Anxiety

My first anxiety attach occurred when I was 8 years old. I think. I was at a restaurant, and I remember feeling strange. My heart raced, I couldn’t breathe. I told my mother about it, and she insisted it was an anxiety attack. I had already been in therapy, so it was just something else to discuss with the therapist. Why do children get anxiety?

I remember my father blaming my mother. She had been anxious in front of me, so some how I caught it. HA! Yes, there is some truth in that, based off of my Google research. Children are taught these behaviors, but there has to be a pre-existing genetic link as well.

My anxiety is rough. My psychosomatic symptoms should win Academy awards. I have felt physically ill, on so many levels. Besides hyperventilating, I have had feelings of dizziness and sensations that I am on a roller coaster or falling. I’ve had phantom pain, practically everywhere. When I was in 5th grade, my father told us he was moving far away for a while. Rather than sharing my sadness, I had intense headaches for weeks and blurry vision. For a time in high school, I had a fear of urinating on myself. So, I had bladder pain. I can go on and on. My psychosomatic symptoms have tricked me into visiting the doctor many times. It wasn’t until recently that I’ve become tired of them, and actually started to avoid the doctor.

My anxiety turned to panic when I was 15. I had just started my 2nd year of high school. Maybe it was hormonal, but I could not sit through one class. I would start to panic, my hands would tingle, my vision would be blurry. I had an urge to run. I had to leave. I would ask to go to the nurse. I had to get out of the situation. I would later learn that my fight or flight response was broken. My panic button was pushed on-always. I started missing school. I lied to my friends and told them I had mono. I would try to go to class, and end up in the nurse’s office. She grew tired of me, fast. She got nasty too. My mother would end up picking me up from school, everyday. I was missing class, tests, assignments. My life was falling apart.

At the time, I did not think it was anxiety or panic. I was convinced I was dying. I stopped eating. We began going to doctors. My bladder pain was so intense, my mother took me to a urologist. We went to 4 different specialists, I had sonograms, bloodwork-of course everything was normal. It took about a month of this charade at school for my mother to realize, this wasn’t physical. This was completely mental.