Anxiety/fear after reading books like "kingdom by sea" and "the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

[mom17]

DS10 read couple of world war2 books in recent couple of months (War of the Worlds, The kingdom by the sea - robert westall) and "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy " and its been 25 days he stopped reading ( we stopped giving these books at first instance of anxiety/fear), but he is still worried about fighter plane sound passing by , any kind of noise, brightness difference in Sun etc. We have been counseling him ( parental counseling telling we also had these fears when we were kids etc.) but looks like he has taken all this really to heart. His fears are below ( he starts crying and thinks that these will really happen )

1. Earth will be destroyed ( concept in "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" where they destroy earth to build some space Over-bridge or something like that).
2. What if "if Earth stops rotating".
3. What if "If Sun dies"
4. What if another courtly declares war and throws Atom bombs
5. What if terrorist attacks his school.
6. What if "If he gets lost and bad people catch him"
7. what if "if he forgets some musical notes in his Piano Exam"
8. What if he gets some disease like "cancer"
9. Last Piano class he forgot one note and he got anxiety attacks thinking he has got "meningitis" ( he studied about diseases recently in details in his science curriculum).

etc..

I thought it will get over but looks like there are always some new new kind of worried/fear keep bothering him once we talk about one and give our reasoning but at times he doesn't get convince and keep getting same fear ( he will get some disease) and says "he is still not convinced with our reasoning". These things mostly happen in evening/night time and because of that his sleep is getting disturbed as he sleeps around 11-11:30pm as we keep talking to him and counseling him( can't make him sleep forcefully once he starts crying ). he at times gets cold/hot flashes, a li'l high pulse , some nerve pain, stomach pain etc. because of all this stress. Has any child gone through this ? pls. advice what to do ? is it because of some deficiency or signal of some other stress ?I am really worried as it is making his normal day-to-day life so miserable. We miss school at times as he would have slept very-very late in night ( 2-3 emergency visits because of all this).

I think that sounds like a general anxiety rather than because of the books.

OK the books are fiction - an author thought 'what if' but instead of thinking about all the what ifs they went with an interesting thing, in fact they probably thought of their characters before they thought up the science bit.

1. • the Hitch Hiker's guide - well it's a bout bureaucrats and just a way for the author to get Arthur Dent of the planet, he would not go otherwise. Ford Prefect could have easily knocked him unconscious but it wouldn't be in tune with his character
2. • it can't, all planets have an orbit and a rotation, it would be like throwing a ball in the air and it stopping mid air.

3. well yes the sun will die eventually, but not in his lifetime or the lifetime of anyone he knows and in the lifetime of his children and grandchildren should he have any. Think of a bonfire - it will eventually die out but it doesn't go from being a massive pile of wood/debris to going out in nothing.

My brother went through a phase of thinking monsters wee going to get him, my mum sat down with him and they drew his own monster that would protect him.

Would something like that work, so he has an imaginary knight / Jedi / friend who monitors his dreams and will come and help him if the dreams are bad?

but he is almost 10.5 years very logical boy who might not accept/trust this trick. Though to adults, all his "what if" might be illogical but he proves to me with various example that it can happen.

I don't really have any advice but I went through this myself when I was your son's age. I had terrible anxiety about the 'what ifs' when I found out about the meteor that drove the dinosaurs to extinction, cancer and war. I distinctly remember spending hours wondering how human beings could do things like that to each other. I never really talked to my parents about it so at least he isn't bottling it up like I did. With respect to the anxiety about us being wiped out on our planet, could you let him watch some more educational programs? I'd really recommend Carl Sagan's Cosmos series. It is a bit dated but he really puts into perspective how unlikely it is that there are other civilisations out in space and he really talks about the wonders of the universe.

Your ds's anxiteies sound very similar to my DC. Especially the Illnesses. We had to get him CBT. It's not a miracle cure but helpedwhen he was at his worst. This more than just little boy silliness, this is seriously impacting hid day to day life, especially when stopped eating because he thought he will be ill.

When it gets to this stage, reasoning doesn't work, logic etc because it's become a mental health issue. They cannot rationalise their thoughts.
I would seriously look into CBT to calm things down.

thanks everybody. MnRumours, do u mean "complete blood count" ? We did it 2-3 months back and it was fine.

Agree that it sounds like general anxiety. Runs in our family, so I know it well. Basically because you are experiencing the symptoms of anxiety, your brain looks around for an interpretation, so seizes on something in your daily life or something you've read or something somebody has told you and works that up into a big thing. If you manage to get that sorted, it will go for the next thing.

What has worked really well for us is CBT: which is basically admitting that you have intrusive thoughts and using techniques for controlling them rather than dealing with the thing itself iyswim.

Dd, who is the worst affected, has now got to the stage where she can recognise that I am having one of those attacks and start using the techniques. With her, you can also tell that it's going on because she starts speaking very fast and in a slightly garbled fashion.

mom I think you've got me confused with someone else, I didn't say anything about blood tests.

