Reply to Is blaming EVERYTHING on anxiety a teen 'scheme'?

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[quote=Anonymous]This sucks for kids who really have anxiety disorders or other mental health issues. My DD has anxiety and depression, and OCD tendencies that stem from anxiety but not a separate OCD diagnosis. When her anxiety is controlled everything else is better. She is on meds and does CBT.

Anxiety affects everything she does, in subtle and obvious ways. Sometimes she'll do something silly/dumb/ridiculous/annoying and when I ask why she'll say anxiety. I used to think it was a cop out but she explained it to me with the help of her therapist one time she told me this story, about why she needs to sit in her specific seat.

She sits in the same spot at lunch. It's the best for her for various reasons. She feels safe and secure there. If she can't sit there, she knows she'll obsess about it until at least the next time she can sit there, maybe longer. So at least 24 hours. She worries that if she is obsessing about her seat, she'll miss instruction in her classes. If there's a quiz or test (also has major anxiety about tests), she'll fail. Then of course she'll make a low grade in the class. Because she didn't master the material in that class, she'll fail the next class, and so on. Her gpa will be terrible so she won't go to a good college or get scholarships. If she can't get into a good college, or can't pay for it if she gets into a mediocre college, she won't be able to get into grad school or get a high paying job after graduation. So she winds up working at a pet store selling fish because that's the closest she can come to her passion (marine biology) without a degree. She can't pay the bills with that so she has to live at home forever, and she'll never meet someone to marry because no one wants to date, much less marry, a 30yo who lives with her parents. So she eventually tries to move out and can't afford rent, gets evicted and winds up homeless on the streets, where she catches some horrible disease or is murdered.  So basically, because she didn't sit in her spot at lunch, she's going to die alone on the streets.

I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open, astonished. Her therapist said it's very common, when anxiety patients follow their fear fantasies through to the end, for death/homelessness/similar extremes to be the outcome they fear. Sometimes when she blames something off the wall on anxiety I'll ask for more details, and she explains it sometimes. Mostly she internalizes it though. It's embarrassing for her to explain it because she knows it's not normal. So yeah, it sounds like an excuse sometimes but it isn't always. We problem solve to prevent it from happening again and don't dwell on it. I try to be understanding.

I'm sure some kids are using it as an excuse. But if your DD is on Xanax, she might be telling the truth. I'm curious about Xanax though. Surely she has other tools to use too, right? Are you monitoring the Xanax use? It's very addictive, as I'm sure you know. [/quote]

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