Is Your Anxiety Making Your Kid's Addiction Worse?, with Maya KrugerIs Your Anxiety Making Your Kid's Addiction Worse?, with Maya Kruger
Hopestream for parenting kids through drug use and addiction
Host Brenda Zane and therapist Maya Kruger talk about anxious mums, generational trauma and grief, and how a parent’s unmanaged anxiety can affect a child’s addiction and mental health. They share practical ways to relate differently to fear, shame and control while still showing up for a struggling young person.
1:03:15•9 Apr 2026
Is Your Anxiety Fueling Your Child’s Addiction? A Therapist’s Take on Anxious Mums
Episode Overview
- Anxiety is originally a protective response, but when it dominates your life it can function like a process addiction that keeps you stuck.
- Observing anxious thoughts with some distance, like reporting the weather, helps you see that you experience anxiety but are not defined by it.
- Tuning into the “younger parts” behind your anxiety and asking what they fear and need can be more helpful than trying to force the feeling to stop.
- The way you relate to your own anxiety is what children absorb; modelling honesty and self-compassion is more important than appearing perfect.
- “Mother” is a role, not just a biological fact, and nurturing support can come from friends, therapists, creativity and your own inner caregiver.
“What I have come to learn is that mother is a role… it doesn’t have to be a biological mother. Mother can be support, friend, art, therapist, self.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation between host Brenda Zane and psychotherapist Maya Kruger zooms in on one powerful piece of the puzzle: an anxious mum’s inner world, and how that anxiety can quietly fuel a child’s addiction or mental health struggle. Maya shares the story of growing up with a mother who had lost her own mum young, and how that grief soaked into their mother–daughter bond.
She talks about believing, as a child, that “mothers die young”, then losing her own mum suddenly at 18, and the long, messy process of learning to mother herself. Her perspective is particularly grounding for parents who feel broken by their child’s choices. You’ll hear Maya explain why anxiety is initially “incredibly adaptive”, yet can become its own kind of process addiction when it takes over your life.
Instead of shaming anxious reactions, she suggests getting curious: noticing anxious thoughts like a weather report, asking what part of you is so scared, and “parking next to yourself” rather than abandoning your own feelings while you chase solutions for your child. She also reframes generational trauma and the mother role, reminding parents that “mother” is not just a biological identity but a function that can be held by friends, therapists, art, and even your own wiser self.
Her Outward Bound experience as a teen — three days alone in the wilderness with just water, crackers, and a journal — becomes a powerful example of what can happen when you finally sit still with yourself. This episode speaks directly to mums who feel consumed by fear, guilt, and control, and to dads who want to understand that inner storm.
You’ll come away with language, perspective, and practical ways to care for your own nervous system while loving a child in crisis. Could tending to your anxiety be one of the most loving things you do for your family?
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