Lilya

Helle everyone,

My 9 year old niece lives with me. I have been her ward since she´s four and she´s been getting anxiety attacks for some time. She has difficulties breathing deeply. School is starting and she is so wound up, she cannot sleep. I keep taking her to doctors and child therapists, but they tell me the reason is the relationship with her mother, who is an active alcholic and in a terrible state. She abandonned her daughter three times and it had terrible effects on my niece.

I think it´s more than possible that she senses when I´m anxious. My own daughter is grown up, but anxious as well. In fact the whole family is anxious!

I´ll be doing fun things with my niece this autumn. She has ballet lessons, art courses, piano lessons and we want to study some flamenco as well. I hope it will help her.

Anything else you would recommend? Some input would be good.

mike_mass

You might want to look into the writings of Elaine Aron. She's a clinical psychologist who studies the biological and social aspects of anxiety. Here's a link:

http://healing.about.com/od/empathic/a/HSP_hallowes.htm

Introvrtd1

My son was born in 1995. I've had p/a since 1992. I just hope that I didnt pass this dreaded condition to him for the remainder of his young life.

Yuchcch!!!

I would hate to have to explain to him he has an inherited trait related to my wimpy panic attacks.............

Anyway, at least I could prepare him for the unknown............like, its just a feeling..........."here's how u deal with it"".................

No one has ever done that for me............

Intro

nakur

It could be possible that anxiety/panic attacks have a genetic cause, some kind of genetically determined adrenalin/noradrenalin imbalances, that is passed on to our children.

Lilya

Thanks all of you for the input.

I think the link you sent is very interesting, Mike, and makes sense to me.

I have a feeling this condition can be genetic, but we can help our children more since we´re aware of it. My niece has real anxiety attacks, not unlike mine when I was her age. But she is smart and I am teaching her to control her breathing, not unlike yoga. She was in Rudolph Steiner´s preschool and did yoga every morning.

Love and light,

mike_mass

I have also found meditation helpful