Personal Narrative: My Childhood Mental Illness

One of my first memories I have about my parents is from when I was about four years old. They were having a loud argument. I can remember hiding in my younger brother’s room, trying to distract him from the commotion coming from my parent’s bedroom. I have always been on edge around my parents, I never wanted to do or say anything that would cause them to become upset with me or upset with each-other. They separated three or four times before I got to middle school. I was always nervous, it wasn’t just with my parents. I didn’t want anyone to be upset and so I always went out of my way to make sure no one would become upset around me. Even to this day I begin to panic when I hear arguments, thinking that somehow it was my fault. When I was six I was diagnosed with trichotillomania, an obsessive compulsive disorder where, when I felt stressed or nervous I would pull out my eyelashes. After battling that for a few years I was able to get to the point where I only pulled eyelashes out in moments of high stress. My sophomore and junior year of high school I began to have a lot of stomach issues and was always on edge and tired. I also experienced a few of my first real anxiety attacks, where I felt like I couldn’t breathe or speak. I was diagnosed …show more content…
According to NAMI.org one in five children will experience a serious case of anxiety in their childhood. The body already creates anxiety as an alarm system for danger. But when there is an overproduction of the anxiety there are consequences to the growing child. Children with high anxiety are more likely to become addicts or have an eating disorder when they get older. With that in mind there has been a debate throughout the science community trying to figure out what is more likely to cause anxiety. There have been two main sides of the argument that circumstances that children grown up in or because of the genetics that they’ve had since