Let’s take it back to August 23-27, 2010, where we will find a 15-year-old freshman in high school learning about anxiety disorders the hard way.
As a child, I struggled and suffered a lot due to my GAD (generalized anxiety disorder). However, I didn’t actually know this until the very first week of my freshman year of high school. (Clearly I’m not a very fast learner…)
DAY 1: MONDAY: AUGUST 23, 2010
I woke up from a long and restless night that wonderful Monday morning, got ready for school as I had done all 9 years previous and got in the car with my dad to be driven to and dropped off at school. I got out of the car and entered the new building for the first time as an actual student there (I had been there countless times before because my four older brothers had all gone to school there). I walked into my first class—English (go figure, right?) and took a seat after seeing a few familiar faces. My stomach was churning and it didn’t seem like it was going to stop so I quickly—just minutes after class had started—asked my teacher if I could go to the bathroom. He wasn’t happy about it, but agreed to let me leave the class.
I hurried to the bathroom and before I knew it I was kneeling in one of the stalls ready to throw up the contents of my stomach which, by the way, totaled absolutely nothing. I had not eaten anything that morning because, over the course of the summer, I had learned that I would feel sick for hours if I ate breakfast. I was crying and in pain as my stomach tried, with no avail, to release something. It was the most terrifying thing to happen to me in my short 15 years of life. I sat there, on the bathroom floor, crying and struggling to understand why I was feeling this way. I even texted my mom and told her how I was feeling and she immediately came to get me.
On the drive home I began to feel better and I couldn’t help but notice that the further away from the school we got, the better I felt. I stayed home for the rest of that day and worried about everything I would need to get caught up on in my classes because I was already missing school. My mom didn’t really think anything of it and we let the rest of the day go as she figured I merely had a one-day stomach bug—which in her defense was totally a possibility.
DAY 2: TUESDAY: AUGUST 24, 2010
The next day I woke up and repeated my steps to getting ready for school (skipping breakfast again, of course) and as my dad drove to the school I felt the familiar sensation of wanting to toss my cookies. This feeling came quickly and more readily than it had the day before. This time I couldn’t even get out of the car because I felt so sick. Thus I asked my dad to drive me back home. There was no way I could go to school today either. When we got home I went to my room and began to cry. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I apparently could not physically go to school because I would always feel sick the second I knew I was heading there. I couldn’t stop crying, nor could I stop worrying.
The more I cried and worried, the more I felt like throwing up again. My mom asked me what was wrong and I explained to her my worries. She listened and asked me if I wanted to go to the doctor. I shook my head, there was no way I wanted to go to the doctor because my body didn’t want me to go to school. No way, I thought they would laugh at me. Instead I told her I would try to go to school again the next day. She accepted this plan and let me spend the rest of the day in my room reading and watching movies.
DAY 3: WEDNESDAY: AUGUST 25, 2010
Waking up in the middle of the week was no easier than it had been the two days previous. This time my mom refused to let me go with my dad to the school because I had woken up feeling sick and had tried and struggled to throw up already even though I hadn’t even left the house yet. My body would not physically let me go to school. I was crying and worrying about how this would look and how I would get caught up in my classes. I had no way of contacting my teachers because I didn’t even know who they were, nor did I even know if I had any work to make up yet. This time my mom refused to let this go and called the doctor’s office, assuming we wouldn’t be able to get an appointment until the next week, but that it would be better sooner rather than later. However, when she called they had an appointment available for that very same morning. So, instead of going to school, I got to go to the doctor’s office.
We sat there speaking with him about what I was feeling and how often I felt these symptoms and when for somewhere around an hour. The when was very important to my doctor and turned out to actually be the most important thing. We found that I felt these symptoms (nausea and worry) whenever I was about to do something new or unfamiliar. He offered up the idea that I may have an anxiety disorder. He suggested speaking to a therapist because at this point he would only be able to give us anti-nausea medicine, but did not guarantee it would work if this thing I was dealing with was, in fact, an anxiety disorder.
After we left the office and returned home, my mom emailed our bishop and asked him if he knew of a good therapist who would possibly be able to speak with us soon. He responded back quickly with a woman’s name and contact information. He also gave us his best wishes and hoped that we would be able to figure out what exactly was going on soon. My mom quickly called the woman and when she answered and heard about our predicament and of how we needed an appointment soon she suggested we do it the next morning around 10 am. My mom agreed and we had an appointment set for the next day. By this point we had been working all morning and afternoon on this and decided it was time to give it a rest.
DAY 4: THURSDAY: AUGUST 26, 2010
This time I felt sick for an entirely different reason, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go to school, but I did have to go see that therapist and the thought of that was just as nauseating. Before my mom and I left to go meet with the therapist, my mom emailed my school counselor and asked if we would be able to meet with her later that day. She too emailed back quickly and responded in the affirmative, she wanted to meet with us. Having that appointment set, we headed to the therapist’s apartment.
