I've had anxiety episodes on and off ever since I was about 8 or 9 years old (ie 20 years ago). Every time, the anxiety is about a different theme, and it's always the thing that scares me the most at that particular time. An episode normally lasts a few weeks or months before it fizzles out, and then I can go for several months or years before the next episode starts.
The theme of my current episode is particularly depressing and worrying - it's about dying! I worry both about my relatives/friends getting older and dying, and also myself getting older and dying (which seems irrational as I'm only 28, so I've probably got a long way to go as yet!)
No-one close to me has died recently, so I'm not sure what has triggered this negative obsession. Sometimes I wonder if it's to do with repressed emotions from my childhood. Both of my grandfathers died young, when they were in their mid-60s. I was only about 4 years old when my paternal grandfather died, and 7 when my maternal grandfather passed away. The latter died of a heart attack whilst he was away on holiday with my grandmother, which means that I never had a chance to say goodbye to him, and neither did my mother or my sisters. I can still remember there was a horrible sad atmosphere in the house for several months afterwards. My mother and sisters were consumed by grief, but at the time I didn't fully understand. But it was as if everything had changed - my mother was particularly badly affected. I remember that she would often break down crying even when doing usual day-to-day activities like cleaning the house.
My first episode came about a year later, although it wasn't to do with dying, it was more a feeling that the world was dreamlike and unreal. Do you think this could be connected to the early sudden death of my grandfathers? Is it unusual for someone under the age of 10 to have to deal with the death of a relative?
There was an article on the Daily Mail website today about the increasing incidence of anxiety, and one of the women they interviewed mentions that she thinks her obsession could be to do with losing close relatives when she was under 10. I'm not sure if I can post the link here as I'm new to these forums, but if you do a Google search for the headline "As prescriptions for anxiety drugs soar..." it should come up as the first result.