Dear Daniel C.:

Welcome back. I just read a lot of our correspondence, mostly your posts since October of last year, the beginning of the 10th grade for you. Now it must be the end of the 10th grade and in the fall, the beginning of the 11th grade. Your aim is to become a mechanical engineer but you are afraid you are not making high enough grades and will fail in college, not becoming the engineer you hope to become.

A question: do you still attend the same school, a long distance/ long commute from home, still the high work load school/ lots of homework and such?

You mentioned GAD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder repeatedly.

Here is my comment today: in October you wrote: ” when I write something personal, I have fun, I write well, and I put effort to it. Whenever its for school I see to tense up, freeze, and just stop doing anything useful”- this is where all the answers are, I believe, right in that sentence. I will elaborate on it:

You tense up and freeze when faced with school assignments and performance because you already have a negative association between school and your well being. The association is something like this: school-danger. The danger is realizing you are not good enough to get good grades, not smart enough, a failure as a hopeful engineer, a failure as a son and so forth. The association is already there so you freeze. Freezing is a reaction to your fear of feeling these I-am-not-good-enough feelings.

This is the reason you are not motivated to do school work, why you are easily distracted. Who wants these I-am-not-good-enough feelings? Better be distracted.

You are an amazing young person though, that with such fear you sit down and force yourself to study, again and again and again. You are so dedicated to be a good son, so ambitious, to be an engineer, that in spite of your ongoing fear, you sure try so very hard, muscling through the fear. And so you are like a person in the mud, with your feet and legs in a swamp. Walking forward is very difficult but you keep moving forward. Of course you can’t walk faster (metaphorically get better grades) because you are in the mud of fear. If you weren’t afraid, it would be easier to walk faster (get better grades). Everything is more difficult when in the mud/ in fear.

Your goal is to become an engineer and it is very possible for you. There is nothing lacking in your intelligence to prevent you from becoming an engineer, I am quite sure of it. If you heal and manage the fear, you will have way more access to the intelligence you do possess. As it is now, the fear keeps much of that intelligence frozen, not accessible.

Let me know if you agree with me so far; what you disagree with and we can communicate further.

anita

Dear Daniel C.:

I like your canine initiative and you having the dog!

Would you like to look more into the nature of your anxiety here, on your thread, with me?

How do you feel about doing so?

Also: are you in psychotherapy for anxiety currently? If you did have therapy in the past, what did it teach you about your anxiety; what do you currently know about it?

anita

Dear Daniel C.:

I will be back at the computer in a couple of hours. Can you tell me:

What insight did you get in therapy about your GAD, anxiety? Any insight on its origin, why and how it came about?

anita

Dear Daniel C.:

You agree with me, that anxiety freezes your brain so it is less capable of learning. The less anxiety, the smarter (and wiser) you will be. I hope your parents understand this concept and they pay for psychotherapy for you with a competent, caring therapist for a few months at the least.

It can be therapy of you seeing the therapist individually, learning skills how to manage your emotions on one hand and on the other gain insight about how your relationships with your parents in the past and presently (as well as the relationship between your parents) caused or contribute/d to your anxiety.

And at any one time, it may be you and your parents attending therapy sessions together. This is called “psychoeducation” where the therapist teaches you and your parents how to interact with each other (with EAR: Empathy, Assertiveness and Respect), interacting in the sessions with the help of the therapist.

In any case, what you tell the therapist in one-to-one sessions is confidential: the therapist by law is not allowed to share what you tell him/ her with your parents or anyone else without your written consent.

In summary: to get better grades in 11th grade, 12 grade and college and to become a mechanical engineer, the most helpful thing for you is to get psychotherapy with a competent, caring therapist so to eliminate the anxiety as much as possible. This will be the wisest investment you and your parents can make for you.

anita

Dear Daniel C.:

You are welcome, Daniel C. Please do post anytime. My interest in your thread is your well being. I believe that healing the causes of your anxiety, whatever they are, will help your well being, including your academic and professional performance.

anita