Exploring Childhood Anxiety
There are several different types of anxiety disorders, which affect approximately 1 in 10 children, and I wanted to take some time to touch on each of them and then discuss how my son is affected. The first type is Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the children affected with this type of anxiety are often very self-concious and worrisome needing constant reassurance. Phobias are another type of anxiety; a person with a phobia have an unrealistic fear of an object, situation, etc. The next type of anxiety disorder is the Panic Disorder. People, including children, with panic disorders will have repeated panic attacks and they don’t always have a known cause.
The last two types of anxiety disorders are Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) deals with individuals who are often stuck in meaningless routines, repetitive thoughts, and behaviors. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) usually manifests after a child has been faced with a traumatic event.
Alexander probably has touches of General Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. When he is in social situations, even some that are comfortable to him, he often times shuts down as if he doesn’t know what to do and how to react. He’ll slouch his shoulders, turn away from the person talking to him, look at the ground, and sometimes he will answer their attempts at conversation. When asked how he feels he says nervous. I think this would fall under the general anxiety section, of course I’m no doctor so this is just one mom’s opinion.
I can only think of two times where he had something that would be classified as a panic attack. He is underweight and it has been an issue for some time. I was getting into a neurotic state about it and I think I put too much pressure on him. Twice in one week he complained that his heart hurt and that it hurt to breath. We ruled out everything medically; EKG, chest X-ray, full blood workup, etc. In hindsight this sounds a bit like a panic attack, at least according to friends and family that have experienced them.
Now I would have never thought of Alexander as having obsessive-compulsive disorder because it doesn’t manifest like you see it portrayed in movies, etc. He is a creature of routine. He knows how to get to every place we ever go to and if I take a different route he gets a little nervous and then wants me to map it out on the navigational system in our car. Once we get close to the destination and he starts to recognize the surroundings his nerves ease up. When he goes to bed at night the pillows must be in a specific order and the closet must be closed. If a pillow is out-of-place or even backwards it is upsetting to him.
Now that we have a direction to take with Alexander regardig his anxiety I think we’ll be able to make good progress towards resolving it. We received the Indigo Dreams CDs that I previously mentioned and he sat down and listened to one of them this evening. I didn’t think we’d be able to get him to sit still for that long but he was really intrigued by them and actually participated along doing the exercises they discussed. I’ve also started reading my new library additions, three books on the topic of childhood anxiety. I need to get a bigger bookshelf!
