Week 9 ~ Anxious About Anxiety

What causes anxiety disorders in children? Why do some kids only experience a normal, healthy amount of anxiety while others end up being consumed by their excessive worries, anxious thoughts, and stressful events? Like many diseases and disorders, it is not exactly known what causes anxiety disorders, but there seem to be several factors that play a role: brain biochemistry, genetics, stressful life circumstances, learned behavior, and an overactive fight-flight response are all significant risk factors for anxiety disorders.

Throughout my child and adolescent years I experienced many anxiety-filled moments, some happening for no reason at all it seemed. I remember camping in West Virginia with my family and becoming anxious after eating some peanut butter. I had eaten peanut butter all my life and wasn't allergic to it, but for some reason thoughts started racing through my head. I started worrying that there was a possibility I was now allergic to it, causing me to become even more anxious. As my stress level grew, I started to feel like my throat was closing up, which of course caused me to panic even more. Then my mind turned to the fact that we were up in the mountains with no cell service, miles from the nearest town. I jumped from one anxious thought to another until finally I got my mom to drive me to a doctor. Of course, once we arrived I started to feel better and my anxiety subsided. My throat was never actually closing up; I was just having a panic attack. I was only 10 or 11 at the time, so as my "episode" was happening I didn't realize it was all just anxiety. I had dealt with feeling anxious or nervous before, but I don't think I had ever experienced a panic attack. Now I would know how to manage my anxiety before it had time to turn into a full-blown panic attack, which is fortunately why I never experience them anymore :)

It wasn't until middle school that I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and also social anxiety disorder. I don't really remember being in preschool, but my parents said I was very quiet and hardly ever talked when I was at school. But once I got home it was like I was a completely different person, the "real" me who my teachers and classmates didn't get to see. My parents learned that this was known as selective mutism, but thankfully I started to become a little more talkative and comfortable with my surroundings in elementary school. Even now I am still one of the quieter people when I'm in many social situations (not including being with family or friends), but I have come a long way from my "selective mutism" days. 

In high school, one of my main worries each day at school was whether or not my face would turn red. This may sound funny or trivial to many people, but it made each day a lot more difficult and stressful than it had to be. I never had this issue before high school. I don't even think I ever noticed that I blushed after being embarrassed until a friend in middle school mentioned something about it. Then I started becoming more self-conscious about my blushing, and in high school is when it really grew into a problem for me. I started blushing for no reason at all except for the fact that I was thinking about it and hoping not to blush. Then my friends would point it out and playfully make fun of me. And what do you think this caused? Even more blushing. When I say “blushing” I don’t mean just slightly pink or red cheeks. It was excessive. My entire face would turn a very noticeable shade of red, and I would feel like my whole head was on fire. Many times I would lie my head down on the desk until it went away. When I was dealing with this blushing problem I discovered that there is actually a term for what I was going through. Erythrophobia is the fear of blushing, which is exactly what my fear was. I would bring on my blushing by worrying that I would blush, which was a very hard anxiety to overcome. Instead of blushing due to embarrassment, I would become embarrassed because of blushing. Once I got to college, though, it seemed that my whole fear and anxiety over blushing just disappeared. Of course I blush every now and then, but I am definitely free of a problem that used to impact me every day at school. I don’t know exactly why things changed so suddenly, but I feel that a significant part was the fact that I wasn’t focusing on it as much because of all the new experiences and distractions in college. I didn’t even realize it at first, but once my thinking changed, my old anxieties went away.

This is why I feel that what we allow our mind to focus on and how we think and talk to ourselves play a big role in whether or not one develops an anxiety disorder. How we react to one situation can turn into a domino effect and end up influencing our responses to other events. We are creatures of habit, so how we start to deal with our feelings and emotions when we are children can easily follow us as we get older. I have always wondered what made me so different from my siblings when it comes to experiencing anxiety. We were all created by the same two people, and yet they do not have any sort of anxiety disorder. This is where nature vs. nurture comes in. We may be genetically related, but we each had a different experience growing up. I was in preschool and daycare a lot as a young child because both of my parents worked full time. When I was about 3 or 4 we moved to a new town where I started kindergarten a year or two later. It was only half-day kindergarten, but since my parents both worked I would go to daycare for the other half of the day. I remember feeling very uncomfortable at daycare, and some of the kids were intimidating or mean at times. When my sister (who is 2.5 years younger than I) went to kindergarten my mom was only working part-time, so she got to come home after school instead of going to daycare. Once my younger brother started school my mom wasn’t working at all, so no daycare experience for him either.

I grew up in a very good home. My parents are both extremely great people, very responsible, loving, and encouraging. I feel that they were a little too overprotective at times, but this also helped keep me out of unsafe or risky situations. They encouraged my siblings and I to each play at least one sport and learn a musical instrument. I think this is partly why I love music so much. In general we were all raised about the same, but when looking at the specifics there are differences. It doesn’t have to be a huge, traumatic event that can trigger anxiety or lead to a more anxious personality. I predict that one reason I may experience more anxiety than my siblings is because I spent the first two and a half years of my life as the only child with just my parents. This could be why I was so shy when I started preschool. I had some little friends I would play with, but I didn’t have any siblings who I lived and interacted with every day. When my brother and sister were born they had another kid around right from the beginning, so it may have been easier for them to transition to preschool.

I decided to just focus on the nurture aspect and how a person responds to stressful situations because I find it all extremely interesting. There is so much to consider when thinking about how and why each person is the way he or she is. Two people can grow up in the same type of household but have two completely different personalities. Each little part of life impacts us in some way, even if we may never notice it. I feel that anxiety disorders are developed due to a combination of genetics, the brain’s biochemistry, and all the big and little moments, events, and situations a person experiences.




References
1. KidsHealth. (2014). Anxiety disorders. Retrieved from http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/feelings/anxiety_disorders.html#
2. Photo (top): http://kirstyne.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/anxiety.jpg
3. Photo (2nd from top): http://www.chicagonow.com/daily-miracle/files/2013/03/panic_attack.jpg
4. Photo (middle): http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/fear-4.gif
5. Photo (2nd from bottom): http://www.icare4autism.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/nature_vs_nurture2.jpg 
6. Photo (bottom): http://www.shelbycollinge.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/life.jpg