humor and awe and befriend the wild animal that lives beneath our skin. Anxiety can protect us, energize us, and show us what we hold dear in life. When we help our kids discover their anxiety’s purpose, we can teach them how to harness its power.

Before starting a psychiatry practice specializing in anxiety, Dr. Foose was director of the Anxiety Disorders Program at UCSF Weill Institute of Neurosciences, where she continues to teach at the school of medicine. Her favorite teaching gigs, however, are within her own community – speaking at schools, organizations, and guest appearances on NPR. She and her gastroenterologist husband are parents to a high schooler, middle schooler, and grade-schooler this year and delight in embarrassing their 3 daughters by gabbing about the brain and gut in very public settings.