From Anxious to Anxiety Disorder
Anxiety is something we are all familiar with, and it is usually nothing to be worried about. Anxiety is a normal physical response our bodies use to protect us. Anxiety keeps us safe, protects us and allows us to do tasks that would otherwise be impossible.
What is important is to understand the difference between being anxious and struggling with an anxiety disorder. And specifically, how an individual progresses from being anxious to developing an anxiety disorder.
Put yourself in the following scenario: You are crossing a street and as you get to the middle you see a vehicle racing towards you.
In this situation your body kicks into the Fear/Flight/Fight mode, it is automatic and happens in a split second. Simply put, you see the danger, and your body responds instantly and injects adrenaline into your system.
At this stage, the following happens:
Heart rate increases
Blood and oxygen flow to parts of your body that need it the most
Increasing the speed, strength, and agility you need to save yourself from the threat
You speed out of harm’s way to the other side of the road. Relief rushes through you. Your body has produced an extreme reaction to an extreme situation.
My guess is you will feel some if not all the following very real, physical symptoms:
Heart beating so hard you feel it at the back of your throat
Sweaty palms
Cotton ball mouth
Nauseous, physically might want to vomit from the fear in the pit of your stomach
Blurry vision
Headache
Within 20-30 minutes, these sensations will have subsided, and our bodies will be returning to normal (the adrenaline will have left our bodies).
The next time we cross a road we will be a little more cautious, but we should be able to do it with no problems.
Our children are at a different stage of their lives, their brains are not fully developed yet. In fact, the logical part of their brain will only be fully developed by age 23. At this stage, they are still making most of their decisions with the “emotional” part of their brains.
If we take this into account and then add the fact that from about age 8-9, your child's brain can trigger the production of adrenaline by subconscious thoughts alone.
Now imagine what is going on inside the minds and bodies of our children in the following scenario.
Imagine a scenario where our 9–10-year-old goes to school and does not have a good relationship with another child. At night when it is bedtime and they are lying in bed, their mind starts to race
What if they tease me?
What if they make me look silly in front of my friends?
What if they hurt me?
What if they are better than me?
What if they beat me in a test?
What if my friends like them better than me?
What do you think their first thoughts are when they wake up, on the way to school, all day?
These thoughts will always be lurking just under the surface ready. Remember, the emotional brain is in charge, so when we say to them “Don’t be silly my darling, nothing will happen. Just tell your teacher.” That is the logical brain speaking, the emotional brain works differently.
Our bodies are dynamic and will change and adapt to the way we live our lives, so just as physical exercises prompt specific physical gains and reset how our body responds to those exercises.
The same happens when we worry and problem-solve constantly. Your body adapts and responds.
The hormone your body responds to challenges with most effectively is adrenaline. The body then resets the levels of adrenaline it needs.
Remember this is in response to thoughts your child is having, not physical danger. And as it continues, your child gets stuck in a loop. They worry and risk asses more, the dial gets turned up repeatedly. All whilst there is no physical threat.
Think back to the symptoms you felt just after the car raced past you…….
Heart beating so hard you feel it at the back of your throat
Sweaty palms
Cotton ball mouth
Nauseous, physically might want to vomit from the fear in the pit of your stomachThe list goes on and is different for all of us.
To try and put this into perspective, imagine the first scenario with you crossing the road. Imagine a pot of milk (let's pretend the milk is our adrenaline) we put it on the stove turn the heat up and as the milk starts to simmer that is the adrenaline flowing around our body.
When the adrenaline has done its job, we are safe, we take the pot off the stove and turn the heat off. The milk returns to chilled, or we return to normal.
In the scenario of your child, the pot of milk is constantly simmering, it never stops bubbling. Your child in this scenario feels the symptoms constantly, the main difference is they do not know what caused them.
They get used to the symptoms and live with them, rather than cope with them. If that were where it stopped, they would struggle on through life and everyone around them would be unaffected. Unfortunately, it does not stop there, the adrenal glands have only reset themselves, they still function like yours and mine only their “normal” and our “normal” is different. They start where we end.
So, when they have a difficult day, a test, a new environment, or anything that would push you and me out of our comfort zone, they do not go from chilled to simmer, no, they go from simmer to the pot boiling over.
Try and put yourself into a position of a near escape……you are on edge, heart racing, nauseous and then I flood your body with the same amount of adrenaline again…………. you have nowhere to go.
Your heart cannot race any more, you can't feel more nauseous, what would you do?
You might:
Lash out?
Hide until you feel safe?
Distract yourself any way you can – we see some very drastic mechanisms used
Hurt those closest?
Avoid these feelings at all costs, school refusal, not leaving your room?
Push away friends
These children are petrified, they are not being difficult or rebelling. They are reacting on instinct, fuelled by adrenaline and fear.
As parents, we try and help, but do not really understand what they are struggling with, and we do not know how to help them. It seems that the more we try the worse it gets.
We know they are safe at school, extra murals, and friends' houses, the fact that they are safe does not matter. Their bodies are giving them every sign and symptom to tell them that something is wrong, they need to be fearful.
They do not know what, but they can feel it, so the more we say give it a go it will be ok, for them it feels like we are asking them to step into the oncoming traffic.
We are expecting them to ignore every signal their body is sending them.
We need to give them space, when they are overwhelmed and flooded with adrenaline, it is not the time to ask them to try it.
The pot will chill but you cannot rush it, nor can we force our children.
Look at this animation for some more insight into anxiety - Welcome to Anxend!
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