I thought I would start out my blog by talking about something that significantly affects the life of my family. Anxiety.
We as a family all have anxiety difficulties but we all present to be very different. I thought it is good to talk you through each different presentation that we have t home. I also want to make it clear that whatever is written on these pages is from lived experiences. Often what I speak about can present in others very differently than we describe it affects us.
The first one I thought I would talk about is myself. It’s due to how I feel things that I was able to see what was going on with my boys. Now I have anxiety all the time. It varies in levels to how severe it is.
I mask my anxiety and always have. I have always worn a mask but to varying degrees. I do this to function as I always have some sort of degree of anxiety, so for those outside looking in at me I honestly look like this well-put-together person managing live.
What is not clear to anyone is the underlying anxiety and the effects it has on me the very effects that no one seems to see. When it comes to the severe end of my anxiety it honestly makes me poorly. I have stomach cramps, muscle cramps, headaches, nausea, and diarrhea. I struggle with sleep often having nightmares and then feeling constantly fatigued.
My mind seems to have full control over me in the worst of it, reliving conversations, practicing what could be said, role-playing what could happen in social situations, and scolding myself for what my mind perceives is not the right way to go about it. You see when you have anxiety you certainly do not need a worst enemy. It tells me often how I am an imposter, not worthy, that I upset everyone etc. I could honestly sit and type all day the kinda ramblings my brain runs through.
My anxiety is not always on full throttle so there are times that I can ignore the thoughts and do more and when it’s not extreme it does not hurt, and my physical symptoms are not present.
One of the things that people often do not understand is that anxiety fluctuates across the day, it means that there are not really any good days or bad days it means there are good hours and bad hours instead. Also, it can be anything at all from a little tiny thing that seems like nothing to anyone else to something big that changes it. I seem to be affected more by the little things that seem nothing to someone else rather than the big things. W also has difficulties with anxiety the same as I do he has varying degrees but always seems to have some anxiety.
W has toileting difficulties due to his anxiety and often has use the toilet at least every 15 minutes when he’s very anxious. W tries to be as compliant as possible to reduce the number of demands to avoid feeling anxious. He is the child that is the yes child even to his own detriment.
He struggles to say no and constantly says sorry. He often feels that he will be told he is wrong for the way that he thinks and often believes that he should not ask for anything.
His anxiety makes him very careful with his speech as he worries so much that he will upset someone. One of the biggest driving forces for W’s anxiety is not wanting to upset anyone. W also has some physical symptoms; he tries to hide them though bless him as he doesn’t like to worry anyone.
W also will avoid situations and places due to his anxiety. He withdraws and hides when his anxiety is really bad. To help him to stay regulated he likes to surround himself with soft things like teddys and blankets. H anxiety appears to anyone that does not know him to be non-existent. He really likes everyone to only see is tough exterior. It takes a lot to know him enough to know when he is anxious. H was the on that was described in school as being the perfect model student quiet in class, never doing anything wrong. To the school, this was deemed as just fine.
The thing is though as his parent I knew this was not true. H was the funny prankster who could not keep still and could very easily flip over to explosive.
The thing with H though was H was doing everything he could to hide. He did not want to be different from his peers, so he mimicked them. He did everything he could to get through those school days. So, when anxiety made him feel nausea, he didn’t eat his dinner, when anxiety told him he would get things wrong he would sit quietly and draw no attention to himself so a teacher wouldn’t ask him anything.
He would hold all this in all day as his body fizzed more and more as he did till he got home where he felt safe, wouldn’t look different, wouldn’t be told off and the lid would pop off from all the fizz and he explodes into the hulk and have an almighty epic meltdown. This is what they call the Coke bottle effect and the delayed reaction to trying to hold everything in.
School never saw any of this as he couldn’t allow them to. So to them in their idea of what children are like he was fine in school.
For us at home, his anxiety would manifest as frequent urination, exhaustion where he struggles to wake up in the morning, not being able to sleep at all, stomach pain, not eating and being extremely Hyper. As you can see anxiety manifests in each individual differently.
The most important thing I want everyone to know is the last thing we as anxious people often want is the world to know. Why you might think well for one we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, two we don’t want people to feel sorry for us, and lastly we just want to feel safe and be ourselves.
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