Therapy

People who know Allie casually (from church or school, etc) are often surprised to find out that she isn't always a sweet and happy girl. Far from it, in fact. Allie has always been a little moody and not great at controlling her emotions. She has always had to go in another room and "cry it out" when she gets upset, because she just can't seem to get herself under control any other way.

She has also had a lot of phobias over the years, starting when she was really little and was afraid of shadows on the wall. Then it was stink bugs, spiders, mosquitoes...really any type of insect. I remember one day two summers ago when she saw a stink bug in the back yard and wouldn't move, peeing all over herself with hysterics. Or after we moved into our new house and she was afraid of the shadows in her closet and wouldn't go in her room by herself for months. Or the time she saw a spider in the van and, hours later, flat out REFUSED to get back in, even when it was long gone, instead running around screaming like she'd been attacked.

But no matter how severe her reactions were, she always seemed to be fairly short-lived. And so, while I worried about her, I figured it was just something she was able to get over in time and didn't need any professional help.

Times have changed. Her anxiety has gotten worse and worse and now it is affecting her life (and all of our lives for that matter). Mostly she is scared of things at night. For several months, we were able to get her scary feelings under control by reminding her to breathe, pray, sing songs and think of good things. For the past few months, though, she hasn't been able to get herself under control and instead has spent a lot of hours (usually at night after the other kids have fallen asleep) crying, then screaming, then getting hysterical.

Jeff doesn't understand what it feels like to be anxious, so he doesn't know how to deal with it. I am much more empathetic, as I can relate to what she is feeling, but it has gotten beyond my abilities to help her. When she gets hysterical, she is also completely irrational. She throws things and kicks the wall and door and SCREAMS. She says she CAN'T get control, she CAN'T stop crying, she's TOO SCARED. And if she isn't at least somewhat calm, there is nothing anyone can do to help her.

Like I said, this has been happening 3-4 times a week (occasionally even in the middle of the night if she gets woken up--one time she came in and said she was worried her heart was beating too slowly), and there are no longer any triggers that I can recognize. There's not a specific thing she is scared of, she is just scared. Saturday night was the worst night yet. After 30-45 minutes of screaming (her), threatening (me), kicking and hitting (her), and some filming of the incident (me), she still couldn't calm down.

It was going on 11:00 pm and I was losing it. I'm ashamed to admit that I was a little rough with her, trying to snap her out of her insanity, which obviously didn't help anything. I told her I needed to take her to the hospital, hoping to scare her out of her hysterics, because "if you can't get control of yourself, we need to get professional help." She tried to run, threatened to run away (ha, as if she was seriously going anywhere in the dark) and I put her in the car and started driving. We drove around and I tried to get her to just listen to me. Still, it didn't help. She was saying mean and hurtful things and I ended up taking her back home (because I had left the rest of the kids home alone and I knew Damon was scared when I left).

I called my mom and she and my dad were still up. I asked if they would just talk and see if Allie would listen. And finally, for the first time in nearly an hour, she stopped screaming. My dad talked to her about how important it is to get oxygen to your brain so you can think clearly and he got her to try to breathe deeply. I took her up to her bed where my parents continued to talk to her and got her relaxed enough to say a prayer together and fall asleep.

Phew. It was draining, physically and emotionally. And I knew that we needed professional help. I scheduled an appointment with a counselor that specializes in children and I met with her yesterday. Allie will meet with her every week for a while and hopefully we will all be able to start resting easy around here.

I don't know exactly why Allie has such a struggle with anxiety (genetics, definitely. And maybe the fact that I was not exactly in the best place emotionally when I was pregnant with her had something to do with it--LONG story for those who don't know. I was dealing with the after effects of losing Chance, and struggling with some bad anxiety myself. I was going to counseling and taking Zoloft while I was pregnant with her), but I do know that she shouldn't have to feel so afraid all the time. And I had a good feeling yesterday that this counselor will be able to help her be the happy girl that everyone else sees.