Dd keeps saying she feels like she has done something wrong

[Whatabeautifulsunset]

Starting to feel worried.
My Dd is 6 in summer and has been saying multiple times a day for a week or so that she feels like she has done something wrong. She seems so nervous and worried and keeps telling me and Dh every little thing she’s done. I’m constantly reassuring her and saying she hasn’t done anything wrong and she’s not naughty and every child does silly things sometimes and she’s just a child and learning. She gets very upset if she’s told off at school or by us, it’s never harsh and she seems to be ultra sensitive and nervous. Feeling like a crap parent and that we must be coming down too hard on her, really don’t feel I do and her teacher at school said she reacts v badly to any perceived telling off/criticism. She’s also been pointing out people and saying they look horrible because they have spots and she’s scared or they’re fat. She has never once spoken or acted like this before. She will keep coming and telling me things she said to her friend months ago and saying she feels as though she’s done something wrong.
Please can anyone tell me what might be wrong and what we can do to help her? It’s all v out of character 😔

I’m a psychotherapist. It could be a number of things, but I’d look into OCD (it sounds like the obsession might be intrusive thoughts of having done something wrong and the compulsions might include telling you about it?) or maybe social anxiety (she’s going back over things she’s said, worrying about how she comes across). Either way, I’d get her into therapy before all of this gets entrenched.

This resonates with me. I have had that feeling of having done something wrong a lot in my life (including this week, at the ripe old age of 41). For me, its a manifestation of my anxiety, and not related to anything beyond that like OCD. As a child, it was directly linked with abuse. Not saying that this is the case with your child, and I hope it isn't, but that was the first place my mind went reading your OP.

@orion678 So sorry that happened to you, what kind of abuse do you mean

Because it’s all very recent, do I wait a bit and see if it passes with the illness or do I get her to see someone straightaway?

Get her seen straight away as many health professionals on this thread have advised you to do. Don't wait any longer as the sooner she is seen the better. Seeing someone will not only help her but also help you to understand what's happening and you'll get support on the best way to help her

I hesitate to say, because I don't at all want to imply that this is the case with your child, but I experienced sexual abuse as a child. That said, I experience feelings of guilt as an adult that are not related to my childhood experiences, which I have worked through in therapy, and just seem to be rooted in generalised anxiety. A concrete example: I struggled to sleep last night because I felt bad about a situation at work. One of my superiors has actively blocked a development opportunity for me without telling me, and I had rightly confronted my manager about it. I was totally in the right and did not behave badly, but feeling like I'd misbehaved kept me up last night

This could be an anxiety reaction. the charity Mind have some useful stuff on childhood anxiety. Your GP and school Senco should be able to refer you to some mental health services too.

Your child might not be Neuro diverse. We are dealing with a Fear of Failure child...we get tantrums, self doubt, procrastination, avoidance...the whole shebang.

I think ND.

My Dd presented with anxiety at an early age and ND was missed.

I increasingly keep reading and hearing that anxiety is often the first presenting symptom of ND in girls and gets ignored or misdiagnosed. Severe anxiety in childhood isn’t a normal thing.

Just got her to sleep, she was saying she could see her favourite cartoon characters but with horrible black eyes etc but she wasn’t asleep. I just held her tightly, feeling really scared about this

Dh says she’ll be ok and she’s just overthinking etc (she does go through phases of this, finds it hard to switch off etc, very hyper) I’m more of a worrier though, hate the thought of her being scared like this, if it was a nightmare a bit different but this was whilst awake

That also sounds ND. My Dd was very very similar.

My Dd too.

Literally turned her round. It’s just amazing.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow Is that a natural supplement, can young children take it?

I’ve just messaged the psychologist lady, hoping for appointment next week/asap

Does anyone know something I could give her to help calm her a little in the meantime, I just want to help her and stop her mind racing

No, it’s Ritalin used for ADHD.

My Dd was initially diagnosed ASd. Anxious, overwhelmed and avoidant with social anxiety. Then she was diagnosed ADHD. I wasn’t convinced she was ADHD although there were a few soft signs.

She triated up to her dose over about 4 weeks and was like a different girl. Bright, happy, confident, friendly and motivated. It turned her to be like her younger self rather than an angst ridden adolescence. Shes 18 now and it’s totally transformed her.

