Therapy 101
Children & Adolescents
Is My College-Bound Kid Anxious — Or Am I? How CBT Can Help Both of You
Sending a child to college stirs up anxiety for parents and students alike. Here's how CBT can help both of you navigate the transition.
You’ve filled out the forms, made the campus visits, completed the applications, and received the acceptance letters. It all feels like a major accomplishment. You and your child have shared in the journey of finishing high school together, and now they’re choosing to take the next big step to further their education. And yet, something feels a bit off — and you can’t quite name it.
Are they ready to be on their own? Are you ready to let them be?
After all these years of relying on you, they’re about to begin the first chapter of life where you won’t be right beside them. Those feelings are normal, and sometimes they pass. But often the anxiety that comes with this big transition lingers — and that’s where a form of therapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, can help.
At its core, CBT is built on three straightforward ideas:
• A lot of what we struggle with emotionally comes from unhelpful or automatic ways of thinking
• Those struggles are also tied to patterns we've learned in how we act and respond over time
• And most importantly— both of those things can be changed. People can learn new adaptive ways of thinking and new coping skills that shift how they feel and how they show up in their lives
If you’ve ever been in therapy, there’s a solid chance you’ve experienced CBT. Over time, CBT has started to become an umbrella term that includes a lot more specialized therapeutic approaches. But at its core, it's still pretty straightforward- the therapist is actively involved and it's very collaborative. You're working together to figure out what's keeping the anxiety going, and then building new coping tools, healthier behaviors, and more balanced ways of thinking so things start to feel more manageable.
So how does that apply to the specific anxiety that comes with sending a child to college?
As a parent, sending your child off to college can bring a real mix of emotions. Worry can creep in and start to take up more space than you'd like. You may find yourself preoccupied with what they’re going through even when you’re trying to go about your own day. And it's not just that your child is stepping into something new; your role is shifting too! The day-to-day version of parenting changes, and that can bring up uncertainty about what your relationship will look like moving forward. Sometimes it becomes hard to tell the difference between normal concern and worry that feels more consuming. And it can show up physically as well — trouble sleeping, irritability, and that constant sense of being “on” are all common in this kind of transition.
Students are going through their own emotional adjustment at the same time. There’s often a real fear of not being able to keep up academically without the structure and support they’ve always had at home. Socially, they’re also starting from scratch in a lot of ways — building relationships in an environment where they don’t yet have shared history or familiarity. On top of that, everything that used to feel steady (friends, family, routines, even just being in a known place) has shifted at once. And something people don’t always talk about is the pressure to feel excited. When the experience doesn’t match that expectation, that mismatch alone can start to feel overwhelming.
CBT is designed to help with exactly these kinds of patterns — the thoughts and behaviors that quietly keep anxiety going. It’s a collaborative approach where you and your therapist work together to notice what’s happening in real time, and then start shifting it in a more manageable direction.
For parents, CBT can help with things like:
• Catastrophizing — jumping to worst-case scenarios (“They’re not going to be okay without me”)
• Over-responsibility — feeling like your child’s struggles reflect your parenting
• Identity shifts — figuring out who you are as your day-to-day caregiving role changes
For students, CBT can help with things like:
• All-or-nothing thinking — “If I mess up once, I’m failing at all of this”
• Comparison — especially when social media makes everyone else look like they’re adjusting effortlessly
• Emotional reasoning — assuming that feeling overwhelmed means they can’t handle it
The work in CBT is really about identifying these patterns, checking them against what’s actually true, and building more balanced ways of responding. The goal isn’t to get rid of anxiety entirely — it’s to keep it from running the show.
What to Do Next
Noticing that this transition feels hard is already an important starting point. From there, the next step is simply seeing whether CBT feels like a good fit — and that starts with a conversation, not a commitment.
Highpoint Wellness Center is a family-owned group practice serving the Montgomery County area, with therapists who work with both students and parents navigating this transition. We offer both in-person and virtual sessions depending on your preference. If this resonates, we’d encourage you to reach out to schedule an initial consultation.
Therapists who practice CBT- do we want to list all of them who currently have openings?
Sources
This post draws on peer-reviewed research and clinical literature:
• Bhattacharya, S. et al. (2022). Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety-Related Disorders: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Literature. Current Psychiatry Reports. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36534317/
• Chand, S.P. et al. StatPearls / NIH: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy — clinical overview including cognitive distortions (catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization). National Institutes of Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470241/
• Mattanah, J. et al. (2017). Stress, Depression, and Anxiety among Transitioning College Students: The Family as a Protective Factor. Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1161344
