Living With Anxiety

Living With Anxiety

Only after a friend asked me did I begin to wonder if I have passed anxiety on to

my daughter. I now wonder if she will suffer as I have. I don’t want that to happen, so I have decided to find out exactly what anxiety is, who it affects, and what can be done about it. I want to be able to offer the information to Abby if she ever needs it. I want to know if the medications are as bad as they say. Is anxiety a mind game that only you can control? Well lets look at some of my family members and find out.

It’s 90 degrees and muggy outside. Eighteen children run wildly up and down

the front yard. They’re yelling and laughing hysterically as they throw one another off

the country blue dock into the brownish-green lake water. They don’t seem to have a

care in the world. Then there’s twenty five adults trying to relax on their day off. While attempting to keep their children out of trouble, they don’t seem to find much time to catch up on each others’ lives. Then there’s my grandma. She’s either in the kitchen or sitting by the fire. I can always tell when her blood pressure is up. Her nose turns bright red like Rudolph-the-red-nose-reindeer. She worries about having enough food to feed thirty six mouths. “I hope I have enough”, she always says. I don’t blame her for getting so nervous. She has ten children and twenty grandchildren to worry about. After dinner we go for a long walk along the dirt road. My grandma and I always look for what she calls “worry rocks”. They are the brown colored rocks that have been worn smooth from cars. My grandma always says, “ just keep them in your pocket. When you start to worry about something, rub your rock. All of your worries will go away....

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...big element of truth to it: When you stop to smell the roses, the world is just a brighter, happier, and more beautiful place to live.

-- Thomas A. Richards, Ph.D., Psychologist

The true cause of anxiety is still being debated, but it has been said to be

genetically inherited. Anxiety is a disorder that causes normal stresses to turn into

something unbearable. At times it is hard to control and at other times you don’t even

remember that you have anxiety. I hope that you have acquired the understanding that

this disorder can be self-controlled or controlled by medicine. Having anxiety doesn’t

mean you are abnormal. It just means that you have to come up with other ways of

handling the stresses in your life. I now have the information that I need for myself that I can also pass on to my daughter. Just remember that it is all a state of mind.