Dear Crad:

A child needs to know that the grown ups in his life, his parents, are able to take care of him (or her). This is where safety is, for a child, knowing his parents are calm, strong and capable. What you experienced, way before the divorce, is two parents who were not calm and strong: “both my mom & dad were struggling financially, etc.” and “my mother was struggling mentally”.

As you look back now, as a teenager, you can see that these two parents were able to feed you, clothe you, etc., so you may think: well, they were capable of taking care of me. But the young child doesn’t know that, doesn’t see the future. For the young child, if a parent is anxious, not calm, it means there is trouble, something is wrong something can get worse,  and he is not safe.

This is common, parents who struggle financially and otherwise, later divorce,  or not, and that is the reason anxiety is also common, beginning in childhood and it keeps going into adulthood.

Anxiety is fear that keeps going and going. It is like a sticky substance that sticks to new things. It is now stuck to your friends, fearing they will leave you. It is stuck to other things you didn’t mention.

There is a way to heal from early anxiety and it takes a long time and persistence. There are ways to manage anxiety, to lower it when it spikes, to take healthy breaks from it (a walk in nature, for example). Let me know what you think of my answer so far, and if you wish, we can continue to communicate.

anita

Dear Crad:

You are welcome. In looking into “how to manage this anxiety about my friends, school, life in general”, it is important to know what you already tried, what helped you in the past and what didn’t help you. You can share about that and I will reply further.

anita

Dear Crad:

You mentioned your schedule “consisting of school, soccer, clubs, my job, household/family duties, etc etc etc”- reads busy to me, maybe too busy. My recommendation write your weekly schedule down and evaluate it over the next few weeks. Maybe it will be wise to remove some items in it, limit others, expand an item or two in it, add something. It will take time to make this evaluation, experimenting with this and that change, and come up with a less distressing and more helpful schedule for you, one that will help with your anxiety.

Reads like you get enough exercise, soccer being one. If so, no need to increase exercise. Maybe this or that club includes interactions with difficult people, interactions that add to your anxiety, or many there is simply no benefit in this or that club, for you. Something to add could be, for example, taking a walk outside when you feel distressed, or guided meditation.

But again, evaluating your schedule and making changes will take time and experimentation.

I will soon be away from the computer for about sixteen hours. When I return, if I read from you, I will be glad to reply and continue our communication. Anxiety is not an easy issue to begin to resolve, not likely in one or in a few posts.

anita

Hi Crad,

In dealing with similar problems, I realized the way to solve them is by loving myself more. It sounds simple but hear me out. When I worked on self love, I started loving those around me more. And I stopped being insecure around my friends because it would be their loss to refuse the love that I knew I was capable of giving. Before that I felt like they may not like me secretly because I wasn’t giving my all in loving them and wanting the best for them. Self love is the tricky part. A lot of that comes from learning to comfort the inner child within each and every one of us that is still not healed from past experiences, such as the separation you went through. Picture yourself as that young child, viewing what was happening and being really fearful about it/taking it personally, and be that person to hug that child and comfort them, letting them know that nothing was their fault and it’ll be okay. Things like this work wonders for healing my past traumas and I just feel more whole afterwards. It’s a substantial way to know what it’s like to love yourself. Any fear you have can be pictured as that small scared child and it’s up to you to hold that child and give them so much love that they won’t remember pain. Once you know your own worth and have that relationship with yourself people will naturally be drawn to you/want to hang around you. In any situation where someone is adding value, others will want them around. I hope this helped, best of luck. You can heal.