People who have been reading this blog for a long time might notice that I used to post pictures of my kids all the time, and I used to write about my kids frequently, but I don’t anymore.
There’s a simple reason for that. When a kid is two, you can write about them, and it’s not totally about them. Sure it’s about their quirks and whatnot, but two year olds and two year olds, and it’s hard to be too embarrassed by something you did when you were still in diapers and smearing grape jelly all over your hair.
But when a kid gets to be a bit older, things become more personal. I write about my life and I share it pretty freely. But they aren’t old enough to really give me informed consent to write about them, and so I don’t.
Unfortunately that also means that I can’t write about motherhood as frequently as I used to. That makes me sad because I used to love to so much. But such is life.
But I think I can still safely talk in generalities about some topics. And the topic that has been on my mind a lot lately has been anxiety in kids.
My anxiety started when I was very young. It started out being afraid of dying from diseases I heard about on television – AIDS, heart attacks, you know… things common in 5 year olds.
Then it expanded and I started to get anxious about moral issues. I guess you could say I had a clear and extreme version of justice. If I did something wrong, then there should be a consequence. That can be beneficial. It kept me out of trouble. But when mixed with the wrong brain chemicals, it turns into uncertainty. Well what if maybe I… I guess it’s possible I could have…
And soon I started confessing to things I had never even done. I still remember the guilt and the panic that would overcome me until I confessed the made up transgression.
Bad deeds had consequences, and I surely was not going to skirt my own.
And then the obsessions about moral issues became obsessions about other things. When I was younger, I was obsessed with making sure there was nothing in front of the heaters in our home. I was sure a stuffed animal would fall and it would overheat and burn the house down. I remember being utterly exhausted and going from room to room time after time after time checking to make sure nothing was by a heater.
Finally I would lay back in bed after checking everything, and then the thoughts would start again. “What if I knocked someone in front of it when I last checked?” And the cycle would continue.
I don’t know how or when that ended. I don’t know if it was abrupt or gradual or even how long it went on for. I just remember the nights.
And then when I got a little older and started babysitting, I started getting anxious that a door was unlocked and someone would break in. And so I would check back door locks dozens upon dozens of times. I started hating babysitting.
Things went on like this for years, sometimes being anxious, sometimes not. Sometimes obsessing over things, sometimes not.
And then unfortunately for some people, things start to get worse. And that happened with me. I started becoming absolutely terrified of my own thoughts. If I had to be home alone, I would put on a “safe” television show (one that could trigger the least amount of thoughts,) and I would make it loud. I would shut all the shades because sun could wake me up, and I had to be as calm as possible. I wouldn’t move an inch because I didn’t want to raise my heart rate. Because things wouldn’t be better until TJ got home and he could tell me when my anxiety was out of control. He could help.
I did get help, and it has gotten much, much better. Of course I still have relapses, but in general, I kind of feel normal most of the time. Just a normal that is always aware that the ground can falter under me and I could fall fast and hard.
But in general, I know that we all struggle, and we all suffer, and I actually feel like at this point, the anxiety has finally taught me more than it has taken away from me. And that is beyond significant because it has taken so much.
And so with all of this in my back pocket, I went to a presentation at my daughters’ school about anxiety. I wasn’t sure if I would learn anything new because I’ve spent decades reading and learning about anxiety from therapists, but with four daughters at the very least, genetically predisposed to anxiety, I felt it was my responsibility to go.
And I’m glad I did. And yet it made me so very sad.
Anxiety isn’t like when I was a kid. When I was a kid, we didn’t live in a world of stressed out, anxious children. Things were simpler. I was the exception, not the rule.
But today there is so much more that they face, and I still don’t think that as a society we really know how to deal with them all that well. Perhaps because as our kids are freaking out about their grades and their social media profiles, we are all stressing out about our jobs and our social media profiles.
We live in a society that moves so fast that it makes our brains move fast just to keep up. My brain naturally moves nine thousand miles a minute. I’ve learned to make it work for me. It’s just how I am. But I wonder how many kids weren’t born like that and instead learn it through a world that moves much more swiftly than any person could or should?
I don’t know if my daughters will face the same struggles I did. I have some good hints that some of them might. But I also have a lot of hope because these disorders are so much more well understood than they were back then.
When I get anxious about my kids getting anxious (notice the irony?), I try to remind myself that I don’t need to be their therapist. We can get them one of those if needed. I don’t need to fix all of their problems. (Actually trying to fix another person’s anxiety ironically makes them more anxious the vast majority of the time.)
All I need to do is love them and seek guidance when needed. I can be there for them. I can listen without judgment. I can be the one person who very truly understands what they are going through because I spent my life going through it.
I remember when I was about to enter the pushing stage of labor with my oldest that I almost had a panic attack. How could I give birth when I still struggled with anxiety? I believed that I needed to have beaten it before she was born.
Now I see that even if I *might* have passed on a genetic tendency towards anxiety in them, I also have decades worth of experience dealing with it to pass on as well. I’ve been in the trenches. I know just how far you can fall. And I understand the logic behind their worries and fears and anxieties even when they might sound totally absurd to anyone else.
So I can’t tell you how to make your kid less anxious. I can help my kids, but I don’t have all the answers. But I am going to refuse to be overwhelmed and filled with guilt should that cross fall on them. Because I am their mother. And as such, no one will be more staunchly on their side. If my kids fall to anxiety, I cannot cure it for them, but I can walk the journey with them step by step, being their biggest cheerleader.
And then perhaps I’ll go home and cry in my pillow because no matter how much we may understand all of this, there’s still nothing worse than seeing your child suffer. Especially when you know how much it hurts.