Health news blog

What if?’. How many times during the course of the disorder have we all said this in one form or another: ‘what if I have an attack?’,'what if something happens?’,'what if I make a fool of myself?’ How many times has the anxiety stopped us from doing what we have wanted to do? How many times have we spent days, weeks or months worrying about ‘what if? What if this is perpetuating the disorder? It is.

Thinking about it

We give our thoughts the power and our thoughts destroy our lives. Everyone is always telling us ‘it is mind over matter’, or ‘you are always thinking about it’ and ‘you should just stop thinking about it’. This is exactly what we have to do. We have to stop thinking about it. We have to get to the point where it is mind over matter—we don’t really mind because it doesn’t really matter. In other words, we don’t mind if we do have an attack because it doesn’t really matter.

It is difficult for most people who haven’t experienced a panic attack and/or anxiety to understand why we can’t stop thinking about it and why we can’t ‘pull ourselves together’. If it were that simple we wouldn’t have the disorder. It is no use trying to ‘think positive’, because it is extremely hard to be positive when we are living with unremitting symptoms of anxiety and ongoing attacks.

Even though we are told repeatedly that nothing is going to happen to us, it is difficult to believe when we are constantly betrayed by the attacks and anxiety. We think the next attack is going to be ‘the one’ in which our fears will be realised. We can’t just ‘not think about it’ when we live and breathe it every day. This is the problem—we live and breathe it—because we constantly think it!

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Refer to the definition of sleep problem: When a child’s sleep habits cause recurring or continuing problems for him or for his family, then there is a sleep problem.

The best way to identify a possible problem is to listen to the parents— yourselves. Listen to how you describe the experience of parenting. How quickly, or how often, does the subject of sleep come up? How much energy do you spend thinking, worrying, or complaining about sleep? Are your feelings about your child being colored by your frustration and exhaustion? If there were just one thing you could change about your child or your life, would it be sleep?

EXERCISE 1-1: Types Of Problems

The following checklist will help clarify the type or types of problem your child is having. Mark each sentence that generally describes your child. Use a check mark for those that fit at some times. Circle that check mark if it is a current issue.

1. She wakes during the night and can’t find her pacifier.

2. The only way I can get him back to sleep is to feed him.

3. He sleeps in late and won’t take a nap.

4. She hops out of bed defiantly.

5. He wants several drinks of water and goodnight kisses.

6. She comes to our bed during the night.

7. I can’t wake him in the morning.

8. He won’t be alone in his room because of the “monsters and snakes.”

9. She comes to our room scared and crying.

10. He needs to have all the lights on at bedtime but will look at books forever if I let him.

11. She screams and thrashes around.

12. My husband can’t put her to bed—she only wants Mom.

13. We are ready for bed, but he is not!

14. He calls out during the night wanting juice.

15. She wakes up several times with no particular pattern.    

16. He seems to wake about every few hours.

17. He is reluctant to go to sleep at bedtime because he’s afraid of bad dreams.

18. Note any uncircled check marks; these indicate changes—possibly improvements. Fit your answers into the following key to see possible types of problems your child shows. There may be some overlap because the same symptom can be an indicator of several types of problems.

Frequent waken 1, 6, 9, 14, 15, 16    Nightmares and sleep terrors: 8, 9, 11, 17

Night feeder: 2, 14    Difficulty getting to sleep: 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13, 17

Unusual sleep cycle: 3, 7, 10, 13, 15    

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We all evolve our own particular ways of coping with tension. Some people relieve it by “blowing their top” and ventilating their emotion, and in this way they dissipate their anxiety; some develop a studied calm in their approach to things; while with others the anxiety is concentrated in one particular limb or organ, so that the rest of the body is free. Other people cope with inner tension by making sure that they have everything just right. They feel that if everything is right there can be nothing to worry about. These are the perfectionists. They like everything neat and tidy and in order. This is likely to become an obsession with them so that they become preoccupied with it and spend much of their time checking things over time and again. In this way they are inclined to fuss over every minor detail. It soon comes about that there is no time for the really important things, for with all their attention focused on the details they lose sight of the main issues. There is a tendency for the mind to keep churning over some particular subject and be unable to make the normal transition to other subjects of thought. At the same time the need to have things just right leads to doubts about whether things are right or not. In this way the obsessive is continually in doubt, so that he becomes a constant worrier and has such difficulty in making up his mind that even trivial decisions may become a matter of great effort. He seems to see two sides to every question; and when it comes to some important matter, such as marriage or choice of occupation, he simply dithers and is unable to come to any decision.

Nevertheless, the perfectionist way of avoiding inner tensions works reasonably well in some circumstances. It is effective if the person is able to live a methodical routine way of life that allows everything to be neat and tidy and in its right place. But if something happens to change this way of life so that he can no longer follow set routines, then he becomes tense and anxious because his way of preventing tension does not work in the new set of circumstances.

This was the case with a young woman whom I have recently seen. She had been a very good nurse, in fact she had been top of her year because she was so neat and thorough that she always had everything in order. She liked her work and was free of tension as she was able to avoid worry by having everything in order. However she married, and quickly had two children. In the new circumstances with two babies to care for she was no longer able to have everything around her in perfect order. She could no longer cope with her inner tensions and broke down with severe anxiety.

Another perfectionist woman was successful in running a milk bar with her husband in a country town. Then they went to live on a dairy farm, but the presence of the mud and dirt from the cows so conflicted with her perfectionistic tendencies that she broke down with severe tension and anxiety.

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