Anxiety

I have been bothered lately by anxiety. Let me rephrase that, for the first time in my life, I am understanding that I struggle with anxiety and I’m trying to get help for it.

Anxiety is an emotion caused by a belief in potential loss

Reading that 1 simple line at church hit me like a ton of bricks!   For years, I have struggled with letting things get to me, but not knowing how to process or effectively deal with the issues. I would internalize things to the point, that I would blow up and be completely stressed out.

Buy why? What was causing all of this? Honestly, I still don’t know for sure? I do know that I’m trying to figure out why I am unable to relax. Unable to deal with certain things.

Anxiety for some, is much worse that what I deal with. But, it is very real for me. I have had several people in the last several months comment that I was working my way to a heart attack. That scared the hell out of me. Friends and co-workers, people that I spend a lot of time with, were seeing what I could not. They recognized a change in me that was not good. They saw how tired I looked, which then I would have to talk about not sleeping.

Oh right, part of my anxiety is that I’m not sleeping either. If I get 2-3 hours a night, I’m doing good. But in rereading that line from church, the part that hit me was the part about the belief in a potential loss.

So what am I afraid of losing? Friends? Family? Relationships? Not sure? But something is causing me to be anxious a lot more than I should.

I have recognized that after seeing the movie I Can Only Imagine, that I have realized things from my childhood that I did not deal with. Whether on purpose or not, I didn’t. So, maybe that could be it?

Regardless of what it is, I am for the first time trying to figure out a healthy solution, to deal with this problem.

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We are wrapping up Week 1 of ADHD for my son and so far, not so bad. And by that, I really don’t know?

I didn’t know what to expect when we started the medication for him to be honest? I really expected him to oppose the medication and he has not at all.  Granted, his physician told us to give it to him in a spoonful of ice cream for breakfast, so who would really complain about that? But, I really don’t know the true effects of the medication either?

We have talked with his daycare provider on a daily and sometimes multiple times a day to get a gauge on his behavior and the two things that have stood out are:

  1. There hasn’t been a HUGE change. Meaning, he is a little more focused, but he is still getting frustrated.
  2. The medication is not lasting as long as we had hoped.

For the first item about still getting frustrated. This is kind of a no brainier, as he is still dealing with anxiety related issues. The hope is that over time those will be less of an issue because he is more focused. There are 2 quick thoughts to this: 1) the dosage is to low and 2) he is bored at daycare. And I personally think that it is a combination of the two. He loves going to the daycare, most days, but he and his brother are older by several years in most cases over the other kids.

As for the medication not lasting very long, most of the medications for ADHD claim to last up to 12 hours. Honestly, we are seeing 8 hours or less. And based off of the other indications, i.e. anxiety, wearing off around 3:00 pm we are going to call his physician tomorrow about upping his mediation by 5 mg.

This is all a trial and error. It is a trial and error for my wife and I as much as it is for my son and his brother. At this point, we are just trying to find the right combination for my son before he starts back to school, as this year, he will be required to complete homework assignments and today, he would not be able to focus on them long enough to complete them.

Tomorrow, we find out if his physician agrees that he needs to be moved up to a higher dosage, because school starts in just a few days.

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Well and there you go, 4 little letters this weekend, ADHD and now we have a diagnosis.

The last year has not been the easiest for us. We have have Boy B in Occupational Therapy and also seeing a child psychologist. And through all of these things, which he has grown a lot, we got the results of his psychological assessment.

Was I shocked, not really? I was actually more shocked when I shared with some family members the results and they asked if I was ok with the results? The results are what they are. Heck, I really was expecting him to fall on the autism spectrum. And besides, I’m not so sure that I did not and probably still do have characteristics of ADHD. So, no, I am not shocked.

But, I am learning at the speed of light some things that we will be doing differently. We have an appointment to his pediatrician this week, but we will also be drastically changing his diet. And just by a very quick Google search for ADHD diet for Children yielded a large list of ideas. Overall, it is interesting to discover how much nutrition plays a direct role into ADHD into the balance of the medication.

And yes, we have decided that, assuming that the Pediatrician wants to go the route of medication, which I am assuming they will, we are open to it. Are there pros and cons to medicine yes. And if you don’t agree with our decision, do I care what your opinion is? No! It is an opinion for a reason and I respectfully ask that you keep yours to yourself. We are making the best decision that we can for our son and we have sought out the advice of multiple people, both in the education and medical fields and they all agreed that medication was appropriate.

I had struggled for a long time about if we were faced with this decision, what would we do? I have struggled with an unknown factor, i.e. will my son’s personality be different? I have struggled with the fact of knowing that my son CAN NOT control his hyperactivity! I have seen it too many times. I have watched him struggle to focus. I have talked with his teachers and they have shared the same things that we were seeing at home.

I love my son. I love both of them equally. But my wife and I have to make the best decision for them, as they can not make the decision for themselves. And our hope and prayer, is that we are able to get the right balance of medication, diet and continued therapies so assist him, so that he is not on medication long term, but will be on it as long as he needs it.

The decision to put him on medication was not an easy one nor was it one that we took lightly. But, we are doing what will help him going forward, especially in school, to make him successful.

This is our new life. This is my son’s new life. He has a diagnosis. We finally know what we are dealing with, so that we can better deal with it. My sons are the most important thing to me and I will do what I can to give them the best that I can, even when it is going to be something like medication.

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It is amazing what you can remember some days, but when I was a kid, my mom bought me a worry stone and I was allowed to use it when I felt anxious. Well, Boy B has talked a lot lately about feeling anxious and it hit me this morning after walking him to the bus, why not try a worry stone.

So while drinking another cup of coffee this morning, I thought that I would do a few quick searches and see if I could come up with a way to make my own worry stones for the boys, because then they could color them and really make them their own. Besides, my mother gave me a worry stone that was a rock and I just see that going through a window or against his brother’s head. So, here are some great resource that I found this morning, not just for the worry stone, but also for other things that can be made at home if you have anxious children.

The School Counseling Files – The Mind Jar idea and Fidget tools were awesome and will probably be made this weekend here. I’ve been having the boys to draw and color when they are frustrated or upset and use that as a way to deflect their anger.

Behavioral Interventions – Here is the worry stone that we are going to make this weekend. And I have a feeling that the boys are going to love doing this. Not only from the texture stand point, but being able to color and personalize their own worry stones.

Pinterest – what doesn’t Pinterest have?

Creative Elementary School Counselor – Here is another blog post about worry stones and how to make them at home.

I hope that these resources will be of assistance and once we finish the boys worry stones this weekend, I will post a photo of the final product and hopefully report back that some of these things have helped calm Boy B down a little and helped with his anxiety.

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