To think anxiety is caused by feeling anxious

[tigwig76]

My dd aged 15 has suffered for years. Had 3 camhs referrals and now just puts up with it as nothing really works. It's a sickness feeling that doesnt go away.
A few weeks ago my ds aged 9 had a panic attack and says he feels sick frequently. Seems to be very similar to dd. However dd is a worrier and had a lot more on her plate to deal with. Ds has a completely different personality. He's always happy and insists he's not anxious about anything. No idea why hes feeling like this. Dd says you dont have to be anxious to get anxiety but surely the clue is in the name?

For me personally, anxiety symptoms can appear from nowhere, even when I feel I have nothing to be anxious about. It can really floor me, and the nausea can be awful.

Yes there is Generalised Anxiety Disorder.

I think anxiety is caused by fear, either of the unknown or dread of something known, so much so that we over hype it.

Before we get to a panic attack, we need to learn the very early signs of them, if we can interrupt the early stage,mathematician we can stop one.

A fear of sickness, is a real thing and can take over from the original anxiety
So it becomes a fear of actually being sick.

Surely what your dd means is that you don't have to be anxious about something specific in order to have anxiety? In which case she's quite right. Just as you don't have to be depressed about a specific thing in order to have depression. It's a mental health condition, not a normal, natural reaction to normal stresses in life - everyone has that!

Sorry not sure why that word got in there 😳

Do you know I've never looked at it like that before. I'm just gutted both my kids suffer from it. He's got a gp appointment next week but not really sure what they can do. I dont want him to be in the camhs system too.

I had bad anxiety for a while. Mine was initially kicked off by a specific thing, but it was completely disproportionate to the thing that caused it, and, once I had it, it continued for long after the trigger was no longer there, and it happened at random times when I had nothing to be anxious about.

What helped me was a) vigorous exercise and b) accepting the feelings of anxiety and trying to see them as basically just a temporary malfunctioning of my brain's 'security system', rather than allowing myself to panic about the fact that I was feeling panicky iyswim!

My DM would say to me "But what have you got to be anxious about?" and to an anxiety sufferer this is the worst thing you can say alongside "Just pull yourself together".
Anxiety isn't always caused by a specific event and people who look like they 'have it all' still suffer.
In my case it was an accumulation of events.it can also happen years after a stressful event when everything seems to be going well or indeed come from 'nowhere' that can be pinpointed.
Your brain and body get to the stage where they say 'enough'.
My bodily anxiety symptoms have kept me in the anxiety loop. I fear my heart racing and feeling faint so I overthink and worry and try to prevent this happening. This tires my brain even more and all the over thinking triggers the very things I fear.

I used to have it as did DD. It seemed to come out of nowhere for me in my early 20s and lasted for about 15 years. I think in the end it became a vicious cicrle and was excerbated by stress, lack of sleep, smoking and drinking plus stomach problems I had. I had counselling for years and I'm not sure how much it helped the anxiety (I never took medication though) but I think it helped in other ways so I still do it. About 3 years ago it just stopped and has never come back. No idea why. DD had it through puberty but it's mainly gone now. She saw CAMHS once but they weren't much help and we just let it pass by and now she is fine apart from the odd thing but that's probably just normal worrying. It's not necessarily a lifelong problem it can just be a fleeting thing (or longer like it was for me). I think for the preteen and teen years it is pretty common due to the changes in the brain.

My bodily anxiety symptoms have kept me in the anxiety loop. I fear my heart racing and feeling faint so I overthink and worry and try to prevent this happening. This tires my brain even more and all the over thinking triggers the very things I fear.

Same here. I'm fine, and I have never gone back into a full-blown anxiety attack since I recovered, but the fear is always there in the back of my mind as soon as I feel my heart racing a bit (e.g. after exercise) or feel a bit overheated or stressed about something.

I suffer with anxiety and panic attacks and whether or not I feel anxious is totally unrelated. I can suffer from anxiety when I am anxious or when I am not anxious at all and have nothing on my mind

Some interesting replies. It's certainly given me more of an insight into anxiety. Any tips for how to deal with it in a 9yr old?

That's like saying asthma is caused by breathing difficulties.

Try to explain to him that feeling anxious is ok. The more he feels that it's not normal and that there's something wrong with him, the more anxious he will feel. The more he accepts that it's just something that's a normal human function that's just got a bit out of kilter in him at the moment, the less hold it will have over him. That's how it was for me anyway.

My ds was a bit anxious for a while. I told him that anxiety is like a human security system dating back to when human life was very dangerous. It kicks in to check you are safe from danger (from sabre-tooth tigers etc). Some people's security systems get a bit over-active and start kicking in a bit too often over nothing much. When it kicks in, just say to your security system "Yeah - thanks for the heads-up dude, but there are no sabre-toothed tigers around right now!".

Sounds a bit crazy, I know, but it helped us.