Please help. My two years has awful separation anxiety
I've been blessed with the most loving, little girl, but her separation anxiety has become really difficult.
For the last six weeks, she's constantly been saying things like, "Mummy gone now," "Daddy gone to work," or "Where's my mummy?" She'll repeat these phrases over and over again, screaming them at the top of her lungs for long periods. It feels like she's stuck in a loop that she can't get herself out of.
What I'm struggling with is that it isn't always triggered by us actually leaving. Sometimes it's completely understandable, like nursery drop-off, which she suddenly finds really upsetting even though she never used to. But most of the time it happens for reasons that don't seem to make sense.
She can be perfectly happy playing, completely calm, and have had our full attention, cuddles and reassurance all day. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, one of us might stand up from the table, walk to the other side of the room, pop around a corner where she can still hear us, or even just move around while she's still able to see us, and she'll become absolutely frantic.
Today, for example, we were in the garden together. She was happily playing and I simply walked across the garden to tidy up some toys. I was still in the garden with her, never out of sight, and our garden isn't even big, but she immediately went into full panic mode.
It doesn't seem to matter whether she's already upset or whether she's been getting plenty of attention beforehand. She can go from completely content to inconsolable in seconds, simply because one of us has moved away slightly.
In a nutshell, she seems to need one of us or preferably both me and my husband right beside her almost 24/7. Even the smallest amount of distance, or the thought that one of us might be leaving, is enough to trigger a huge meltdown. It feels like her anxiety has escalated so much that she can't tolerate even tiny separations, and we're really struggling to understand what's causing it or how best to help her.
It’s like living with this mini atomic bomb and you can feel like your walking on egg shells because just freely moving around has become this awkward things to do. Not sure if this is a phase, developmental or something else. Family members are noticing and it has on occasion made them feel uncomfortable because of all of the repeating she does. Please help because I’m not sure what we can do as we really do try everything and explain nobody’s leaving and we always come back to her very quickly.
