My Anxious Child Blog

There could be a number a causes for an anxiety disorder. It is often hard to answer it with confidence for someone who has an anxiety disorder. (Let me just note that when it comes to treatment, most of the time answering this is not crucial). Nevertheless, we like to understand how things work. In order to make sense of things we have a desire to boil something down into a clear cause and effect relationship. Yet, the fact is that several different things being present in a person’s life probably cause anxiety disorders. Here is a working list of some of the theories:

1. A perfect storm. Sometimes you just can’t put your finger on anything that seems to explain it. Imagine you have only so much capacity for stress. Like you have a container and you fill it with various liquids. None of them alone are enough but as more liquid is added eventually it will spill out. That is when you get the symptoms. One patient came to see me after having a panic attack at a stop light. He felt it came out of the blue. Well, a partial list of things going on in his life were family conflict, school stress, loneliness, traffic, lack of sleep, hunger, anger…okay you get the idea.
2. Biology. Fear is basic to human survival. It is really good that we have a capacity for fear and it causes our body to react lightening fast. However, some people are very sensitive and they have a tendency to get false alarms. They get the whole danger response when it isn’t warranted by the situation. Sometimes this is called a genetic predisposition. It just means you have a built in vulnerability to certain reactions. It is a certainty, just a tendency.
3. Experiences. Sometimes there is something really scary that happens. This is the case with traumatic disorders. It could be the case with phobias. However, more often than not there is not a clear experience. Some people can point to the first time it happened. For example, one patient with social anxiety remembered an event at school when the blushing started. Blushing became a huge fear for her.
4. Vicarious learning. TV, movies and news sources tend to draw attention to things out of the ordinary and extreme. If you watch the news you would think your child could be abducted on every corner. On any given night there is a show featuring doctors and patients with terrible illnesses. We can be persuaded about how dangerous it is “out there.” This can happen to people who become news channel regulars.
5. Faulty thinking. These are mistaken thoughts and assumptions about how dangerous something might be rather than more accurate views. For example, one reason number 4 is a problem is because of a thinking bias called the availability heuristic (heuristic is learning by experience).  That means we make predictions not on facts but on how easy (available to memory) something is to imagine. Scary stuff is easy to imagine and so we think it is very likely to happen.
6. Avoiding. Rather than testing out something and finding out it is not dangerous it is easy to avoid it. Over time this tends to build strength. Each time you consider reasons to avoid you build a strong case for why it is dangerous. You create physical feelings of fear with thought that are never tested.
7. Modeling. Sometimes we are convinced by other peoples fears. Depending on our receptivity and their influence we can use another persons example as proof of the danger.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list but maybe it will give you some ideas for what happens. If you know some other causes post a response, it would be helpful for readers.

Many people seeking counseling for anxiety expect to feel better as a result. Seems logical, doesn’t it? But anxiety is a tricky feeling to overcome. For some children listening to Turnaround, they just need a better understanding of how anxiety works and they can get free fairly quickly. For many others though, knowledge is not enough. For them, it has to get worse before it can get better.

This can be especially hard for children and parents to understand and accept. Just today I had a young man tell me that his 13 year-old sister didn’t want to come to counseling any longer because she felt things were getting worse rather than better. He stated that he tried to convince his sister that her thinking wasn’t true. ”Actually,” I said, “she’s right in saying that. It may be getting worse for her. But quiting is not the answer.” 

To overcome anxiety, you must learn to tolerate the thing that is making you feel anxious. Your brain must learn that the feared stimlus is not really a danger and that it doesn’t have to be so alarmed by it. Once it learns that, it will calm down and stop sending out false alarms to the other organs in your body. But in order to do that, you must expose yourself to the feared thing so that your brain can build up a tolerance to it. That’s the tough part.

Imagine your child wants to go swimming during the spring-time. The air is warm but the water is still quite cold. She really wants to go swimming but really hates the feeling of being cold. You child has a choice. She can either stay on the side of the pool and avoid the cold feeling, but also avoid the joy of swimming. Or, she can jump in the deep end and swim around for a few minutes until her body builds up a tolerance to the cold (she can also slowly wade in using the stairs). Once it does, she’s free to enjoy the pool. In order for it to get good, it must get bad first.

A fairly common question we receive from parents regarding Turnaround is whether their child will become more anxious as they hear other fears discussed. The answer is potentially yes. The child’s fears may get worse as they begin to address their fears as well as hear about other types of fears. But does that mean they should quit? No. They’ve just jumped in the deep end of the pool. Now they need to learn to how to deal with, and overcome the cold chill of anxiety.

A common mistake parents make is to over-protect their anxious child from experiencing further fear and distress. Avoidance of fear is the most common way to cope with anxiety; however, it only enables and builds the child’s fears. Many life lessons are learned as a child faces their fears. They learn to accept both pain and pleasure, fear and joy, stuggle and success, risk and reward. At some point, in order to develop into a healthy child, they must learn to accept the dual nature of life. Unresolved childhood fears can easily become crippling problems in adulthood.

So, as your child experiences a set back, don’t quickly try to rescue them or help them avoid the negative thing. Walk with them through the negative experience, through the fear. Offer them your strength of resolve until they build up their own courage and resolve. Keep at it until they have learned to master it and/or tolerate it to the point where it’s no longer an issue.

Hear Christopher on Charlotte Today discuss the latest trends and research regarding teenage drug use.

http://www.wcnc.com/charlotte-today/How-to-protect-teens-from-drug-use-131462648.html