A Timeline of How My Anxiety Symptoms Changed With Age

The first time I remember feeling anxiety I was five years old. I associate it with my first day of kindergarten, but I do not actually know if it was. Still, I remember eating egg salad sandwiches and finding a small black ball of pepper in mine. The strong taste could only be poison on my tiny tongue. Of course, a part of me knew it wasn't, but my life had changed so much lately. There were so many things I could not control: my parent's divorce, my mother's breast cancer diagnosis, and having to move in with my grandparents and declare bankruptcy.

Look back, it's no fucking wonder I'm an anxious mess.

I wouldn't attribute these thoughts to anxiety until a couple of years after I was formally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Looking back, what could've been considered tantrums, stubbornness, or sass may have been anxiety in disguise.

It is well known that illness--both physical and mental--often look different in adults versus children. Reflecting back, I can see and remember how my anxiety manifested at different times in my life. You can see this if you Google the symptoms of any mental illness, you will often receive symptoms lists as they pertain to children and adults. While there is overlap, they do tend to present with varying symptoms.

Therapy has helped me realize some of this. Before therapy, I didn't even recognize the physical symptoms of anxiety. Or, at least, I did not recognize them as being connected to anxiety and my mood. Not even realizing that anxiety disorders were a thing for so long, performing this exercise is certainly validating.

Thus, I think there is merit in looking back on the anxiety symptoms I can remember throughout my life.

Age 5

Before the age of 5, I had almost no anxiety. I talked to every grocery store checker, I bravely went down slides head first with my eyes facing the sky. I one day wanted to move to Australia and work with animals. Yet, when I started Kindergarten, things seemed to change.

Symptoms:

• Paranoia
• Obsession with germs and being poisoned
• Obsessive handwashing
• Trouble falling asleep
• Feelings of impending doom
• Intrusive thoughts
• Nightmares

Some of these fears have an understandable thread. At the time, I lived with my grandparents who--due to a large shop and being homeowners in the area--suffered frequent break ins. While most people focused on the shop or barn out back, one intruder came onto the back porch when just my mom (who was in her late twenties), my brother, and I were home. He was certainly only interested in the old TVs we were in the process of getting rid of, but I will never forget the way my mom told us to get under the table. The way I left my mac and cheese in the bowl and huddled under the sturdy wooden table with my brother.

This led to some of my nightmares and the intrusive thoughts of bad things happening to me or my family. Additionally, around a year before, 9/11 occurred and the Afghanistan war was underway. The green, night vision scenes of the war scared me, but I didn't understand them enough to know how to express that.

However, some of the other symptoms have no discernable source and which I rarely exhibit now. For example, frequent hand washing, while I do probably wash my hands more often than the average person, it is not obsessive. At age 5, I would spend minutes upon minutes running my hands under water of varying temperatures. It came to the point that my grandpa told me I was running up the water bill. I don't know if I actually was or if it was just a scare tactic to get me to stop, but it didn't fully break it, but did contribute.

While I do have some OCD tendencies that come out when I am especially stressed or anxious, I have never shown this level of obsession in adulthood.

Ages 7 & 8

The next major shift came around second and third grade. This is when I began to experience negative social situations that did not resolve easily. Up to this point, I was actually quite social and made friends without too much trouble. However, after experiencing some low level bullying and stigmatization, I began developing what I now identify as social anxiety.

Now, while I was extroverted and social as a child, there were inklings of this at even younger ages. But, this is when it began to severely impact my life and social lift.

Symptoms:

• Obsession with other's thoughts of you
• Lack of confidence
• Intense desire to be liked and accepted
• Avoidance of people or certain social situations
• Fewer friendships

Some of these symptoms can definitely be attributed to normal social growth and maturation. However, this time and the social interactions I had, shaped the way my social life would continue on. While I rarely wanted for friends, I trusted few and avoided initiating friendships, even if I desperately wanted to. As I grew older, dating became even harder (though this was due to several other factors as well).

Regardless, it ingrained the now diagnosed symptoms of social anxiety like fear of being judged, obsession with what others may be thinking, and avoidance of social situations.

Age 10

This will be a shorter section as it highlights one major event/symptom. I had what I believed at the time to be a night terror, but I believe now was a vivid nightmare. I would continue to have distressing nightmares throughout my adolescence. This led to insomnia through middle school and only increased my everyday anxiety.

I can still remember some of these dreams from over a decade ago. I think many are unlikely to fully leave my memory since they scared and distressed me so much at the time.

Age 13

The summer I turned 13 I refer to as the "agoraphobic summer". I found out later on that my mom nearly took me to a psychologist--and not just as the threat she used when I voiced my anxieties or my symptoms were bad--but because she was actually concerned.

Symptoms:

• Intense fear of going out in public
• Paranoia
• Daily worry and dread
• Never feel completely safe
• Helplessness
• Intense anxiety
• Bouts of depression
• Crying for no discernible reason
• Sleeping more than usual

Again, on their own, some of these symptoms are easily contributable to puberty and the stage of life I was in. Teenagers do tend to sleep more during the day and mood swings can be perfectly normal. But, in conjunction with the worrying symptoms I was displaying such as extreme distress in public places, sitting beneath windows, an intense fear of dying every single day, it is understandable to see how that may not be the full story when it came to my symptoms.

Age 15-16

In high school, the primary anxieties were social ones. Always worried about what others thought and becoming extremely attached to my friends and worrying that if they moved or if I lost them, I would never recover. Though, this is also when I would discover one of my main coping strategies: keeping busy.

I worked part time, took multiple AP classes, was an FFA officer, belonged to the National Honor Society, and did Knowledge Bowl. I was insanely busy my Junior and Senior years of high school. Thus, I fell asleep almost instantly upon getting into bed.

While this was good to an extent, I did have problems when I first started my part time job. I thought it had to do with smell sensitivity or something I ate, but after a few months, it became clear my intense nausea was due to anxiety around going to work. After the first year of work, this improved. However, this would be one of the first times I truly understood how anxiety physically affected my body.

Conclusion

The summer I turned 20--seven years after the initial incident of agoraphobia--I had a similar incident. While I still went to work and school, I moved so carefully that it was impossible not to think about danger every single day of my life. I was scared to be alone, but wanted to stay inside.

This would be the summer I would finally seek mental healthcare for the first time and spoke to a therapist for the first time. This allowed me to learn about Panic Disorder and identifying the build up of a panic attack to prevent them.