FEAR is not just name of an awesome punk band..........

I have anxiety. Simple. Millions of people do. Millions of people are worse off than I am. Millions of people have cancer, one of my oldest and dearest friend's sons died at 13, my best friend of 15 years has a son with severe autism who tries to hurt himself and others on a regular basis, and I have anxiety, a lot of it.... 

I can remember a time when I didn't have anxiety. Call it my halcyon period. I was about 5 when it all changed. The first time I remember paralyzing fear was the week before I entered Kindergarten. My family was involved in a car accident. We had just gone to Sonic, one of the only local fast food places in the late 1970's in our area. We were out for a leisurely drive; when B-A-M we were t-boned by a car driven by hippies. They say no one remembers an event the same way, and that the imprint of the event sears itself into our brain in the way we perceive it, and not necessarily the way it happened. My dad and I have very different recollections of the event, and my mom was injured in the accident and doesn't remember anything at all. 

So here is my version of events. It was late summer 1978, and in the 70's no one cared where the kids were in the car. I was standing in the front seat between my parents eating french fries when the accident happened. I was thrown somehow from the front seat to the backseat. My mom flew forward and hit the steel dashboard of the car. When her head came back she was bleeding from her nose and mouth. My dad had jumped out of the car and ran to check on my mom. Simultaneously a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair opened the back door of the drivers side of the car. She had a soft  lilting voice and in a sing-song manner said very clearly to me, "I'm sorry we killed your mommy." At that moment I believed my mom was dead. I remember her hippy eyes were huge and she reached her hand out to me as if to take me by the hand and out of the car. The man with her pulled her away and I remember her outstretched hand getting further and further from the car. Emergency vehicles arrived and my dad was talking to people and no one talked to me. I was in the car and my mom was silently bleeding in the front seat inches from me quiet...she was after all dead.

what my mind sees

In what seemed to be hours a nice lady took me to her house and I watched my mom and dad get into an ambulance. No one told me where either of them were going and no one said anything about my mom being obviously dead. The lady was nice she had a traditional house with a piano and gave me cookies. I sat in her formal living room for days in my 5 year old head. Where was my dad? Would I ever see my mom's body again? Would they clean the blood off her face? Where was my dad? Who were these people with the cookies and piano? Where was my daddy? .........I wanted my daddy. 

Fear, panic, paranoia; whatever you want to call it set in for the first time. I was too scared and numb to cry. How could I live without my mom? Where was my daddy? NEVER would he let me down. Was he gone too? Had something happened to him too? Where was he? Surely he hadn't abandoned me with the cookie lady. 

Days later in my mind my dad walked through the cookie ladies door. I ran to him and he picked me up, thanked the lady and carried me outside to my uncle's car. Unbelievably to me there sat in the passenger seat my mom! She was ALIVE! She had massive bruises on her face and bandages on her head, but she was talking and alive. She seemed happy to see me. 

Years later I would be diagnosed with a myriad of anxiety disorders, but this one has the distinct honor of being the first......PTSD.

I wasn't in Vietnam or the Gulf War, but my head is forever filled with landmines and traps of my own making, I started building these walls at 5, and now at 41 they are  insurmountably high in most places.

The Pennsylvania School of Psychiatry website says this about PTSD.

(https://www.med.upenn.edu/ctsa/ptsd_symptoms.html)

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a pathological anxiety disorder resulting after exposure to a traumatic event. Current literature estimates that 8% of the U.S. population meets the criteria for PTSD and while PTSD cases commonly involve combat or assault experiences, there is a wide range of events capable of triggering PTSD symptoms. These events include car accidents, kidnappings, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and any other traumatic experience where an individual experienced or witnessed an event that involved death or the threat of physical harm.

For example, should a car accident occur, PTSD could result in the drivers, the passengers, or a witness; yet, the development of PTSD in one individual does not imply the development of PTSD in others involved in the incident. How one responds to an event is dependent on a variety of factors that lie outside the traumatic experience itself.

Common Symptoms:

 Intrusion: Recurrent recollections of the event

Dreams, intrusive memories, and exaggerated emotional and physical reactions to events that remind person of trauma

Numbing: Emotional distancing from surrounding people and events

Depression, loss of interest in activities, reduced ability to feel emotions (particularly emotions of intimacy, tenderness, or sexuality), irritability, hopelessness

Avoidance: Fear and avoidance behavior

Fear and avoidance of people, places, thoughts, or activities associated with the trauma, development of anxiety disorders (GAD, panic, specific and social phobias)

Arousal: Agitated state of constant wakefulness and alertness

Hypervigilance, sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating

PTSD is characterized by 4 primary symptoms: Take, for example, somebody who witnesses a major car accident on a highway by their home. Over the following week, the individual begins to avoid driving on that highway and over the next month, avoids driving all together - either as a driver or a passenger. He/she may become irritable or angry while watching high-speed car chase scenes or avoid conversations about driving; yet, despite the apparent discomfort, the individual may refuse to discuss his/her fear. Moreover, although the witness is unwilling to discuss the fear or the traumatic event itself, he/she may still be haunted by the memory of the accident with segments of the event on “constant replay” in his/her mind.

Young children do not experience the same reliving of the experience as adults. The progression of PTSD in young children may initially involve dreams about the traumatic event, however, these dreams frequently transform into more generalized nightmares about monsters or different threatening situations where they or another person is in danger. It is more difficult for children to express their sentiments verbally. Therefore, it is necessary for parents or teachers or other adult observers to recognize behavioral changes such as a decreased interest in activity or an altered sense of the future (i.e. the child now believing that he/she will no longer live to become an adult). Other signs of childhood PTSD may occur in the form of repetitive play if the child begins to recreate the incident with toys or may occur through the emergence of physical symptoms such as headaches or stomach aches.

So....Here I sit 36 years later writing about the impetus of my doom, The only thing I have come to count on is that anxiety will always be there lurking waiting to strike, and anxiety is no friend to me.

Oh.....one more thing in my dad's version of the event he was gone less than 2 hours, but to me it seemed an eternity. He also remembers the hippy girl, but didn't hear her words as he was focused on helping my mom. 

And one last thing...the only people I can ever count on are my mom and dad. I love them more than I can express and I am sincerely lucky that they are both still with me. They have a difficult time at times accepting that I am not 'normal', and that at times I am ruled by my anxiety, but that's okay. They do their best, and they love me. What more could I really ask for?

For more information on PTSD.......

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) - An organization with the National Institute of health dedicated to mental health research:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml