Anxiety

Anxiety is an insidious thing; a silent sort of condition in many cases. It can mask a great deal of other behaviours and I came to know this first hand very recently when I finally managed to put the puzzle pieces together and determine that my youngest child was overly stressed.

It is well known that he is a very bright and capable young man and we were told that he would achieve at a very high level so long as he learned the skills of completing tests and exams within the time period. I knew that this was a problem for him and we put this down, over time, to his perfectionist state of mind. A capable educator worked with him when he entered senior school and together they developed strategies to overcome his perfectionist traits and he was sent on his way.

Mid way through this year, alarm bells rang for me. Together, he and I attended the parent-teacher interviews before the mid year exams and his History teacher, as an example, was excited about his recent essay and she suggested that he review his notes well so that he could attain the A+ he deserved in the exam. However, when his exam was returned the result was confusing. He had indeed attained full marks for the essay but many other simple questions were left completely unanswered.

His report again noted that he needed to finish tests and exams in the required time but there was no plan made. It was clear to me that this capable student had slipped under the radar. He was capable and he would be all right in the end, seemed to be the thinking.

I contacted the school and asked that the same woman work again with my son one and one and give me her opinion. She called me at home after a few more one on one sessions and began to make some comments and finally, I saw the whole picture.

"Do you think these are OCD type behaviours...?" I asked.

Realizing she was speaking to a parent who was open to the truth, she said, "Oh, I definitely do."

Within two hours I had located a highly capable psychologist in cognitive behaviour therapy for obsessive compulsive behaviours and my son has now had two sessions with her. We've already seen some remarkable progress. He has accepted that he suffers from anxiety. He recognizes that he is a perfectionist.  He is beginning to see that he had made many rules for himself; rules which were counter-productive to his happy functioning in the world.

We understand that relieving his body of cortisol and replacing it with endorphins is important and a few nights ago we took the dogs for a walk together. He was having trouble "letting go" of a little annoyance he experienced before we left the house and together at dusk in the park we breathed quietly together, registered all the noises of trains and cars but tried to locate the quiet centre within ourselves. We acknowledged that he was tense and troubled by not finding it easy to let go, but that it would get easier the more he learned to relax and breathe through the anxiety. We hugged tight; a hug he initiated. "Thank you," he said to me later that night. We were on the same team.

This week, we are working on "shoulds" and "musts". He has been asked to locate all the "rules" he has made for himself.  In the spirit of co-operation and in recognition of the fact that I am not entirely free from such obsessive-compulsive thoughts myself, I offered that I find it hard to leave home without the kitchen all neat and tidy and my bed made but that this meant I often kept Daddy waiting. It was a "should" that didn't always work in my favour. He was beginning to see what he had been asked to do: not easy but an extremely valuable exercise.

We are doing what we can to take the stress off too in terms of choices. He will drop one language next year and already this thought is calming him, it would seem. He said he was suddenly enjoying Chinese a lot more knowing that it was the one language he would be carrying through to next year.

And, his electives for next year are all fun stuff - subjects he is biting at the bit to do; studio arts, drama, computing and film and media. He is one of the fortunate boys who will be doing what he is passionate about - at school and beyond.

We are not out of the woods yet but we are certainly well on our way to the transformation of a worried young boy into a relaxed and joyous and highly productive young man because we have recognized and accepted that his behaviour was due to anxiety.

I am beginning to think that much aberrant, defiant behaviour in children (and adults) could well just be the mask and that behind that behaviour is a great deal of anxiety about how they fit into this world and how they will live up to expectations; perhaps others' expectations or perhaps their own. It bodes thought.