When Peanut Butter Becomes a Lion

   WOW, what a morning!!! Our house has a lot of anxiety that often hovers like a cloud over it. The littlest thing sets one of us off at any given moment and today was no exception. My oldest is home from school on a break and so her routine is thrown off causing her angst. She has a set way that she reacts to this and it usually means picking on her siblings in some way shape or form. It is relentless and exhausting and it triggers everyone else. However for her this is what she feels she needs. When everyone is up at her level of anxiety then she feels somehow better because then she knows where everyone is at and she doesn't need to worry about any escalations. I try to be aware enough to help her lower her anxiety levels and feel better so everyone can remain at calmer levels. It is not easy though. Today she went out for the day and so my next child (my eight year old son) really started to escalate. He has an anxiety disorder. It comes from a lot of different things but since this diagnosis and with living with him and my oldest as long as I have I have learned some very interesting things about anxiety. Today however I felt like I had a bit of a break through in how to talk to him about it. He had a panic attack because I put peanut butter on his french toast this morning. I also put syrup on that precious toast but today the peanut butter was the last straw. Usually with anxiety it can simmer for a while and build before exploding but everyone is different. As soon as his sister was leaving the anxiety that had been building because of her behavior was able to come out. Sometimes when life seems like it should have a moment of peace that is when things get even crazier and that is because the body has a chance to cleanse a bit or release. So for him today when I gave him the peanut butter ~ that was it!
   When the body goes into this 'panic attack' it has a mechanism that has been labeled the ~ fight, flight, freeze or fawn ~ response. Your body literally does one of those things when you have a moment of panic. My eight year old does the fight to the biggest degree. This means screaming, throwing things, and he seems to be totally raging. Since I now know that it is an anxiety attack I am approaching things from a VERY different angle then I did before. I try to regulate my breathing, talk calmly and keep him from hurting himself and myself and the house as gently as I can. If I have to hold him down no matter how gently I am holding him he is screaming I am hurting him. His heart is pounding, his pupils dilated, he is just in full blown freak out. It is heart breaking. Basically his body has never learned to differentiate between real danger and every day life. When we are babies we are in total survival mode. If, when we are little, we were not soothed appropriately when we needed soothing our bodies can get stuck in that mode. For my eight year old this was the case. He was allergic to almost every food from birth and so nursing caused him a lot of pain. He also had severe acid reflux and had a hard time breathing properly and so many other things. I was stressed out so much because he cried all the time. He was my first new born baby ( my oldest moved in with us when she was one and a half) and I had no idea how to help him. It was unbearably hard. This resulted in how he perceives and reacts to the world around him now.
  Today after I got him calmed down I had this brain wave of how to show him what his body was doing. I told him that his body thought that a lion was attacking it. He LOVES animals and so I thought giving him this word picture might just work; and it did!!! I told him that his body couldn't tell that having peanut butter on his toast was not a life threatening situation. I told him that when I was talking to him (while he was screaming) all he heard was lion roars and when I was holding him safe, while he was panicking, all he could feel was lion claws. I explained about how our body is designed to help us do amazing things when we are in real danger. I told him about people lifting up cars to save someone or accomplishing seemingly impossible things when they had that adrenaline coursing through their bodies. I told him that this is not supposed to happen often in our bodies but sometimes our bodies get stuck responding one way to every little thing. So I told him that his body feels like a lion is about to kill him almost every day when really there has never been a lion anywhere close to him. While I was holding him as he was screaming I just kept quietly saying....'It's just breakfast, it's just breakfast' and so after he was calm I told him why I kept saying that.
  He snuggled in close to me and listened as I explained. I told him about how his heart was pounding out of his chest, how his blood goes to his extremities and how his body is ready to do whatever it takes to survive when he is going through one of these episodes...but it was just over peanut butter!!!!
   I think today he understood a lot better than he ever has. I hope it is yet another step in a positive direction for us. Now I need to find  a way to explain this to my oldest in a totally different way. Now I can say things to my eight year old like, 'honey I think you need to tell your body there is no lion!' I can teach him more about how to tell his body in ways other than words. I have a key worker from my community that comes over once a month to help me strategies how to help my children better manage life. This month she made tool kits with each child. She went to a dollar store and bought cute boxes. These boxes are filled with little things designed to help children have ways to cope with stress, anxiety and worry. The children made each thing with her and she explained their use. There is a stress ball made out of two balloons and some rice, there is a journal and pens, coloring pages, bubbles (to help with deep breathing) a worry doll to whisper your worries to, lavender sachets to smell for a calming scent, a little booklet that they made with lots of different ways they know helps them feel more calm and the list just goes on. It was so helpful for my children.
  If you have a child who struggles with explosive anger or seems extremely sensitive to sound or textures or has a very hard time sitting still or focusing you may have a child who is struggling with anxiety. There are many ways to help a child find peace. Vitamin D, B Complex with folate and liquid magnesium are helpful and eating lots or protein every couple hours usually makes a big difference. Fish oils help also just in a physical sense. Giving children knowledge about what is happening in their bodies helps also. Giving them tools and ways out (like the tool box) and remaining calm when they are escalating helps. New pathways need to be created in their brain and so after they are totally calm...help them re do what needed to be done the right way. In my case today my son needed to be able to communicate calmly why the peanut butter was not acceptable and we also needed to realize he was feeling anxious not just about the peanut butter but other things. I am just now (in the last year or two) really able to recognize when I myself am anxious and escalating and sometimes it takes me a couple days to figure out the root of it. So children need a lot of help every day with this. Self awareness can bring peace but it takes time.
  Thanks for reading ~ I hope you are doing alright, holding on, and that no matter what happens in the next couple days you will be able to find pockets of peace and moments of beauty. xo