Anxiety is here!

We have this visitor the likes to visit more often than we would like. Sometimes here for me other times here for Mitch. Right now, its Mitchell's turn. You see this visitor likes to play with our minds and make us think that bad things are going to happen to us and its really hard not to believe what we are being told!

This time it goes like this.....

Mitch went to a Boy Scout Campout on Friday. He doesn't do stuff like this very often because he is really not comfortable sleeping places that he is not familiar with and usually would not go camping with out Brandon but this time he went and we were so proud of him for going and not being afraid to try it without one of us being there. He's getting ready to go to Scout Camp in a couple of weeks and he had to take a swimming test so that he would be ready for camp. Well, little did he know, he would be swimming in a lake not a pool. He texted me late Friday night and told me he didn't want to swim in the lake. I told him he would be ok and that he has been swimming in lakes before and he will be fine. Come to find out, one of the other boys told a story about a boy that was swimming in a lake, got a parasite that ate his brain and he died. This is a really, really bad thing for Mitch to hear but once he told me we talked about it again and he took the swimming test the next morning and was fine. At least I thought he was fine! Think again! He swallowed a little bit of water and he hasn't stopped talking, worrying, and crying about it ever since. He is so afraid that there is now something in his body and that he is going to die in 2 weeks.

Usually we can talk Mitch out of these thoughts but this time it doesn't seem to be working. Its really hard to know what to do. I can tell him what I would do in the situation and how I would make myself feel better but to a 12 year old it doesn't really help. People that don't have anxiety have no idea what this is like and think that he should just be able to get over it and quit worrying. Sometimes, even though I struggle with anxiety too, I get frustrated that he doesn't see the silliness in some of his worries! My poor boy! What I would give to take this away from him! It makes me so sad to see him so scared and so afraid that something bad is going to happen to him! It is so hard to know what to do or how to help him.

I really really hope this visitor will leave soon and never come back!