When it began

My earliest recollection of Anxiety was when I was around 7 or 8 years old. I was terrified but couldn’t talk to anyone, even my parents about it. I was an only child, I had friends but was very shy and full of fear. I would get mini panic attacks at school, shops or driving in the car. I would fairly regularly fake an illness just so I could stay home from school and hide from the world in my bedroom. There was a period when I refused to go to school for a period of time and was taken to a Child Psychiatrist who prescribed me tranquilizers which I took for a bit but didn’t like the effect so stopped taking them. This was the late 1960’s and the understanding of my condition was not well known. In years 6 and 7 I had a very understanding teacher and my attendance and results improved a lot.

I moved schools going from Primary (Grades 1 to 7) to secondary school when I was 12. I remember on the first day we were all put in a huge hall and had to undertake a test to determine what class level we would be put in. I had a massive panic attack, couldn’t breathe sweating, chest pain, couldn’t swallow. I was too terrified to tell anyone, and tried to complete the test (couldn’t even spell my name!) and was put in the lowest stream. That incident defined my life for the next decade.

I came from a dysfunctional family, although i thought that we were ‘normal’ while everyone else was doing it wrong. The only time we sat together for dinner was a Saturday night, when my parents ahd a few drinks. My mother very unhappy and became over protective of me, while my father was a Workaholic and spent most of the time in his room at the back of the house. Looking back now i love my parents, they did the best they could both coming from difficult childhoods and suffering Mental Illness like me. My Mother had Depression, my Father suffered Anxiety. I was lucky i got both !