Her ASD symptoms have totally gone. We now think she’s just ADHD.

Odd that this is a sudden thing. Has something happened that is making her insecure?

My DD went through a phase when her sibling went into hospital, she seemed to act her fear & anxiety out, she was constantly worried about having given something away & now wanting it back, it was really strange to see a very stable girl becoming so anxious. She was about 9 at the time. We said to her that she was worrying about her sibling & this worry was sort of leaking out.

We offered her either to meet with someone to talk her worries through or maybe spend more time with us on a Saturday. She opted for spending more time with us. We used to take her out for a couple of hours, it worked very well. She is now a very stable 24 year old.

My DS responds really well to the sleep casts on the Headspace app, but you could try any guided meditation on YouTube. Or even a loving kindness one. I just leave them running on my phone in his bedroom.

This could be a general anxiety thing but with OCD I had this a lot as well. I used to call them dreams because I didn't know how to describe it but it was intrusive thoughts. It was as vivid as a dream in my mind - unlike just passing fleeting thoughts I could see the images very clearly. Yet it wasn't a hallucination. I knew it wasn't real. I just couldn't stop thinking it.

I was writing out a post literally begging you to take her to someone but I see you've gone ahead with making the appointment now. I'm very glad OP. Thank you for the updates.

Could it be that she cannot explain some of her tummy problems and the only thing that is similar is the feeling of being naughty/caught? For example, when we have the sudden need to have a bowel movement or cramps, it might feel different to her, like chills and bowel contractions, which are also common when one gets a scare. In her little world, the feeling closer to that might be when she has been naughty, so she's associating the cramps, chills and uncomfortable tummy with the feeling of being naughty. If so, that must be driving her nuts because she probably knows she's not being naughty but cannot explain what the symptoms are. I would try to validate the symptoms and see if they are physical and she's just associating them with her limited experience to make sense of them. The tummy is one of the first organs that react under stressful and fearful situations (hence the saying of "sh1##ng yourself"), so she might be doing the opposite, feeling the bowel symptoms and explaining it as a consequence of a worry. If she can articulate the symptoms or understand that those symptoms can have other causes, maybe she can separate the two (if that's what it is). One of my DC is scared of plasters because of associating the plaster with a bad hurt, even though the cut/injury comes first! My other DC mixes excitement and anxiety, and sometimes needs help to understand which one it is at that particular time. It's not always easy to identify feelings with limited experience, little ability to compare, and perhaps not being able to fully explain what you are feeling, with words. Could she try to explain how "being naughty" feels? How does she know what that is, how does it feel for her? Maybe you can see other symptoms appear there.

OP, all sympathy to you, its so stressful. I noted in one of your earlier posts that you were worried you contributed to your daughter's worries by scolding her.

My eldest was very anxious as a 6 year old and I constantly blamed myself and my parenting. Turns out he is on the spectrum. All of my fretting and trying to change how I parented was a complete waste of energy.

You sound like a wonderful mother. Your daughter has challenges which are entirely separate to you, and you will help her with them.

A piece of advice I once saw on here, which I have found helpful:
parent the child you have, not the one you thought you were going to have.

Trust yourself

@Whatabeautifulsunset
Sorry you are going through this. It’s so hard when your child isn’t happy.

You’ve had some good advice and I’d second getting a good child therapist. My dd had therapy for a different reason but it certainly didn’t add to her stress, it was only a positive thing and helped so much.

It sounds like a chicken and egg situation with the constipation. Does the anxiety cause the constipation or vice versa. You’ll work it out in time.

A couple of thoughts on your question about sleep; magnesium spray on the soles and tops of her feet at bedtime to relax her and help with sleep (good for constipation too). Watch some ASMR videos with her at bedtime. There are good ones for kids on YouTube and they helped my anxious dd in times of high anxiety. A bit of lavender oil on her pillow. Bach rescue remedy pastilles.

Last thought, from experience children feed off our nervous systems. If you’re stressed out and so scared about the situation she will feel worse. I know it’s easier said than done but she needs you to have a calm nervous system in order to regulate her own. Try to be the calm for her x.

