Like Mother Like Son: The Secret Coping Strategies of an Anxiety Addict

When I was 11 years old I had trouble sleeping at night. I was nervous most of the time and constantly experienced a horrible "alarm" sensation in the pit of my stomach telling me that I had done something wrong, or I had forgotten something.

I hated school. I hated waiting for the next embarrassing moment when I would be singled out for not being prepared for class, misplacing an assignment, misspelling a simple word, or not understanding the math concept everyone else seemed to have mastered. I hated homework in the evening that started after dinner and would last sometimes until 9:30 or 10:00 at night. I hated that when my parents tried to help me I still didn't understand. I hated even more that my lack of understanding created an obvious frustration that caused them to say and do things that I knew they didn't mean but caused more anxiety and stress never the less.

The emotions I became most familiar with at that time in my life were worry, fear, guilt, and frustration. I was worried that I wasn't enough. I was fearful of that next moment in time when the fact that I wasn't enough was revealed to my peers. I was frustrated that everything I did moved so slowly and I felt guilty for being such an annoying problem.

My entire elementary school experience was stressful. The only way I was able to sleep at night, and the only thing that seemed to ease my anxiety was creating lists. I would keep my sisters up at night by asking questions like, "If you were going to plant a garden...what would you plant and why?" Or... If you we were going to start a business making homemade Carebears (remember the 1980's?) what would you need to do and what would you name the bears?

I brainstormed on paper what I would do with an island if I could afford to buy one and what might be the smartest way to live out in the wilderness like the kid from "My Side of the Mountain."

I needed mental organization, and I needed to be able to brainstorm creatively in a safe environment. My sisters were fantastic. They never once suggested a different conversation idea besides the ones I brought up. My youngest sister finally got to the point where she would just say, "Okay..you talk..I'll listen".

By high school I had it mostly figured out. I avoided the classes that I struggled with and loaded up with the ones that I had learned that I was good at. Luckily I did have some areas of strength.

English classes were a haven of comfort for me. I loved to read. I loved the escapism of if. I loved that the rest of my stress could dissolve away as I became privy to how a main character was feeling and dealing with his/her own issues.

Fast forward 15 years.....

I am now a mother. I have earned a Masters Degree in Education. I have a successful career in Higher Education.

I still come close to panic when someone puts me on the spot to answer easy percentages and simple equations. I can still tell that hives and rashes are in my near future when someone tries to explain driving directions (I can't see maps in my head and don't have a single idea where north would be), and despite all my practice and education, I'm still not a great speller.

Luckily, I have learned to develop my strengths while becoming a pro at avoiding and managing my weaknesses. Spell check, google, calculator, secretary, GPS, and the courage to ask for clarification have been my saving grace.

As an adult, I am soothed by children's literature. The "Pancakes Pancakes" story by Eric Carle is the story of my mental survival. There are ingredients in life. I have learned that the key for an anxiety addict like me is to tackle them one at a time much like the boy who wanted pancakes.

The next period in this life is called motherhood. If my life were a play and I was the playwrite I would instruct the curtain to open again to a new scene. A young boy, about 10.. crying out in complete frustration because after an hour and a half he was still only on question 2 and he had to get to 10 before his mother would let him stop.

I am the mother now, and this is my child.

Oddly enough, I was not initially very understanding. This seems odd in retrospect because of my own challenges and how hard I had to work to overcome them. How hard I had worked. Yes, I believed in hard work and I was not convinced my child was putting forth the effort...Until one day when I went into his classroom to speak with his teacher about our mutual concerns.

I walked in at 3:30pm after all the other children had gone and watched my son at his desk trying to copy homework assignments into his notebook from a horribly disorganized whiteboard.

Flashback.

I am 10 years old and staying late everyday after class because I am behind. I can not seem to copy the questions or the words on the board without getting lost. It takes me 30 minutes to do work that it takes 5 minutes for my friends to do.

Snap.

I fall back in my 33 year old body looking at this woman's whiteboard and feel the beginnings of a panic attack. I don't understand the flow of information. I can't see what is supposed to come first with all her notes and scribbles all over the place....and I feel myself moving into the body of my 10 year old boy. Completely defeated. Completed frustrated.

The teacher was at the end of her rope. She had called me in to suggest my child was ADHD and that medication should be considered. She asked if it was okay that someone from our local AEA come in to observe him in class.

Still in heightened anxiety mode from being in the midst of such a whirlwind of a classroom, I became annoyed. Looking around at papers piled up, notes randomly scrawled across the board, equipment and tools from various projects strewn all over the place and then back at my quietly frustrated child, my annoyance grew louder.

It had gotten so bad for my son by this point in the year that I had seriously considered homeschooling him. His Iowa Test of Basic Skills test scores were so miserable, that if I had home-schooled a child that performed that poorly, the state would mandate that I re-enroll him at public school.

Not only were his test scores bad, but he was starting to really hate school and express hate for himself.

This is where our lives change. In retrospect, this terrible year was also an enlightening one. I decided to bring my child in to an educational psychologist for some serious testing. After two full days of tests and interviews with my child and another day talking with me the psychologist was ready for the big reveal.

My son was NOT ADHD he actually had his own highly developed area of strength. He did however have a learning disability that he was going to have to learn to manage.

Armed with a diagnosis and a new professional opinion I marched myself back to school and looked forward to developing a plan with administration and staff to help my son. He was going to get a team of helpers. I was going to be able to give my child an experience I never had myself.

Not only did I catch a glimpse into the mind of my child, I could see that there was a reason why my learning was so different than my peers. I was not the only person in my family to struggle either, both of my sisters and my father had also grown up having to modify things in their lives because of learning challenges.

We were a family filled with successful hardworking people that had learned to compensate for what would most likely have been diagnosed as a learning disability had we been young during a time when a diagnoses and testing was available.

With some accommodations to his learning environment, and the persistence it takes to advocate for change, my son went from scoring on the 2nd percentile in the science section of the ITBS to the 97th percentile. He now gets A's and B's and he is proud of his academic achievements.

We still struggle with anxiety but we focus on our strengths. He is a creator and a scientist. I am an entrepreneur and teacher. We take one step at a time and we work to focus on where we are going. We set goals and we evaluate our progress. Are we going where we want to? If not...why not?

We breathe, and exercise our bodies. We try to eat well and to reflect on our blessings. It can be hard to focus sometimes when there are so many details in the way. The simple things keep us focused. A sweet apple on a fall day. Running in the rain. The things that keep us in the moment are the things that best seem to help us manage the anxiety that comes with being different.

It was a blessing to have an explanation for why we are the way we are. Ultimately however, success seems to have more to do with our choices everyday and less about our particular brain wiring.

There is peace in knowing that.