Dealing with Childhood Anxiety

As a child I was not as in control of my anxiety as I am now. I can recall the first time I felt it.

I was young, probably about three or four and I was strolling along the walkway outside our house towards the stairs leading down to the driveway. I had just finished eating a packet of some sort of meteorite candy (similar to gushers but much smaller with no juicy center, the name eludes me now) and had pulled out another packet from my pocket when my sister said "Don't eat that, its got's calories in it!" Immediately I felt paranoid and thought 'Oh, no! What are calories?! Are they bad?! What is going to happen to me if I eat another packet of these?! Will I die?! Those thoughts raced through my head. I still think I may have eaten the second packet or even given it to her. Either way I felt legitimate fear based on the unknown, and after all that is what anxiety is, right?

Although unrelated to the aforementioned incident, I did have repeated tantrums where I must have felt an extreme amount of anxiety. These stemmed from not getting my way. I talked to my mother and she said it must have happened anywhere from 20-50 times. These were not your usual tantrums, though. I would scream until I passed out. My mom thought that I was dead the first time, but luckily our neighbor knew what was happening. I do remember one occasion of screaming and then hitting my head on the lower part of the cabinet at said neighbors house. That is really the only incident I can recall, the rest are lost by my brain, a rare occurrence.

As sixth grade started I got very anxious about a whole bunch of things. I worried so much and hard that I felt like I had a stomach ache. Ms. Macnamee gave me crackers to try and ease the pain I was feeling. I was so worried that I was going to be late for a class or forget my locker combination. It doesn't sound like something most kids would be worried about but for me it was a terrible thought the first week of sixth grade. I got over it and didn't look back. The move to high school had no such incidents.

I don't know when I learned to control most of my anxiety but I tend not to worry about the same things you do. We all have different things that can cause us to lose sleep. I see any problem as something that I will laugh about later, and I do tell myself this as I go through the ordeal. You know what? I have a lot to laugh about. The more success I have the easier it becomes to feel comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. I just think to myself 'Well, you've done this a million times, how about once more?'

Questions or comments? Let me know.