DD will be 13 in the New Year. She is naturally quite a wary child but she hides it well. Socially, she has started going to the local town to the cinema with friends or shopping - I stay nearby and she knows she can contact me if need be.
She has no desire to be on her own in the house - fine by me.
At bedtime, she is incredibly anxious. She's hugely security conscious and asks me several times if doors are locked etc. She often has bad thoughts and the occasional nightmare- always about a faceless woman trying to harm her. She's only ever had 2 night terrors about this woman and it'll stay with me forever (she was inconsolable with fear and sobbed "I don't want to live" - she said this just the once so I'm putting that down to terror and disorientation and nothing else. Her wakeful imagination frightens her and I sometimes sleep with her to make her feel secure. We watch hardly any movies or tv programmes (no nothing unsuitable) and she has very little access to the internet apart from age-appropriate stuff.
Since a toddler, she will wrap herself tightly up in her duvet before settling down to bed. My other DD sleeps totally relaxed, legs akimbo, duvet flung everywhere, limbs everywhere - totally comfortable, whereas fearful DD is tight and rigid in her sleep. She is at her most relaxed when we go camping because we all sleep in one open pod, so she's next to me or her Dad.
Nothing has happened at home to make her feel threatened - lovely neighbours, no break ins or confrontations anywhere. I don't know where her fears come from apart from her own imagination.
She's acutely aware of this sensitivity but I reassure her constantly and tell her that it's absolutely normal to feel like this. I've tried to tell her that she is a sensitive creature and while it can feel like a burden at times, it also means that she isn't hurtful or thoughtless of others. She's a typical girl in most other respects - impatient and snappy, overly critical at times, exceptionally sensible at other times.
The night fear worries me a little. Should I be doing more to help her?