Please is there anyone here whose dc is suffering anxiety? I really need someone to listen.

[nameuschangeus]

My ds1 is 10 and in September suddenly started having terrible anxiety attacks (hyperventilating, feeling sick, going to the loo, racing heart) which seemed to be about watching films in literacy at school.

To cut a long story short the literacy thing has been alleviated by moving classes in school to a more sympathetic teacher and stopping taking some bedwetting medication he was on.

However the anxiety seems to flare up now at more random times - going to play at a friend's house; having my parents babysit (he sees them often and has no problems with them) and going to the cinema or theatre to see a play. It is awful to witness his upset and discomfort but I try to make him see these things through as I know he will be ok once he's actually into the activity.

He is seeing a mental health worker at CAMHS. He has had 1 appointment and us only due one more with her but he says that she hasn't 'taught him anything' (he was expecting to be given strategies for dealing with it i think) and I'm not sure that she realises how bad he gets tbh.

Tonight we have been to a play which he's due to go to with school the week. He had a horrible panic attack beforehand but he is very brave and did sit through it. He doesn't feel able to go with school though when I'm not there.

Please does anyone on here have any advice as to what I can do to help him. I feel so helpless and I am so worried as to where this will lead for him. He's 10. It's terrible that he's going through this. It breaks my heart.

Hi,

Sorry that your son is going through this, panic is a truly horrible thing. I can share some advice I was given, as an adult, when I suddenly started to have panic attacks about 7 years ago. My nephew also started having panic attacks and high anxiety from around age 7. He is now 15 and much much improved.

Firstly I would recommend you see if you can meet with CAHMS to see if you can discuss their findings and what action they suggest. I am going to share some of my and my nephews things but don't want to advise anything that may go against what they may see as a way forward for your son.

My panic was often triggered by things like the theatre and restaurants- being somewhere where I couldn't easily just leave if I felt panicky made me panic more! I saw an amazing lady who had herself suffered debilitating panic attacks and decided to study and qualify as a panic therapist. Firstly she gave me a really useful visualisation: if you imagine all people have an internal guard dog who is there to protect us, they bark when there is danger to alert us to react (giving us tge physical symptoms of flight/fight response- sweaty palms, heightened awareness, adrenalin etc). For someone who panics their dog has become overly sensitive and has begun to bark at things that are not in reality a danger, thus sending us into fight/flight (panic) mode at 'normal' things. The dog needs to be retrained as such. This helped me put my panic into a context. She gave me 2 main strategies to help when I panicked:
First was breathe out longer than you breathe in, aim for a count of 7 for breathing in and 11 out, if that's not manageable 5 in 7 out or 3 in 5 out. This releases natural serotonin and helps calming. Secondly engaging the non- emotional part of the brain by doing something like going through the alphabet & naming animals/food etc for each letter- shifts focus from the panic and engages other parts of the brain. Both these really helped me. However she said that strategies are coping mechanisms and not a cure (distracting the dog from barking rather than retraining it not to bark). The way to try to stop the panic in the first place is to not avoid the things that make you panic, to go through them and see that although it feels awful nothing bad has happened, to give your panic attitude "come on panic, bring it on, what's the worst you can do... Etc" because the reality is although it feels awful it is just panic and nothing will happen. I can't say I've entirely overcome my panic but flare ups are few and over quickly.

My nephews anxiety/panic was mostly related to separation from one or both parents, at it's worst I could be out with him and my sister (his mum), she would pop into a shop and ask for us to wait outside and he would panic. Her approach was not to change their lives in response to his anxiety, to talk him through his worst imaginings of what was going to happen calmly and reasonably, to give him secure and fixed things to rely on ( eg I will be standing exactly here at the end of the school day- and making sure she was there early so that she always was). Giving him short achievable goals eg I am going to go out here but will be back in x minutes etc so he built confidence in his ability to cope. He has also had quite a lot of support through counsellors, psychiatrist etc.

Sorry this has been the longest post ever, I hope some of it might be useful to you/your son and that others come with lots of useful advice for you.

Oh thank you do much for replying. I really appreciate it. I'm off now to get everyone ready for school so I'll respond properly later but I just wanted to say thank you quickly!