Taking the Monster Out of the Closet
by Erica Thompson
With my younger child, I want to avoid what I see as my parenting misses and mistakes made with my older kid. This would be so much easier if my kids were more alike, or I suspect, were they closer in age or shared the same assigned sex as birth (along with the unconscious socialization that follows) or pretty much any other variables. Nor should I forget what I bring to the mix and how I have changed (and not) in the intervening years. Nevertheless, my younger child is who he is, and I am his parent, and I’m faced with figuring this out. And honestly, if I’m honest (which I’m trying here to be), this is not a matter of time, experience, or gender, for both of my children fight the same kind of monster, though their battles take on different forms.
Today, after another difficult night of tears and yelling and so much heartbreaking talk of how he is the “worst kid ever” and “doesn’t belong in this family” and “should never have been chosen to grow in my belly” and “won’t be able to go to heaven,” I look to the Internet for help or information or any direction to make parenting this child in this moment easier. What I find is what I already know: my sweet seven-year-old, who has been feeling and voicing such feelings since he was five (and not voicing them earlier, I believe) has an anxiety disorder, one that turns his own brain against him. One that turns his body against him, too, causing painful migraines and sick stomachaches. One that sneaks in at moments of transition and change, makes words said during arguments among friends into condemnations that feel like forever, turns small mistakes into unfathomable failures. What I don’t find, unfortunately, are easy fixes, true panaceas I can whip up in those two hours past bedtime moments or pull out on the sidelines or thresholds when even one step forward is impossible.
Like any inheritable chronic illness, anxiety has waited in my genes (and my husband’s) to be visited on our children. What we have found, too, is that anxiety is a sneaky bastard, often difficult to recognize. Sometimes, it comes dressed as obsessions or compulsions, truly trapping us at home. Other times, it wears the mask of ADHD, filling a brain with so much noise that to move or disassociate or act impulsively is the only way to find peace. For my children and me, anxiety creeps in as pain that is completely real and difficult to treat. It hides and hides during therapy sessions. It erupts (often literally) when it is least expected, leaving a trail of sick stomachs in its wake. In these and so many other ways, anxiety tries to win.
So I look to the Internet, to reassure myself that I am doing what I can, that the moments when my own monster reacts to my sons’ monsters or my husband’s, we will be okay, the mistakes are not bottomless pits. And then I close my browser and look for real help from our therapists, our psychiatric NP, and most of all. from my friends. My friends listen to my fears, my mistakes, and they do not judge me. They share their own fears, their own overwhelm. And this is why I write this. Knowing I am not alone lifts some of the weight. Maybe, knowing you aren’t alone will provide some solace to you.
