Anxiety and Fear

[Giraffe2]

I live everyday in fear that something will happen to one of my two kids, specifically my son who is in Kindergarten. I am terrified everyday that there will be a school shooting at his school. This is something I literally struggle with almost everyday, but with the Anniversary of Parkland tomorrow I cannot shake it. I want to keep my son home from school tmw, but then I feel guilty bc I know he wants to go to have his class party. Would you keep him home? Thanks in advance

[Hidden]

Do to the Anniversary approaching I can understand your concern. If I had a son I would send him to school do to the chances of it happening which are low. I know you are not the only one going through this but things must proceed as a normal daily routine. All will be ok. In addition the teachers have been trained and have specific action to take place incase. Please don’t worry. 😌

[Giraffe2 in reply to Hidden]

Thank you so much

[kkat37]

I would send him to school but if you can you should go to the party with him if parents are allowed it might help calm your fears.

[Giraffe2 in reply to kkat37]

Thank you so much, that was a great suggestion

[LadyO4]

Sweet momma, I understand your pain and struggle. Of course you want to be certain your child will be out of harm's way when he is at school away from you. Letting them go from home out into the world, and out from under our wing, is a huge step for any mother. I needed a lot of support from other moms to get my mind focused on all the right things.

I don't think there is anything wrong with expressing your concerns to the school administration, and get a list of their plan for when unexpected circumstances arise, whether it's a flood from the rain, a broken piece of hazardous equipment laying around somewhere, or other safety measures.

But I think the bigger picture you are facing is fear, which produces all sorts of anxiety. Make it your priority you will have this looked into with a functional doctor, not a regular conventional doctor. Going to right kind of doctor, a functional doctor, is of utmost importance. They will help you determine where the problem is originating in your body, and provide the means to treat it without drugs, which never corrected anyone's problem. Be good to yourself and believe help is out there.

Do you have a moms group you attend? Meeting with others who are on the same journey through motherhood as you will encourage you greatly. You are not alone in your desire to protect your family.

Take some steps to help yourself. It's ok to lean on others when things like this arise. I did the same thing hundreds of times.

Above all else, pray. Ask God to shelter your children from harm everyday when they home. Ask him to do for your children what you cannot do yourself. Ask him for peace, the kinds that transcends your understanding, but promises to help us in our time of need. Blessings to you momma, and feel free to write back if you want to talk more. I am here for you.

[Giraffe2 in reply to LadyO4]

Your response helped me a lot. I’ve read it a few times as this is an issue I deal with almost daily. Can I ask what type of Doctor you mean when you say “functional” Doctor? A psychological? A physiatrist? I really feel like I need to go see someone, I just don’t even know where to start.

Thank you again

[LadyO4 in reply to Giraffe2]

How nice to hear back from you! I am happy to help and will need a little bit of time to pull some information together that I think will help you understand some things better. Check back here soon!

[Giraffe2 in reply to LadyO4]

Oh gosh, I do not want you to have to do any extra work! I can look into it and figure some things out, I’m not putting that on you. I just meant if you knew off the top of your head. If you have information that’s great, but please don’t put yourself out.

Thanks so much for all of your help

[LadyO4 in reply to Giraffe2]

I am writing off the top of my head! This is important stuff I want you to know. I'm almost done.

[LadyO4]

Anxiety is a symptom—a symptom that has a root cause.

Functional medicine seeks to expose the root cause of a person's anxiety (which is grounded in fear) and addresses the bodily system at that level, instead of masking the problem with a drug to help you forget you still have a problem. Healing anxiety with functional medicine means figuring out why you have the symptoms in the first place.

Treating the root cause will automatically remove the symptoms.

It’s like having a splinter in your foot—do you remove the splinter or just take the painkillers to cover up the problem? Treating the root cause will automatically remove the symptoms.

A regular doctor or specialist can do only one thing for you - listen to you explain how you feel, reach for his pad of paper, and write you a prescription for a drug, and hope it works. If it doesn't work, he will prescribe a different drug from the same classification, and hope that one works. If you feel worse from taking the drug, he might tell you to hang in there and be patient. He will make you feel like it is your fault his drug isn't working. Regular doctors want to look like they are helping, but they aren't, because they have been trained to match a drug to a symptom. Remember in school when you would be handed a test that had two columns, and you had to look at column one and decide what from column two matched it? Well, that's what doctors do - but they never fix the problem.

A functional doctor will do four tests to get a broad picture of what is going on inside your body; blood test, urine test, stool test. and a saliva test. Each of these tests will show what your eleven systems are doing, where you are deficient, if there is inflammation, if your glands are working properly, and a ton of other things that you can only find out by doing these tests.

There are three glands in your body, the hypothalamic, pituitary, and adrenal, and together, they control a person's response to stress, and in your case, the stress comes from the fear of your child getting hurt away from home.

When you think of your child getting hurt, the sympathetic nervous systems stimulates the adrenal glands triggering the release of catecholamines, which include adrenaline and noradrenaline, and cortisol, which enlarges your blood vessels, and gives you more oxygen. It is called the fight-or-flight response. Sometimes a person can get stuck in fight-or-flight, feeling like they are under constant attack. This keeps the adrenal gland working way too hard and pretty soon you have some serious hormonal imbalances, compounding the problem.

Stress like this also alters your brain chemistry, and after a while the nervous system stores these fear episodes, and it doesn't take much to pull the trigger and experience the fear repeatedly.

Functional neurology looks at all facets of your health to help you unwind the stress and move you into a more balanced neurological state.

One of the most fascinating things about this approach is that often times a person can trace back in their life to what started this cycle of fear, and the brain remembered it, keeping the pattern going. Mine started when I was a little girl, it came from my insecurities from my parents.

In addition to functional medicine helping you, it is imperative you seek out the right person to talk to. such as a Christian counselor or someone else who knows you the best and loves you unconditionally. You must have a release for these emotions or the problem will just compound, and in a couple of years you can expect to be an emotional trainwreck.

Be kind to yourself and don't be afraid to lean on someone when you need to. Your life depends on it. I hope some of this helps.