Four Practical Ways I’m Managing My Anxiety With ADHD

Things are crazy right now — here’s how I’m coping

Photo by Sydney Latham on Unsplash

I’ve always been anxious, even before I had a word to articulate it.

For a long time, I considered it an unwelcome part of my personality that I was hard pressed to change.

I was what adults called a “mature child”. Despite impulsively doing things like scrawling my name on brand new paving stones (my parents loved that one), I was careful, measured.

I tended to “over-react”; while other kids could bounce back from trauma, I tended to go to extremes to avoid the things that hurt me.

My childhood fears were intense and lasting.

When I was around 6 or 7, a hornet attack from our wooden playground set left me terrified — I couldn’t approach it again, even after the nest was removed. Eventually, my parents had it taken down.

Water became another enemy after I nearly drowned when a water slide tube flipped. But nothing compared to my fear of pool drains, triggered by a well-meaning swim class PSA about a child drowning after getting caught in one. Despite my mom’s gentle attempts to help me overcome this fear, I’d panic whenever we approached the deep end.