Advice needed 13 year old anxiety

[Chrispackhamspoodle]

Hi.Calling her GP later but wanted advice about best route for support or if anyone else's DD is similar.She has always had huge tantrums from when she was little which carried on until she was about 11 and still happen very occasionally now.As she has gotten older they have only happened around transitional times -starting secondary or returning back to school after holidays for instance.I can see sensory seeking when she is having an emotional meltdown-rubbing her body around her bed,banging her feet up and down,clenching her body.She saw a school nurse when she was 7 as it was happening all the time but as she is fine in school after 6 weeks she was discharged She had private counselling again in year 7.At 13 she is obsessed with books and once out of school talks about characters in them all the time -it's YA fantasy books.She says she has whole other worlds in her heads that she escapes to and can think about them for hours at a time.Recently she has been low in mood and says she has been wanting to hurt herself.She rubs her arms hard.Hasn't broken skin.I feel this is replacing the meltdowns as a coping strategy.Says she is not in any way suicidal.She also said last night that she can't talk to people-if she needs to ask a teacher something she can't,if she needs to ask to use the loo she can't ask,she panicks about having to say yes in registration.She can't ask for a drink in a shop and says she feels panicky in town.On the other hand she has a great group of friends and appears extremely confident with them .Their parents would see her as the loud confident funny one.Good eye contact.Knows she can't talk at her friends about books as it would be seen as odd.Smart but lacks confidence in her abilities.I'm so worried about her but don't know if I'm looking for a CAMHS referral (very long waiting list) for anxiety ,going privately but who to- phsycologist,counselllor?,or if it is worth considering ASD assessment. Her school would ssy she is the last person they would think of as having autism...maybe she just has traits and what good would a diagnosis do her?Or are her traits actually anxiety? Anyone with a child experiencing similar I would appreciate advice.I have taught her deep breathing and some basic CBT anxiety stuff.As I said I will talk to her GP but trying to get my head round what support I am asking for.

Going to work so won't see any replies for a while.

Hi there, sorry can’t help really but just wanted to say that some of your post resonated with me. Dd has recently turned 13 and social anxiety and become huge. Was always so confident end of primary - talking infront of people, singing infront of others even. Now she is so painfully self conscious and similarly anxious about buying things in shops, ordering stuff
Feels like everyone is looking at her.
She unfortunately does not have a very supportive group of friends and that has been one of the triggers - classic rejigging of primary school friendships, and the loss of her best friend basically. She has never had a big group of friends but I never worried too much as she always had one or two loyal friends. Now she’s lost her one best friend and is sort of on the edge of a group.
All teachers say how quiet she is in class.
Things like upcoming drama performances at school or even just some homework pieces cause ‘melt downs’
She gets very intensely interested in things and wants to talk about it all the time - currently art and animal crossing.
But even though so quiet and self conscious, with friends as you said, she is quite loud and talkative. But a ‘bit much’ I think? Then afterwards overthinks everything and gets anxious about what she said or did.

Have been trying so hard to get her to socialise this school holidays but she is very very reluctant to.

We have been referred to Camhs actually but I think this was mainly because she has been very low in mood, has been expressing some suicidal thoughts at times, abs also started a scratching herself. We are also waiting to see a psychologist privately via health insurance.
I have wondered about Aspergers but not mentioned this to anyone.
It’s so very sad and hard.
I pushed her today to meet up with someone in town, hoping it was the right thing to do to encourage her but she has come back in tears saying how awful and embarrassing it was and how she is never meeting anyone again ☹️ and how the other girl can’t possibly like her (She had a mishap with her card when trying to pay for something)

Thanks for the reply.Your DD sounds quite similar to mine.It is so hard to know what is teenage self consciousness and what is something more troubling.With my DD it feels like she is fine...until she isn't .So, like your daughter,a small thing like the card in town or if something happened with her friendship group would result in her refusing school or having a meltdown.
I ended up calling CAMHS and making a referral. Also spoke to school SENCO who mentioned ADD. They don't know her though and when I read up on it she shows traits but nothing which really stands out.
Sorry for your daughter and her experience in town...it makes everything so hard and sad when they are unhappy and friendships are hard.

It sounds like one of her difficulties is selective mutism, which is an anxiety disorder.

Sometimes it's supported by speech therapy, sometimes by psychology (and IME with my DDs, often by no-one as SALT and psychology each keep claiming they're "not an expert" and passing it back to the other!). I used to have it too and it is perfectly possible to recover from it, but it takes time and effort. There are organisations that can help with it if you google it, and CAMHS should also be able to support her with it.

I was going to suggest ADHD screening too, because in my and DCs' cases, I've always thought it was the ADHD/overthinking that led to the selective mutism, but my DC have ASD too so I guess it could be either as their ASD definitely exacerbates their social anxiety and overwhelm too.

If the symptoms of ASD don't fit, it might be that she's masking them in certain environments, or of course it might be that she has anxiety and selective mutism without ASD/ADHD.

It’s all very difficult and draining.
My daughter seems to feel that there is no point making friends because she will overthink everything afterwards and ‘mess things up’, plus she says what if they let her down in future (very affected by what happened with friendship group before xmas when they sort of pushed her out) so she’d rather just not try. I think also she’s in danger of sabotaging potential new friendships by declining invitations etc because she’s convinced they can’t really like her.

The friend yesterday is a daughter of a friend who goes to school in a different town so doesn’t have many local friends, seems very nice and non judgey, and they have art in common. Was sweet of her to ask dd if she wanted to meet in town so I thought it was a good thing to encourage/force dd to do. In the hope the friendship might develop and that by practicing things like ordering a hot chocolate and going round shops with a friend it might get less scary. But I think maybe it was too much. Says that she knew ‘everything would go wrong and she was right’ and she self harmed yesterday evening
Really don’t know what I should have done for the best.
Should I just have let her not go and not see anyone apart from family for the whole holidays?

Your DD sounds very similar to mine. The penny has recently dropped for me that she's probably autistic, the main "symptom" being anxiety. Autism presents in so many different ways,.especially in girls, who become experts at masking. I had dismissed ASC for years as she didn't tick many of the boxes. I'll try to post the most recent screen test for ASC in girls and it all fell into place.

Also schools, even SENCOs, are not experts in ASC so please don't pay any attention to what her teachers may or may not think. I can't post the link to the screening test but I would seriously consider a private assessment for ASC if you can afford it.