Ooops! I see what you meant now. CBT stands for 'Cognitive Behavioural Therapy'.

Dc1 went through the same, we talked alot and he managed to understand, when it's anxiety and not the normal sorts of worries. Once you get that far it is easier to then start trying to deal with it.

We got also got this.

www.amazon.co.uk/What-When-Worry-Much-What/dp/1591473144

Can somebody please tell me some good book on CBT which parents can read and help the child.

I haven't read "the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" but I most of the times, think most of his fear are because of it. I took away book on first instance of fear/anxiety. I am not sure which part he was on ( all parts in one book) where they mentioned earth being destroyed, I am guessing I should let him read full book as as of now he just knows about bad part, may be reading it fully will give him final conclusion which I am hoping will be good. Anybody who has read books, pls. share your views, should I make him read all series so that his fear is gone ?

I've ready the whole Hitchhikers series as a child and an adult, and my teenage son has read it too. Its extremely funny and silly, perhaps if your son read a bit more of the series he would get this? I think it sounds like a bit more than just what he is reading, and would seek my doctor's advise if I were you.

Hitchhiker is a fantastic book on several levels. I think I was probably about your son's age when I first read it. A lot of it is gloriously absurd, but I don't know what would increase his anxiety.

My best suggestion would be that you read it yourself, or at least skim it, and decide whether you think it would help him to read the rest?

I'm doing Headspace for generalised anxiety (very minor, I just go into heart thumping what if mode sometimes at night & can't sleep).

Anyway, I love it, so I googled for you and it looks as though they do it for children too. Fab way to get some distance between your anxious thoughts and the part of you that notices those anxious thoughts.

www.headspace.com/kids/subscribe

Thanks FleshEmoji, EmpressOfTheSpartacusOceans n everybody who have helped me. by their valuable suggestion.

I don't think there is much point in trying to convince him none of those things are going to happen. They are not rational fears, so logic and reason won't help. You need to get to the bottom of what is causing his underlying anxiety.

I don't know if english is your second language or something, but the way you write seems quite panicky and anxious too - have you ever had any problems with anxiety? What did your son have blood tests for 2/3 months ago?

He has been complaining of stomach ache since May-June and we met few Doctors for that and blood test was done during those time. Dr. asked us to stop milk-milk products except yogurt and less pulses also which is helping a lot but not like he doesn't have any pain at all. Everything came normal in stomach scan and Vit-B12 test, though Dr. advised to give Vit-D supplement. This is the first time he is having anxiety, before to that he never had any worry/fear even though he read couple of other series like 'series of unfortunate events' ( concerning orphans and nasty uncle), 39 clues etc which didn't disturb him at all.
Dr. has now advised us to meet child psychologist yesterday and DS asked me who is "psychologist" and when I told him he said, when I myself don't know How would they findout ? There seems to be multiple things beneath this like - reading these books, reading about all diseases recently, one of his close friend's mother expired 2 years back and looks like now he understand more, another friend of his told a year back that his friend got cancer after eating 2 red ants ( u know how children talks and believe each other), his current class teacher is very mean ( a crack actually who just yells), he was alone for sometimes after reaching home before I reach home( max 1 hour) recently for past 2 months so looks like all of these suddenly played this...

Reading down your list of DS anxieties gave me flashbacks to being exactly that age.
From about the age of 10/11 I became an incredibly anxious child. My big one was a meteor destroying the earth. I would lie awake for hours in bed panicking about it.
When my family were all celebrating the millenium, I was standing there worrying that a plane would fall out of the sky/atomic bombs would start going off because of all the Y2K hype.

I can't really offer any medical advice because my parents just decided I was a worrier and let me get on with it, whilst trying their hardest to convince me that I was being ridiculous (which deep down I always knew).

I'm still a very anxious adult, and stupidly still worry about planes falling out of the sky and atomic bombs, but now when I worry I read up on it.

Does your DS know/say that a lot of his worries are 'silly' things? I think for me that was the key, realising that worrying about the sound of an old plane flying over didn't mean it was going to drop a bomb (like ww2!). Once I told myself that it went some way to preventing serious anxiety attacks. I don't think it's anything that you can force, but definitely encourage him to read up on what worries him. If he feels more informed about these things they might not seem so frightening.

Sorry. That posts turned out longer than I meant it to!

In Hitchhiker, the world is demolished because it's in the way of a planned hyperspace bypass. It's carried out by obsessively bureaucratic, very ugly green aliens who torture people by reading them terrible poetry.

His biggest fear( 2nd is something happening to Earth, war etc) is "something will happen to me(him)" and he keeps on complaining this pain/that pain ( which generally lasts for 2-3 mins). I guess he has read a lot about diseases and every small pain in body ( which I guess most of us ignore as I have now noticed that I also keep on having these small-2 pains for couple of mins which might be because of wrong posture, cold etc.) but he things he will get some disease. When I explain that nothing happens to kids, he doesn't agree and argue with some example. Looks like I need to meet child physiologist soon. Any book which parents can read and bring down all these fears.