Well, you have described my dd pretty closely. She is amazingly social and loves new places, people, activities and things just as you described above. She was never a fearful kid - always willing to jump off a diving board, ride a roller coaster, speak or perform in front of (very) large crowds, etc. She did become a bit more fearful, though, as the anxiety developed and was afraid of thunderstorms this past summer. Your description of needing to know what is going on and being frustrated by lacking information also hits the nail on the head.
Her anxiety developed last year while in a terrible school situation. Not only did her teacher penalize her for being unable to do tasks which a documented disability prevented her from completing, she also had other kids in the school making hurtful comments and physically hurting her. (The injuries were not the result of bullying - there were a number of kids in the class with behavior issues and the teachers were totally incapable of maintaining any sort of appropriate classroom environment.) She begged for me to change her school and I worked relentlessly to try to improve her situation. As she felt more and more vulnerable the anxiety moved in. She eventually became very clingy and would beg me to stay with her and not leave the classroom in the morning. She began having almost daily stomachaches and I was picking her up from the nurse's office several times a week by the end of the school year. She felt so vulnerable that an accidental bump in the hallway resulted in her crying in a heap on the floor as if she had been hit by a baseball bat.
She was constantly afraid that she would disappoint her teachers or get in trouble for something that she didn't do. Her teacher assigned a student each day to be the "color changer" so she never knew when or if her color would be changed off of green, so she developed a paralyzing fear of the stupid color charts. As she got more and more anxious she began with repetative thoughts. i.e. as we were driving for her visit at a private school we planned to transfer her to she kept saying over and over "Do they have a color chart there?" "If they don't have a color chart I definitely want to go to school there." "I really hope they don't use color charts there."...
The good news is that once school ended the anxiety abated. Now that she is in a positive learning environment there have been no signs of anxiety. Her IEP has her meeting with the school social worker each week to develop coping mechanisms but there has been very little need for it in the new environment.
Hope this helps answer your question.
