Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Anxiety anyone???

Anyone else have anxiety issues. My DS6 worries about everyting. About 1 year ago we had major wind axiety. It was so bad he wouidn't go outside. When he had to, he would completely FLIP out. He said "the wind brings the rain the rain brings the lightning and the lightning will destroy us". We had about 1 yr of therapy for this and other anxiety related issues. Among, other issues such as perfectionism. That is another one we haven't really tackled yet. Anyone else have similar issues.

My DS has the most amazing nightmares. We make a point not to watch the news when he's around. As he gets older, it's getting a little better and hopefully eventually he'll outgrow it.

Many people on this board have issues with perfectionism and if you go back and search the older threads, it has been discussed many times.

My son has some anxiety issues but he has never had any therapy for it.

I had anxiety issues as a child and didn't have half the stuff to deal with that he has. I had a normal, happy childhood but was extremely shy and was very close to my parents. My mother was my best friend. I was very sensitive and only gifted at coming up with scenarios that could happen but probably wouldn't.

I really don't see how my son could avoid having anxiety issues. Having perfectionism along with a motor learning disability and sensory issues can cause anxiety. Having a mother with anxiety can cause anxiety--he tells me that this causes him more anxiety than anything else. Being told by your public school friends that you would have to have protection from bullies if you ever went back to school can cause anxiety. Helping take care of a grandmother with dementia who pinches hard enough that she sometimes draws blood can cause anxiety--he knows not to get too close and she hasn't pinched him yet. Being told that you will probably need to wear a brace until you have stopped growing can cause anxiety. Knowing that you have to dumb down your speech so kids your age don't think you are a geek but not really knowing what vocabulary they know and don't know because you don't go to school with them can cause anxiety. Hearing your grandfather say that it is bad now but it is going to get a lot worse can cause anxiety. I don't know how a therapist could say anything or do anything to make any of this better for him or me. My son deals with a lot of it by using humor and trying to look at bad situations from a different perspective and finding some good in it.

One positive thing was that he developed an interest in neuroscience and psychology. He watches his grandmother and gets to see misfiring neurons in action. He wonders how she can remember something one minute and the next she can't--like my name--but she can still spell and still knows her multiplication tables. He knows about different parts of the brain being responsible for different things and how strokes can damage one part and not another leading to some interesting results. His great uncle, my mother's brother had a stroke that affected his speech for a while but he was able to sing words without any difficulty. He saw that my uncle regained his speech ability because of "plasticity of the brain" which my son is very interested in because he saw that his grandmother didn't seem to have this same plasticity and he wonders why. When my son was in kindergarten he had a dog that was hit in the head by a motorcycle and the brain damage caused one eye to look one way and the other eye to look in a different direction. He is sensitive but he can look past the sadness and see the science. I think all of these experiences might help him if he goes into the medical research.

We have read books about dealing with anxiety but taking deep breaths and trying to prepare for the worst case scenario just is not enough sometimes. One of the books I read said you won't die from anxiety attacks. Maybe not, but my blood pressure went so high and I don't want to take a chance of having a stroke so I have to rely on medication.

Yes for my kids and yes for me. Therapy is helping me and helping me help my kids.

DS isn't too bad, although he has his moments. Me on the other hand... I could probably use drugs at times (and when I had PPD it was very anxiety-oriented, rather than a more classic depression). I think I was pretty laid back before adolescence, so I'm wondering how DS will make it through his teenage years. We have quite a lot of anxiety on both sides of the family, so it seems almost inevitable.

Interesting about the post-puberty change, Erica. Is that common? Any thoughts about what the reason for the change was? Hormonal shift, or just the greater responsibility of adulthood?

My son (6) has anxiety...but he also has a weird autoimmune problem that causes his antibodies to attack his basal ganglia, so his anxiety noticeably increases when he's got strep. The first thing we notice when he's about to get sick is that he follows me around the house and doesn't want to be more than a few feet from me. Which is annoying because the other thing that happens is he develops extreme ADHD-like behaviors, extra disconcerting when he's always 2 feet from me and shouts "mom!" 200 times a day.

So it's hard to know if it's "real" anxiety, or this physical problem, or whether there's any difference...

This year the problem has become chronic because the infection has apparently colonized in his throat.

Anyway, once I've got this physical problem addressed I will definitely seek out therapy for both of us, since I'm starting to feel truly traumatized and I think he is too.

My son develops phobias seemingly at the drop of a hat. He will have a phobia for a few months and then it will dissipate.

I don't know if I read that somewhere or if I'm just assuming the whole world is just like me (LOL) -- I know mine is very hormonally linked, but also an effect of sleep deprivation... which itself seems to be hormonally linked... So I can't really say if the hormones affect the mood directly or if it's via the insomnia. It's hard to isolate one variable out of that!

Well, my shift went sort of the other way. I was a pretty uptight child. I'm much more laid back as an adult. For me I think it had to do with control over my life. When I lack the ability to make decisions for myself, it stresses me out. So for me, I suspect it was more situational than anything internal, really.

Insomnia does tend to stress me out more though, so I can see how that could do it to you. And we all know how those hormones are!

I just find it very interesting and I'm curious about why changes like that happen.