Trying to find the root cause of my anxiety

[Sparkle1984]

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.

[PanchoGoz]

Right, firstly the root case could be a number of things. Genetic anxiety, trauma you remember, early trauma you don't remember, being sensitive or "predisposed", influencial factors like fussy parents or child abuse, unstable lifstyle as a child, too much caffeine freudian ideas such as repressed sexual feelings, jungian ideas like spiritual unease or a misbalance of mind body and spirit...there's something to chew on.

But even if you do find the cause, it won't do you a huge amount of good - it may provide you with guidance and comfort if it is something specific, but you may not be able to put your finger on anything. It is often a good idea if you were to forget the past and just work on treating your anxiety here and now, as that's what you will end up doing whether armed with facts or not. Even if it was your reletives dying that made you anxious, that knowlege will not cure you alone.

I'm sorry to hear of the deaths in your family. A lot of children you will find experience death in their youths, in fact I think you are lucky if you get to your teens without a reletive dying. I have not been close to death in my life, and my grandad is now dying and I'm not sure how I will take it without experience of death in my life. So death in youth may be a good thing. You say your mother was quite volatile - that could have had an impact on how stable you felt as a child.
The unreal feeling you described is derealization, very common with anxiety, might have been in the background during a non anxious phase.

[Indiepoos]

It sounds like this early introduction to death had made you question it a lot. At the age of 7 we're very inquisitive so I'd imagine that because you didn't fully understand what was going on you were trying to work it out which easily could lead to and obsessive like curiosity with death. I'd say that the dreamlike phase seems to be along the same lines "what is life? what is death? is it real? etc". So yes it is really quite likely that you've pin pointed what caused your obsessive thinking and anxiety, congratulations this is hard for a lot of people to achieve.

This should help you to understand your anxiety more and hopefully overcome it some day.

Good luck x

[Elle-Kay]

I'm going to sit on the fence here and say that I agree with you - I have racked my brain for years to find the root of my anxiety (which I have had for a similar period to you), and fairly recently came to the conclusion that it was triggered by a car accident in my early childhood. I also agree with Pancho though - knowing this hasn't helped me overcome the actual anxiety. I feel happier that I can 'attach' it to something, but that is indicative of how I am as a person (I hate to not understand something and like research/analysis) rather than being indicative of me having found a 'cure'. My advice is therefore to understand it if you feel that you need to, but don't be disheartened if it doesn't end up being the lightbulb moment you were hoping for. Instead, accept it, and move forward towards addressing your anxiety in the here and now. Good luck, whatever you choose

[Sparkle1984]

Thanks for your replies. When we first heard the news about my grandfather, I was on my own with my older sister. After getting the phonecall she was hysterical - she was shouting that she couldn't believe we would never be able to see him again.

Not long afterwards, I remember sitting on my bed thinking to myself that when you are dead, you will be dead forever. And then I would think to myself, "But how long *is* forever?" Would there be a time when "forever" would end and you would suddenly come alive again? Would it be 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years or a million years? Then I would suddenly remember the fact that forever is never ending. At that age I didn't know the word "infinity", but I knew that "forever" meant time with no end at all. And that made me feel quite scared, and I would get a funny dizzy feeling in my head, trying to comprehend the idea of infinity. Then I would feel so freaked out that I would block it out of my mind completely, and I would only think about it again if something triggered me to do so. I wish I still had that ability to block it out of my mind, like I did when I was a child.

Then when I was about 9 years old, I remember sitting up in my bedroom pondering the meaning of life (which I suppose is weird for someone that age). I remember one of my conclusions was "we all live to die" (depressing hey?!). In the same evening, I remember thinking "is life a dream?". I was writing these words on pieces of paper - when I was a kid I used to enjoy writing and drawing. Then my father came up to the room and asked me what I was doing, so I told him what I was thinking about. Back then, I didn't see it as a taboo subject. I remember my Dad then sitting on the edge of the bed with me, intrigued by what I'd just said, and he said "Yes it's a good question, what if everything we are doing now is all a dream?".

[sarahblonde32]

I've tried to find the cause of my anxiety and i cant pinpoint anything, it just started out of the blue one day. I too worry about death and things happening to my parents and brother etc, i just do not how would i cope as im a stress head and a worrier anyway. I guess that is the cycle.
sarah

[Indiepoos]

Your young self sounds very similar to myself at round about the same age.
My Dad died when I was about 7 or 8 and I had these same thoughts about how scary it was to be dead forever and how long was forever and trying to understand the concept of not being alive anymore, of not being able to think or even know that you are dead, to just completely not be anymore. It terrified me and upset me thinking that my Dad was dead and he didn't even know it.He didn't know anything anymore. He was just a memory of the people who knew him. He didn't know who I was or that he was ever alive. It broke my heart for such a long time and I became obsessed with the idea of dying to the point where I thought my own Mum would poison my dinner or that after rinsing my mouth with mouth-wash that if I swallowed the tiniest drop that it would kill me becuase it says not to swallow it on the bottle. I take my hat off to my Mother for putting up with me being so paranoid for so long and accusing her of trying to kill me when she was the one comforting me but I just couldn't separate reality from "what if"s.
Although the realisation of what caused your anxiety won't make it go away I think it's really helpful to know. There isn't so much feeling of being "broken" or "why me?" I feel more human knowing that my anxieties come from a real place and I'm not mad.

I think it's a helpful tool on the way to recovery.

[Sparkle1984]

Come to think of it, I think I was always predisposed to become an anxious person. My parents have told me that when I was a baby I used to cry a lot (more than an average baby - I have 2 older sisters and neither of them cried so much) and when I was a toddler I used to be scared of pretty much everything.