What causes this?

[Lightattheend]

Anxiety, health anxiety, panic attacks, etc. What is the cause of these horrible illnesses? Is it genetics? Is it a bad experience/trauma in life? Is it due to a injury? I wonder this? I have 5 siblings and I'm the only one who experiences this. I had a accident when I was about 10 yrs old (I'm in my 30's now) where I was riding my bike down a steep hill and I pushed the brakes in the middle of the hill and flipped all the rest of the way down. Me, my siblings and cousins had to walk miles to get home and when we did get home I had zero memory of the walk or how I got home. I was sick for days with a bad headache and vomiting but I was never taken to the hospital. I wonder if this accident messed something up in my brain?

[hypercat54]

No one knows exactly why some people will get depression etc. and not others. It's still very much a nature/nurture debate. I personally believe that your personality may make you more susceptible to mental health issues but it is the environment or stressful events which can bring them to the fore. Just my view.

If you are worried about brain damage the person to check with is your doctor, so make an appointment. There is no point worrying about something without asking for expert help. Good luck. x

[Lightattheend in reply to hypercat54]

I appreciate your response.

[JAYnLA]

Hey Light. I also have siblings who I don't see as having these issues, but as I've worked on my own recovery and learned a lot about it, I can actually see that they are both very anxious and often sad - they just keep running as fast as they can away from it. I stopped running and it came up to the surface to be dealt with. Otherwise, I know that my family history is littered with it and that I had anxiety issues from at least puberty, maybe earlier.

[Lightattheend in reply to JAYnLA]

I may have other family members with it that I just don't know of..

[JAYnLA in reply to Lightattheend]

I knew that my mother had it. I only found out recently that her father had it and my mother on my father's side had it as well.