When we got there she welcomed us kindly and invited us in. She began with asking us the same questions my doctor had been asking and after we had answered the questions (we being my mom, I didn’t speak at all during this entire session) she confirmed what our doctor had stated about how this very well could be an anxiety disorder. She didn’t try to make me talk to her, but she did recognize how I was acting as the behavior of someone with anxiety. She suggested that I go ahead and use certain strategies when I begin to feel the way I had at school to lessen my anxious behavior and reactions. These strategies included keeping a small notebook with me in which I would write down the things that made me feel anxious or panicked and write out why those things shouldn’t make me feel that way along with telling myself positive phrases and such that would hopefully raise my sense of what I could do. My mom wrote down a lot of what the lady told us especially when it came to scents and flavors that help out with soothing and calming anxious and panicked feelings. Much of what the lady said was helpful, but after she told us everything that she knew about what could help, she also added that everyone and everything varies. No one thing works for everyone and that it will definitely be a journey to figure out what exactly helps me. She wished us luck in our journey and asked us to return if and when we felt we needed to.
As we left her apartment my mom talked to me about what we could do later because when we learned about the scents and flavors that help with anxiety she immediately thought of my aunt who works with herbal essences and remedies. She called my aunt when we reached our house again and asked her if we would be able to come over later that day. She, of course, said we could and told my mom that she would pull out her remedies and essences so that we wouldn’t have to be over there too long. After my mom finished that phone call we got back into the car and headed up to the school.
We walked in and when my mom told the lady at the front desk that we had an appointment with my counselor she nodded, directed us to my counselor's office, and told us that she would be waiting for us. When we went in my mom began explaining everything that had happened in the past week, and my counselor was more than understanding. She immediately knew that we were there to adjust my schedule because I had been signed up for all advanced classes and that I’d need to change those as well as change my speech class to something that would include less presentations for the year. In the end I kept my advanced Biology class and changed everything else to on level and changed speech to library aide. After this meeting, my counselor printed out my new schedule and then asked me if I would like to meet my teachers. Of course, I said yes.
As we were walking towards the first classroom my counselor asked if I was planning on coming to school that day and my mom said that we were actually just planning on Friday. She smiled and accepted that as a good plan. We met my teachers for the next day and then my counselor told us that we wouldn’t need to worry about my absences because she just re-enrolled me into the school so that I wouldn’t start the year with 4 absences. After all of this my mom finally thanked my counselor and we finally left the school. I was feeling better about the school already and knew that we had worked out a lot of things that I needed fixed. Finally we left the school and because my mom had asked one of her good friends who had a daughter that dealt with anxiety about what worked for them we went to Barnes and Noble to buy some books and workbooks on anxiety disorders. We found a few books that were particularly helpful and purchased them. They were "The People Code" by Dr. Taylor Hartman, the fourth edition of "The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook" (this is a link to the fifth because they've probably added more help to it), and "Coping With Anxiety" by Bourne Garano. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America's website is also an amazing tool to learning how to deal with your anxiety and mental health in general.This is where tips to manage stress and anxiety can be found.
Then later that evening we went to my aunt’s and she pulled out a few different herbal essences scents that she knew to help with calming the nerves and such and even gave us a 10 mL bottle of Bach Original Flower Essences Kids Rescue Remedy, which is an all-natural stress relief. I ended up taking home the peppermint and orange scents from my aunt’s collection of herbal essences and then as a final preparation for the next day, my mom and I went to the store and purchased the Peppermint flavored Altoids Smalls so that I would have an easy way to get peppermint into my system. We were all prepared for my “first” day of school and I even got another father’s blessing from my dad.
DAY 5: FRIDAY: AUGUST 27, 2010
This time I woke up and even though I felt a little bit scared about going to school, I knew certain tricks that would help me out. I wasn’t as worried as I had been earlier in the week. I got ready for school, made sure I had my notebook, peppermints, and stress relief drops and then I rubbed some orange oil on my wrists so that I’d be able to smell that in the event that I did start feeling panicky or anxious. This is not to mean that I didn’t feel panicky at all because I felt a little anxious and panicky all day, but it was never enough to send me over the edge and ask my mom to come and get me.
When school ended and I was still there, I was privately very proud of myself. I had won one little battle and even though no one else knew it, I was very excited and proud of myself for it. It may not have been a battle for those around me, but I had definitely won a war. There was no way my anxiety would keep me away from school ever again. I had the power to control it and that was exactly what I was going to do.
Here are the different types of Anxiety Disorders and some examples of how they administer themselves.
