In case you’re unaware… Anxiety sucks. I mean it. Like, really, really sucks.
I’ve had anxiety all my life. When I was a kid, I freaked out when my dad took me out in a boat (which I begged him to rent), when I was supposed to go down a sledding hill (it was pretty steep), and when my parents left my cousin to babysit me. Not little, quiet freak outs, but gigantic, screeching, “Help me, help me, they’re trying to kill me!” kind of fits. I chewed my nails, had to get an A on every assignment I was ever given, listened to my brain go through millions of horrid scenarios each night as I tried to sleep, and started having migraines when I was eleven. At about age 26, I started taking anti-anxiety medication, which has helped, but it’s a battle that’s always there, ready for a fight, ready to take over.
What is actually worse than having anxiety? Watching your children experience it. You feel powerless and sad and even more anxious than you were earlier that day. Did my anxiety somehow cause their anxiety? Do I bring this out in my kids? Those old “what-ifs” running through my brain again.
My youngest daughter is the screamer. When she gets frustrated, or angry, or feels powerless, or her feelings are hurt, or maybe even if the wind just blows the wrong way, she screams. Blood-curdling, limb-has-been-severed screams. When we go to investigate, the problem is generally that she can’t zip her zipper, or she’s too short to reach the shirts in her closet, or she can’t fit something into her backpack. I know what you’re thinking, “Well, don’t give in to her. You’re just spoiling her.” The thing is, we don’t. We haven’t. Ever. We talk to her about calming breaths and using her smart brain to solve problems and asking for help with “a big girl voice.” But I’ve experienced the tornado that breaks out in her brain. We go from fine to exploding in seconds. There isn’t time for your brain to think, “Calming breaths. Ask for help. What could I do differently?” My mom has a master’s degree in counseling and she gave me talk after talk after talk when I was growing up. She’d talk to me when I was calm, she’d talk to me when I was in a fit. Still, the tornados would come, and I couldn’t stop them until I was a puddle of tears on the floor, waiting for her to sop me up with her hugging arms.
My son--the middle child--lacks confidence. If you meet him, you won’t believe this. If you know him well, you probably still don’t believe it. He seems cool and confident and friendly and helpful. But, if you look closely, you’ll see him showing off, just a bit. He really wants you to like him, and he doesn’t think he’s quite good enough. He wants to make you laugh and keep your attention any way he can. At swim lessons, he tries really hard--he CAN swim really well--but he grabs the side after two strokes in the deep end. He’s afraid he’s going to sink in the deep end and never come up. If they asked him to do the same strokes in the shallow end, he could swim all day. But, my dream of him beating Michael Phelps’ records are being held back by the same fears that kept me off the diving board, kept me out of the deep water at camp where all my friends were swimming, and have never let me learn to scuba dive.
So if you see us Halls and we look confident and courageous, just know: we put on a good show. We’re battling more than you can see.
