#Lifestyle Anxiety

A valued friend and I started a Parent Support Group at our local primary school some 4 years back, with the purpose of raising awareness around learning disorders and helping parents/educators better cope with them. Her children have now moved onto high school and I oversaw my last function a couple of weeks ago, which interestingly was entitled “Making Warriors of our Worriers” (courtesy of Pam Tudin) Truth is I think there were as many anxious parents present at our event as the children they represented.

There’s nothing new about raising the subject of anxiety – termed a ‘co-morbid’ condition with ADD and prevalent in so many of our kids.

Truth is, I experienced heightened anxiety early last year which arrived like a tsunami and threatened not to leave.

And I work with several clients who suffer from heightened levels of anxiety; some of which is directly related to the stress of their jobs and some of which isn’t. It’s just ‘there’; a little like the ‘black dog’ of depression.

So in this series of blogs I’d like to;

• Put anxiety under the spot light and normalise it as much as I am able – I mean who wants to worry about worrying?!

• Talk about some of the strategies I have found helpful for my clients, my children and myself

There’s an interesting stat around that typical schoolchildren now report more anxiety than child and adult psychiatric patients did during the 1950’s. I’d be interested to see a similar stat for adults but certainly anecdotally, I think it is on the exponential rise.

So reflect a little with me as we navigate this path. Let me know how anxiety shows up in your life and how you’ve managed it. It’s good to know we’re not alone.