I‘m reading so much and so many things sound like pans but she never had a sore throat etc??? Around 5 weeks ago, she started to say she felt sick after eating at school and had a tummy ache. She was hot too a lot of the time, the school nurse checked for a temperature each time, as did I, but it was never especially high. She wasn’t eating as much as said she wasn’t hungry and still had tummy aches and lots of gas etc as she has done before and two years when impacted. She started to say she didn’t want to go to school as she was scared of feeling sick and kept having a tummy ache and feeling sick (she had this at home too so was genuine) she was also struggling to poo etc, so I started treatment to help her poo, assuming was just the constipation/being impacted. I’d pick her up at lunchtime and go home and she was on and off okay. Around the same time, a boy she’s a bit worried about (has hit her in the past and it was dealt with after I went to school) hit her again at school, so that coupled with not feeling well had her hysterical not to go to school. I’ve ended up keeping her at home. Some days she’s ok, others she feels very sick, tummy aches etc. Her moods have been very erratic, some aggression a couple of weeks ago, very insecure/clingy-wants both me and Dh, has periods of crying when one has to nip out to shop etc. Now with this strange ocd
I need to take her back to the Drs on Monday, so far we’ve been to her and just treating the constipation. Can it be pans without having had strep infection etc?
Other things have been, saying she needs a wee all the time, anxiously running for a wee, sometimes weeing, sometimes not (tested for urine infection etc-all clear)
Also, sounds strange, but she’s become clumsier, dropping a lot of things, failing/tripping over etc, trying to think of everything
Does anyone recognise any of these things? Convinced it’s related to something physical, all so strange, so worried

There’s definitely physical causes, tomorrow she has a party of a friend from school, I’m
trying to gently encourage it as I think it would be good for her to see her friends (previously v v sociable) she seems to half want to go but keeps panicking and saying what if she feels sick, I’ve told her that’s ok, we can just come home. She’s the same in the car and gets nausea (previously didn’t)

Re: how to help in the meantime, I have no advice on anything you could give her. I can't imagine anything that would be able to calm it would be ok to give to a child so young without medical supervision. As mentioned above, reassurance doesn't really work for OCD (if it is that - obviously it may not be) because it continues the compulsion cycle. It might seem to help for a while but often you end up needing it more and more. At the same time I would not take away emotional support from your young and distressed child. Whatever way you deal with it should be under the guidance of a professional so I'm caveating the next bit that I would only do this if she is receptive and seems to enjoy it.

I wonder if you could try some basic version of mindfulness? You could speak about the 'bad thoughts' or 'worries' she gets and how our brain tries to keep us safe by thinking of things that could go wrong but sometimes our brain does it too much and it can make us feel really frightened or sad.

When she is having the thoughts, you could encourage her to say out loud that she's starting to have the bad thoughts again. Not ruminating on the content of the thoughts, but noticing the thoughts have arrived.

She can imagine the thought is a cloud passing overhead or a train going past as she stands at the station (obviously I don't know how much she can engage with this at her age but I think she could get the basic idea with some modelling). Anything externally passing by while she can stay still and observe it passively is fine.

You can be with her as she notices the thought is there. "I'm having the thoughts that I've been bad" and you could look at these thoughts that her brain has come up with not with judgement but curiosity. You're not trying to make them go away - just noticing they're there and watching them pass by.

So instead of "you've not been bad at all! You've not done anything wrong" it can be "oh you're thinking maybe you've been bad? That's interesting that your brain is giving you those thoughts. Let's imagine it's the train going past. My train is red. You can imagine your I've been bad thought is sitting on the train. Or maybe it's the driver. Maybe it's wearing a driver's hat.

I wonder if maybe your brain is trying to protect you from that horrible feeling you get (guilt, if she can identify that) when you've done something wrong and you feel really sorry for it? It's not a nice feeling is it? You think so too? Maybe that's what your brain is trying to protect you from. Thank you brain for trying to protect me but I don't need this thought. Hey let's sit for a minute and watch the trains go past and we can tell each other what thoughts we see go past."

it's fine if her thought comes back again. You can watch it again. "Huh he really doesn't want to give up hey?. There he is. I see him driving his train."

I'm not a professional by the way. I just found mindfulness one of the few things that can sometimes temporarily help and stop an intrusive thought really taking hold if I can do it quickly enough before I've gone too deep in. She should be telling you as soon as she notices it and ideally try to be really casual and relaxed about it. If it makes her worse or more distressed then obviously stop and hopefully it won't be long until you have a professional advising.

@RinsedIfOwned Thank you so much 🙏